absurd dogma of the divine right of kings; which replaced the slavish doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance with the principle that the authority of the monarch was no other than a trust founded on an assumed agreement between him and his subjects that the power conferred upon him should be used for their advantage, for the faithful execution of which he was individually responsible, and for a breach of which resistance to his authority, as a last resort, was a constitutional remedy; which for the supremacy of the Crown substituted the supremacy of Parliament; which made the King as well as his subjects responsible to its authority, and which abrogated the right of the Crown to govern the colonies in virtue of its prerogative, and vested that power in Parliament, placed the colonists upon a footing widely different from that they had theretofore occupied.
The general principle that they were, by the laws and statutes of England, entitled to the political rights that appertained to British subjects, could not be denied, but commercial rivalry and political jealousies acting upon their excited feelings, soon generated questions of the gravest import, both as to the extent of the power of Parliament to legislate for them, and as to the participation in representation essential to authorize the exercise of that power.
The subjects of taxation and the regulation of trade by Parliamentary authority, excited the greatest interest on both sides of the Atlantic. In respect to the latter, the question was not a little embarrassed by an alleged acquiescence on the part of the colonists, and the consequent force of precedents. This circumstance, in connection with the consideration that, if the right to regulate the trade of the colonies was denied to the mother country, the allegiance conceded to be due would be paid to a barren sceptre, was calculated to deprive the cause of the colonists of the favorable opinion of those just men in England whose countenance and support were of so much service to them in the sequel. Duly appreciating the obstacles to success which there was reason to apprehend from this source, with the prudence and good sense that belonged to their character, and without waiving any of their rights, they placed their cause principally upon a ground that lay at the foundation of the Revolution, and was thoroughly immovable, viz., that by the fundamental laws of property no taxes could be levied upon the people but by their own consent or that of their authorized agents, and that by consequence the connection was indissoluble between taxation and representation.
In the justice and constitutionality of this position they were openly sustained by Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Burke, Fox, and others—men who were in their day and have since been regarded as leading minds of England. With but little of public sentiment against them beyond what was influenced by the inveterate hatred and the insane obstinacy of the King, wielding at will the majority of a notoriously corrupt Parliament and the brute force of the kingdom, the colonists appealed to the God of Battles in defense of a sacred principle of freedom, and in resistance to tyrannical acts of the most odious and oppressive character, and they were victorious. It is now, and will be in all time, a source of satisfaction to the people of these States, that the decision of the sword is not their only nor their highest title to the liberty they enjoy. The colonists were right in the contest. Of this no serious doubt is now entertained in any honest and well-informed quarter. The idea of virtual representation, and the attempt to justify one wrong by the practice of another, namely, the taxing other British subjects without giving them an adequate representation in Parliament—the only replies that were made to the claim of constitutional rights—are now well understood, and, it gives me pleasure to say, generally disavowed in England. Lord Derby, the manly and highly gifted leader of what is left of the old Tory party, not long since, in a speech delivered in the presence of an American minister, unreservedly admitted that we were right in the Revolutionary contest; and, if that question were now submitted to the free judgment of the people of England, such would be found to be the public sense of that great nation.
The only way in which the right in respect to taxation set up by the English Parliament could have been sustained consistently with the English Constitution, would have been by a joint government, securing to the colonies the representation in that body to which they were entitled as British subjects—a plan to which both the mother country and the colonies were equally decided in their dislike, but for very different reasons. If a similar question were presented at this day it would, according to the present state of public opinion in both countries, be at once settled by an alliance of peace and friendship, substituting fraternal relations for those of parent and children.
Well would it have been for the interests of both and of humanity if the matter had been thus adjusted.
The immediate question upon which the Revolution turned was, of course, forever extinguished by its results. But it has been far otherwise with the opinions, doubtless of various shades and equally sincere, in regard to the nature of government, the uses to which it could be properly applied, and the manner and spirit of its application, with which the colonists entered into the contest, and with the feelings engendered by those opinions and developed by the war. Upon these points the characters and successive conditions of the early emigrants exerted a great influence. Those to Virginia were first in point of time, and certainly not inferior to any in the elements of character adapted to the difficulties they were destined to encounter. History, doubtless authentic, records that the first emigration to that State was a measure of the patriotic party in England, and sprung from a desire to make an offering to liberty in the wilderness which the stringency of power had prevented them from making at home. The accomplishment of that design, whatever may have been the aid subsequently derived from its authors, has been eminently successful. Whether as colonists, as citizens of a free State, or as a part of our great Confederacy, the emigrants to Virginia, their successors and descendants, have done all that men could do to realize the anticipations and designs of the founders of that ancient colony.
Fully equal to them in devotion to liberty, with the additional merit of having made greater sacrifices in its defense, stood the Puritans, whose descendants are said to constitute at this time one fifth (I believe it is) of the people of the United States. It would be superfluous to describe either the persecutions to which they were subjected by arbitrary power or their fidelity to their principles. Their story is known, and their early character understood, throughout the civilized world.
The Huguenots entered largely into the early settlement of several of the colonies, and their descendants now constitute numerous portions of several of our States. Indeed, the very first European colony established in this country was composed of Huguenots, who were exterminated by the Spaniards—an event which, indirectly, contributed greatly to the emigration to Virginia under Sir Walter Raleigh. Fugitives from the most cruel as well as the most obstinate persecutions, hunted like wild beasts on account of their devotion to religious freedom and the right of opinion, they fled to our shores, detesting irresponsible power of every description, and ready to do their utmost to prevent its re-incorporation in our virgin system.
The States General and the Dutch West India Company, although the former were perhaps not more favorable to popular sovereignty, in our sense of these words, than the Stuarts, and the latter altogether mercenary, yet introduced into this country, in the colonization of New Netherlands, emigrants especially adapted, by character and disposition, to the scenes through which they were destined to pass. This happy result was attributable to the peculiar conjuncture of affairs at home when the establishment of that colony was undertaken. It was during the continuance of the truce in their War of Independence—the first that was granted to them by Philip II., after that barbarous contest had already lasted forty years—that the attention of the United Provinces was directed to this country. The revolting cruelties which Philip had caused to be inflicted upon the Dutch, through the instrumentality of Alva, are as notorious to the world as are those to which the Huguenots were subjected by Charles IX. and Louis XIV.; and the spirit of resistance to arbitrary power, whether ecclesiastical or political, was branded as by fire upon the hearts of both.
To colonists of these descriptions were from time to time added numerous other Protestants, who had fled to Holland, as well after the massacre of St. Bartholomew as from other and kindred demonstrations of political and priestly despotism in various parts of Europe, with an infusion of
