and corruption of the executors of them; then it is their right and what is their right is their duty, to resume that delegated power, and call their trustees to an account; to resist the usurpation and extirpate the tyranny; to restore their sullied majesty, and prostituted authority; to suspend, alter, or abrogate those laws, and punish their unfaithful and corrupt officers. Nor is it the duty only of the united body, but every member of it ought, according to his respective rank, power, and weight in the community, to concur in advancing and supporting those glorious designs.
Political Duties of Britons
The obligation of Briton’s to fulfil the political duties, receive a vast accession of strength, when he calls to mind of what a noble and well-balanced constitution of government he has the honour to partake; a constitution founded on common reason, common consent, and common good; a constitution of free and equal laws, secured against arbitrary will and popular licence, by an admirable temperament of the governing powers, controuling and controuled by one another. How must every one who has tolerable understanding to observe, or tolerable honesty to acknowledge its happy effects, venerate and love a constitution, in which the majesty of the people is, and has frequently been recognized; in which Kings are made and unmade by the choice of the people; laws enacted or annulled only by their own consent, and for their own good, in which none can be deprived of their property, abridged of their freedom, or forfeit their lives without an appeal to the laws, and the verdict of their Peers or equals; a constitution, in fine, the nurse of heroes, the parent of liberty, the patron of learning and arts, the dominion of laws, “the pride of Britain, the envy of her neighbours” and their Sanctuary too! How dissolute and execrable must their character and conduct be, who, instead of sacrificing their interest and ambition, will not part with the least degree of either, to preserve inviolate, and intail in full vigour to their posterity such a glorious constitution, the labour of so much blood and treasure; but would choose rather to sacrifice it, and all their independency, freedom, and dignity, to personal power, and hollow grandeur, to any little pageant of a King, who should prefer being the master of slaves to being the guardian of freemen, and consider himself as the proprietor, not the father of his people! But words cannot express the selfishness and servility of those men; and as little the public and heroic spirit of such, if any such there are as have virtue enough still left to stem the torrent of corruption, and guard our sacred constitution against the profligacy and prostitution of the corruptors and the corrupted.
Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in theCountry to His Friend
This short piece, showing a resonance with the theory in longer essays on the same subject, is typical of much found in the newspapers of the era. It appeared in the Massachusetts Spy on February 18, 1773.
It gives me joy to hear something is now before the General Court concerning the emancipation of the blacks among us. It has long been a surprise to me and many others, that a people who profess to be so fond of freedom, and are taking every method to preserve the same themselves, and transmit it to their posterity, can see such numbers of their fellow men, made of the same blood, not only in bondage, but kept so even by them. Can such a conduct be reconcilable with the love of freedom? I freely confess, to one who is a stranger to the true character of this people, it has the appearance rather of temper and resentment against the rulers, than a hearty regard to that best of heaven’s temporal blessings.
Men may talk and write as they please, but I must be excused from judging of any man or body of men, otherwise than by their works. The patriots in every town throughout the province, are weekly telling us how highly they value freedom, and that every temporal blessing without it is scarce worth enjoying; yet at the same time, they are stopping their ears to the cries of multitudes of their poor unhappy suffering brethren.
I readily grant there are difficulties which attend the freeing of them. It is no more than might justly be expected. Every community as well as every individual acting wrong, must suffer; and shall that be an excuse for not altering his or their conduct? No, they but encrease the evil by withholding the remedy; for either ruin or the remedy, which will be painful in the operation, must take place.
I pretend not to say what remedy is best to be taken by our rulers, but this one thing I may venture to say, that if a deaf ear is still turned to the complaint of those unhappy men—this people have no just reason to expect the righteous Governor of the earth, who punishes communities in this world, will afford his blessing to your endeavors to save a sinking country; but may say unto them as he did to Israel of old, “Ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor: Behold I will proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed to all the kingdoms of the Earth.”
A Sermon Preached to the Ancient andHonorable Artillery Company in Boston
Born in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard, he was regarded as only moderately bright among his classmates, but later in life Simeon Howard was said by some of his peers in the ministry to be “one of the ablest men New England ever produced.” For reasons of health he chose Nova Scotia for his first preaching assignment but after two years rejected a call to a pastorate and returned to Boston for further study and occasional preaching. Soon he was invited to accept the pastorate recently vacated on the death of the great Jonathan Mayhew. Howard was widely denounced by New England Congregationalists as a heretic and suffered some ostracism because of his beliefs. He could not reconcile himself to Calvinist theology; the dogmas of predestination were repulsive to him. Hostility of surrounding congregations and harassment by British troops and American Loyalists then dominant in Boston forced Howard and his followers either to disband their church or to flee Boston. They chose to move en masse (1775) to Nova Scotia, where their pastor had enjoyed a friendly reception in his youth. Life proved to be hard in Canada, however, and learning that British forces had vacated Boston, he and his flock were back in their Massachusetts homes within a couple of years. There Howard devoted the remainder of his life to reestablishing his church, serving in various posts at Harvard University, and broadcasting his personal creed of the innate goodness of man and the infinite love of God. This sermon, preached to a Boston artillery company before the brief exile in Canada, illustrates how ideas drawn from the Bible and English Whig doctrine blended to support American experience and, rehearsed during the Stamp Act crisis, served to prepare Americans for the showdown with England they were about to face. As a consequence, when independence became a common goal, there was firmly planted and widely distributed in the population a theory that supplied a thoroughly satisfying justification of their struggle.
GALATIANS V. I.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.
Mankind are generally averse to innovations both in religion and government. Laws and constitutions to which they have been long used, they are fond of retaining, even though
