Founding America_ Documents From the Revolution to the Bill of Rights Part 1

Founding America.

Doc.u.ments from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights.

by Jack N. Rakove.

General Introduction

A decade after signing the Declaration of Independence, the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush made an important observation that historians are fond of citing. "There is nothing more common than to confound the terms of the American revolution with those of the late American war," Rush wrote in 1786. "The American war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed" (pp. 308-309).

As Rush recognized, the events he consciously called a revolution had two main elements. The first, which had ended successfully only three years earlier, was to secure political independence from Great Britain. That story in turn hinged on two great questions. First, how did the colonists move from resistance to revolution, from seeking to maintain their rights within the British Empire to renouncing its authority entirely? Second, once the last hopes for reconciliation had evaporated, how did the Americans prevail in a long and difficult military struggle against the greatest power in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world?

But winning independence, Rush also recognized, was only the first part of a greater story. In his mind, the Revolution was more than a struggle for independence and home rule. It had also become a movement to establish new forms of government, modeled on republican principles that made the people the only proper source of political authority. Rush devoted the remainder of his essay to discussing how this new form of government could be "perfected." Within a year, this effort culminated in the form of the federal Const.i.tution drafted at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, a Const.i.tution whose first stated purpose was "to form a more perfect union."

These two great themes-the achievement of independence and the "perfection" of republican government-are the subject of the doc.u.ments collected in this volume. These doc.u.ments cannot capture the experience of the Revolution in its totality. No single volume, however carefully edited, could ill.u.s.trate the diversity of experience and the range of issues that were felt and voiced during the quarter century of history that separates the beginning of the crisis with Britain in the mid-1760s from the adoption of the Const.i.tution in the late 1780s.

When Benjamin Rush spoke of the Revolutionary War, he meant both the movement that led to independence and the military struggle that secured it. Defined in this way, the Revolution really began in the mid-1760s, when the colonists first argued that Parliament had no authority to impose taxes or other laws on a people who sent no representatives of their own to distant London. In the crises over the Stamp Act ( 1765-1766) and the Townshend duties ( 1767-1770), Americans and Britons defined and sharpened their arguments about the nature of the British Empire and the rights and duties of its American colonies.

By 1773 these rival theories had exposed a deep fault line between the dominant political views in each country. Americans insisted that they could be governed only by laws to which they had directly consented, through the votes of their freely elected representatives in their own separate legislative a.s.semblies. The British position rested on different a.s.sumptions. Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Parliament had been recognized as the sovereign source of law within Britain. If Americans were part of that realm, as they professed to be, then they were ultimately subject to Parliament, even if no American members sat in the House of Commons.

Even in 1773, however, no one in America was actively promoting the idea of national independence. Nor, of course, was anyone in Britain intent on forcing the colonies into a state of rebellion. On both sides of the Atlantic, political leaders of goodwill hoped the controversies of the late 1760s would soon be forgotten, and the underlying harmony of the empire restored. What happened instead was that a crisis no one had foreseen erupted in the fall of 1773 and then spun out of control in the spring and summer of 1774.

Its immediate cause was Parliament's pa.s.sage of a Tea Act, adopted to alleviate the financial woes of the East India Company by giving this powerful corporation a monopoly over the sale of tea in America. The colonists disliked the idea of a monopoly, but what disturbed them even more was that the Act retained the duty on imported tea that had been left in place in 1770, when colonial protests finally persuaded the British government to repeal the duties on other imports levied in the Townshend Act of 1767. Once again, colonists protested. In most ports, royal officials prudently allowed the tea s.h.i.+ps to return to Britain, their cargoes unloaded. In Boston, however, Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted on enforcing the letter of the law, and refused to grant the three s.h.i.+ps the necessary clearances. Rather than allow the tea to be landed and the duties paid, the townsmen held their own Tea Party on the evening of December 16, 1773. Some 342 chests of tea, valued at 9000, were soon brewing in Boston Harbor.

In London, the following winter was given over to concocting a different, more potent brew of measures. In response to the news from Boston, the government of Lord North, firmly backed by King George III, asked Parliament to approve a set of acts to punish Boston and the province of Ma.s.sachusetts for their defiance of the empire. These measures, known as the Coercive or Intolerable Acts, had several goals. The first, the Boston Port Act, closed the town harbor to commerce until full rest.i.tution was made for the destroyed tea. Next came the Ma.s.sachusetts Government Act, altering the colony's royal charter of government in ways that would presumably strengthen the authority of the empire. In adopting these acts, the King, his ministers, and their loyal majority in Parliament had two further objectives. One was to isolate Ma.s.sachusetts by showing the other colonies just how costly defiance of the empire could be. The other was to provide a conclusive demonstration of just how sovereign Parliament really was. A Parliament that could adopt these measures and see them enforced would indeed be America's sovereign.

Both calculations failed, and their failure converted American opposition to the claims of Parliament into a genuine revolution against the empire. Far from isolating Ma.s.sachusetts, the Coercive Acts persuaded the other provinces to rally to its defense because it was only "suffering in the common cause" of securing American rights. At the First Continental Congress of September-October 1774, delegates from twelve colonies (only the frontier settlement of Georgia did not attend) adopted a common strategy of resistance and agreed upon the basic const.i.tutional positions Americans would uphold. A Second Continental Congress met at Philadelphia in early May 1775. Three weeks earlier, violence had erupted in Ma.s.sachusetts when its new royal governor, General Thomas Gage, sent soldiers to seize colonial arms and munitions stored in nearby Concord. Faced with the specter of civil war, the Second Congress did not flinch from converting the Ma.s.sachusetts provisional army into a Continental Army under the command of George Was.h.i.+ngton, the colonies' best-known soldier. Nor were the delegates (now including representatives from Georgia) willing to modify the strong positions they had adopted the previous fall.

Even though a full year pa.s.sed before Congress felt that Americans were ready for independence, the outbreak of war made that decision inevitable because neither Congress nor the British government was prepared to retreat from the positions each had adopted. Neither side had sought this result. The colonists had no cadre of revolutionary agitators seeking to foment crises or exploit British miscues in the cause of national liberation. Most Americans would have been content to remain subjects of the British Crown. And the British obviously had no reason to try to provoke Americans into acts of defiance as a pretext for cracking down on colonial rights. But on the key issue of Parliament's jurisdiction over America, the two countries found themselves in fundamental disagreement. Both had valid and potent arguments to make, and neither side could see how its fundamental concerns would be answered if its positions were not vindicated. Both found themselves increasingly suspicious of the other's motives-even though Americans repeatedly declared they sought nothing more than the restoration of rights, while spokesmen for the British position argued that it was only reasonable to require the colonists to contribute to the costs of the empire. Had the British government ever offered the colonists a bona fide opportunity to negotiate, or had Congress agreed to send a peace delegation to London, it is entirely possible that war could have been averted. But neither was prepared to take that initiative, and so the war came.

The military conflict that began in April 1775 finally ended eight years later, when the Treaty of Paris formally acknowledged the independence of the United States. The war placed an enormous strain on American resources. If the British had thought that Americans would simply break and run when faced with the disciplined formations of the royal army, the engagements at Concord and later at Bunker Hill quickly disabused them of that hope. In 1776 a ma.s.sive British fleet brought 30,000 soldiers to New York. In a series of engagements, this force repeatedly outmaneuvered and pummeled Was.h.i.+ngton's army, first occupying New York City, then threatening to liberate New Jersey from patriot control. Only Was.h.i.+ngton's daring raids on Trenton and Princeton kept the American cause from collapsing.

The campaign of 1777 was arguably the turning point of the war. The strategic initiative belonged to Britain. While one British army, led by General John Burgoyne, was sent south from Canada, the forces based in New York under the command of General Sir William Howe and his brother, Admiral Lord Richard Howe, prepared to occupy Philadelphia, the American capital. But these campaigns were poorly coordinated, and both started late. While the Howes undertook a laborious movement by sea, sailing all the way up the Chesapeake Bay, Burgoyne's force was slogging through the New York wilderness to transfer its line of attack from Lake Champlain to the Hudson River. American forces commanded by Horatio Gates built up strength by drawing on the militia of densely populated New England. In October, Burgoyne, short on supplies, surrendered his army at Saratoga, while the Howes occupied Philadelphia, which had little strategic significance.

The news of Saratoga had its decisive impact in Paris, where a trio of American commissioners, led by Benjamin Franklin, had been attempting to negotiate an alliance with Britain's ancient enemy, France. In February 1778 the government of King Louis XVI was finally prepared to enter the war as America's ally. Hard pressed to supply its army across 3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean, Britain now faced a graver strategic challenge.

The British responded with a significant change of strategy. Late in 1778, they s.h.i.+fted the theater of operations from the Middle Atlantic states to the South, first occupying Savannah, then preparing to carry the war into the Carolinas and Virginia. There were significant pockets of loyalist strength in this region. The British also knew that the presence of hundreds of thousands of African-American slaves made these states the soft underbelly of the American union.

Over the next three years, British forces carried the war northward, until Virginia became the major site of battle. Other British forces remained encamped in New York City, under Was.h.i.+ngton's watchful eye. The decisive development came in 1781, when a British army commanded by General Charles Cornwallis encamped on the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. Aware that a French fleet was available to clamp off seaward access, Was.h.i.+ngton secured a promise that the s.h.i.+ps of Admiral Rochambeau would descend on the Chesapeake, while he himself managed a skillful march of a Franco-American force southward from New York. Isolated and besieged at Yorktown, Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781.

News of this defeat led to the fall of Lord North's government and the installation of a new ministry committed to ending the war and recognizing American independence. At Paris a peace commission of John Adams, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin negotiated ably on behalf of American interests, securing favorable terms that granted the United States boundaries stretching westward to the Mississippi River. In April 1783 the definitive terms of the treaty were set.

So closed what Benjamin Rush later called "the first act of the great drama." To squeeze into one act all the scenes of military and political action required to secure independence would be a great understatement. But Rush was right to think that the meaning of the Revolution could not be limited to the struggle for independence alone. What made it more than a war of national liberation, what made it truly revolutionary, was the common belief that Americans had been granted an opportunity few other peoples had known, and that none had managed to fulfill: in the words of John Adams, "to form and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can contrive" (p. 86). Such governments, Adams further observed, had to be "republican" in form and principle. They had to draw their authority from the people, yet at the same time be so balanced as to prevent the people from misusing their power.

This part of the drama took the form of an experiment that accompanied the movement toward independence in 1776. During the preceding two years, the authority of the legal governments in most of the colonies had collapsed, because governors appointed by the Crown could not collaborate in organizing defiance to its rule. Real power flowed instead to the network of committees, conventions, and congresses that had first formed in 1774 to carry out the urgent work of resistance and to implement the program of Congress. This apparatus had grown more potent with the outbreak of civil war in April 1775.

With each pa.s.sing month, however, Americans grew more nervous about the absence of legal government. With courts closed in most colonies, many normal operations of government ceased. By early 1776 individual colonies were pet.i.tioning Congress to be allowed to resume legal government. Congress first granted this permission on a case-by-case basis. Then, in May 1776, it adopted a blanket resolution authorizing new governments to be created everywhere.

Americans could not simply restore their prior colonial governments. Except in Rhode Island and Connecticut (the two colonies that appointed all of their officials), executive and judicial office-holders served under the authority of either the Crown or the proprietary families (the Penns in Pennsylvania and Delaware, the Calverts in Maryland) in whom the Crown had vested the right of government. Some new way had to be found to reconst.i.tute executive and judicial power. Moreover, the colonists harbored an array of grievances and grudges against the distribution of power among the different parts of government under the old imperial regime. In the first enthusiastic blush of revolution, they were inclined to strengthen the authority of the most representative branch of government-the legislature-while weakening the executive. Given that wars ordinarily place a premium on the effective use of executive power, this might seem like a naive decision. But it was also a natural reaction to past grievances, when governors acting under instructions from London had often prevented colonial legislatures from pursuing the measures they favored.

Acting under these a.s.sumptions, the colonies began writing const.i.tutions that made the legislature the dominant branch of government. If any check were needed upon government, it would come from the people themselves, relying on the practice of annual elections to control their representatives. This a.s.sumed that the people would be willing and able to carry out this duty-that they possessed the virtue (meaning commitment to the public good) that the citizens of a republic were expected to maintain.

By May 1777 most of the states had adopted new const.i.tutions. In doing so, they also established a new definition of what a const.i.tution was. In Britain, the word const.i.tution was commonly used to describe the underlying traditions, conventions, and principles of government. In America, however, the word acquired a more precise meaning. A const.i.tution was a doc.u.ment, adopted at a known historical moment, that explicitly established and empowered, and thereby potentially limited, the authority of a government. In Britain, the leading principle of const.i.tutional government was the legal supremacy of a sovereign Parliament. In America, it was to become the supremacy of the Const.i.tution over all government.

That understanding did not take hold immediately. Its acceptance was more the result of the ways in which these new governments had to use their power to support the war effort. The Revolution required governments to act far more extensively and intrusively than their colonial predecessors had ever done. They had to raise taxes, soldiers, and supplies from a people who had never been asked to support a war on this scale. Inevitably, the reactions this activity provoked went beyond criticisms of specific policies to consider whether the new const.i.tutions were as well framed as they could have been. They had been written, after all, in the midst of war, by provincial conventions that had other business to transact and little experience on which to rely.

Const.i.tution-making also had a national dimension. In June 1776 Congress drafted Articles of Confederation to provide a const.i.tutional framework of union. But three issues prevented it from reaching agreement on this plan of union: the rules of voting within Congress; the apportionment of expenses among the states; and the control of interior western lands. In the wake of the great victory at Saratoga in 1777, Congress mustered the determination to complete the task and sent the Articles to the states for approval. But because this completed draft granted Congress no authority over western lands, a bloc of landless states (that is, states lacking claims to lands west of the Appalachians) delayed ratifying the Confederation. Maryland, the last holdout, withheld its a.s.sent until February 1781.

By then, many national leaders recognized that the Articles would not give Congress the range of powers that the war had revealed it needed. Congress could only issue recommendations and requisitions to the states. It could not enact laws binding individuals to obey its decisions. And it lacked independent sources of revenue or the authority to levy taxes. The states generally did the best they could to comply with congressional decisions. But the impression inevitably took hold that a federal union that depended on the good faith of its member states was a government in name only.

In 1781 Congress sent its first proposed amendment of the Articles to the states: a request to be able to levy an impost (duty) on selected imports (p. 194). Like the original Confederation, this amendment required the unanimous approval of the states. And like all subsequent efforts to amend the Articles, this amendment failed to surmount that hurdle. In 1783 Congress proposed a new set of amendments designed to answer its need for revenue; these also failed (p. 213). In 1784, with the country slipping into a postwar recession and British goods flooding American markets while American s.h.i.+ps were excluded from British harbors, Congress submitted two more proposals asking the states to grant it authority over foreign commerce (p. 217). These also failed.

By 1786 some national leaders were wondering whether the promise of the Revolution was being jeopardized by the disagreements of peacetime. Some took a long view. They thought that a population exhausted by a long and costly war could not be expected to undertake fresh projects of political reform. Others, however, worried that a union that seemed to be drifting into a condition of "imbecility" could not survive indefinitely. Britain used the non-compliance of the states with various provisions of the peace treaty to justify retaining key frontier posts at Niagara, Oswego, and Detroit. Spanish authorities in New Orleans closed the Mississippi River to American navigation, preventing frontier farmers from exporting their produce and sparking a sharp sectional dispute in Congress. West Indian ports remained closed to American merchantmen. Under these and other pressures, a single union of thirteen states might break up into two or three regional confederations, each pursuing its narrow interests.

The road to const.i.tutional reform began in Virginia. In January 1786 the Virginia legislature adopted a resolution inviting the other states to send commissioners to a convention where they could discuss the need to vest commercial powers in Congress. Its own delegation to this meeting included James Madison, who had spent nearly four continuous years at Congress before the term-limits provision of the Articles of Confederation sent him back to Virginia. Eight states appointed commissioners to attend this meeting at Annapolis. But when the appointed time came in September, only a dozen delegates from five states appeared-too few to proceed to business. But those present included Madison, Alexander Hamilton from New York, and John d.i.c.kinson (the princ.i.p.al drafter of the Confederation) from Delaware. Rather than confess defeat and adjourn, those present invited the states to appoint delegates to attend a second convention to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787. Its agenda would not be limited to commerce, but extend instead to the general woes of the Confederation.

In retrospect, the Annapolis conference appears to have been a bold move launched by a determined and artful group of reformers. At the time, it was more akin to a desperate gamble. The Annapolis delegates could not be confident that the states would respond favorably. They had to worry that their invitation, like their meeting itself, could be interpreted as yet another insult to Congress, because the Articles of Confederation contained no provision authorizing the meeting of such conventions. And should a general convention actually a.s.semble, they had no a.s.surance it would be able to reach agreement. Some knowing observers, like John Jay (Congress's secretary of foreign affairs) thought the Philadelphia meeting might prove useful for discussion only. Yet at the same time, once the idea of a general convention had been proposed, it naturally acquired its own momentum and logic. All the other expedients had failed. Madison, Hamilton, and their allies no longer believed that the cause of reform could wait indefinitely. Some Americans had begun to speculate that the revolutionary union of thirteen states could break up into smaller confederacies, and that this in turn could create fresh opportunities for the empires of Europe to meddle in American affairs.

In the intervening months, the movement for general const.i.tutional reform gathered strength. Virginia was the first state to act and appoint a delegation. In February 1787 the Continental Congress added its own endors.e.m.e.nt of the convention. Eventually, twelve of the thirteen state legislatures appointed delegates. The lone holdout was Rhode Island, a determinedly "anti-federal" state since its veto had killed the impost amendment of 1781. But the fact that Rhode Island did not even send a delegation to Philadelphia had a liberating effect on the convention, persuading it to abandon the rule requiring alterations to the Confederation to be approved by all thirteen state legislatures.

Madison's preparations for the convention decisively shaped its agenda. Three elements of his program of reform proved critical to the deliberations that began in late May (see p. 317). First, Madison believed in empowering the national government to enact, execute, and adjudicate its own laws, without having to rely on the states to carry out its decisions. This in turn required reconst.i.tuting the Union as a normal government, with independent legislative, executive, and judicial departments. Second, the legislative power of this government should be extensive, potentially including the authority to overturn state laws. Third, as a matter of justice, Madison favored allocating seats in both houses of the new legislature on the basis of population or wealth, replacing the "one state, one vote" rule of the Confederation. All of these ideas were incorporated in the Virginia Plan that Governor Edmund Randolph presented on May 29 (p. 335).

The delegates generally accepted Madison's first principle but delayed judgment on the second until they had resolved the third. Disputes over the apportionment of representation among the states preoccupied the convention for seven weeks. In July it managed to strike a compromise to count slaves for purposes of representation in the lower house of Congress according to the three-fifths ratio. But compromise on the upper house proved impossible. Small states insisted on retaining the "one state, one vote" rule of the Confederation ; delegates from large states argued that this was fundamentally unjust. Finally, on July 16, after weeks of heated debate, the convention narrowly approved (five states to four, with one delegation, that of populous Ma.s.sachusetts, divided), the equal state vote for the Senate.

This decision so discouraged some large-state delegates that they briefly debated whether to proceed. No one, however, was anxious to abandon the project of reform, and the longer the meeting went on, the more inclined many delegates were to portray the decision on the Senate as being as much of a compromise as the decision on the House of Representatives. In the weeks after this vote, the delegates turned their attention to the other two parts of Madison's program. In place of the broad grant of legislative authority envisioned by the Virginia Plan, they gradually developed a list of enumerated powers, including most notably an almost unfettered power of taxation and the right to regulate interstate and foreign commerce.

The most difficult issue the framers faced as the convention moved toward adjournment was the design of the presidency. In the eighteenth century, executive power was still essentially monarchical power, and it was difficult to design an effective national executive on republican principles. Moreover, the framers were genuinely uncertain about the best means of selecting the president. Active debate on the presidency thus continued into the final fortnight of deliberation in September. As it continued, the authority of the novel office the framers were creating grew stronger, but the uncertainties about its political character persisted.

The convention concluded its work on September 17,1787. Three of the forty-two delegates still in attendance refused to sign the completed Const.i.tution, but the others fully supported its ratification. To achieve that goal, they had also designed a new procedure. Rather than require approval by all thirteen legislatures, the convention instead proposed to submit the Const.i.tution to special, popularly elected conventions in each state. The approval of nine, not thirteen, would be sufficient for the new government to take effect. State conventions were asked to approve the Const.i.tution in its entirety (p. 410).

Over the next eleven months, Americans extensively debated the Const.i.tution-in the press, in taverns and churches, in popular meetings, and, most important, in the state conventions. The debate was wide-ranging and multifaceted. The Anti-Federalist opponents of the Const.i.tution seized upon numerous clauses and provisions that they saw as laying a basis for eroding the residual authority of the states and the rights and liberties of citizens. Its Federalist supporters argued that the Continental Congress and the Confederation it represented were on the brink of collapse, and that a reinvigorated national government was essential to prosperity and security. Over time, they pointedly answered many of the specific charges that Anti-Federalists leveled against individual clauses.

In many ways this debate rivaled the great discussion of resistance and independence that preoccupied the colonists in the period 1774-1776. It focused public discussion across the country and encouraged the development of alliances that crossed state lines. More important, both the debates in Philadelphia that produced the Const.i.tution and those that led to its ratification allowed Americans to rethink the experiment they had launched in 1776 when they first began writing new const.i.tutions. Then, the urgency of the war and inexperience had made it difficult to consider the problems of republican government in a sustained way. Now, in a time of peace, the country had a decade's experience of self-government on which to draw. Of course, the conclusions they reached often varied. But by July 1788 eleven states had ratified the Const.i.tution, and only two-North Carolina and Rhode Island-initially rejected it.

Had opinion polling existed in this period, it might well have revealed that a majority of Americans either opposed the Const.i.tution outright or deeply distrusted the power it would place in the national government. In securing victory, Federalists capitalized on the strong support they enjoyed in the nation's major port cities and on their control of the press. By contrast, Anti-Federalists found it dif ficult to get their ideas widely disseminated. Their opposition was poorly coordinated, and it suffered as well from a lack of concerted leaders.h.i.+p. Perhaps most important, Anti-Federalists faced the dilemma of having to defend a failing Confederation and a Congress that could barely muster a quorum against a bold vision of the American future supported not only by the nation's greatest men, notably George Was.h.i.+ngton and Benjamin Franklin, but also some of its most effective younger leaders, like Madison and Hamilton.

From the outset of this debate, moderate Anti-Federalists proposed various amendments to make the Const.i.tution safer for both the states and their citizens. Many of these proposals required changes in the structure of the national government or the powers it exercised. Others supported the adoption of additional articles restating the fundamental rights of citizens. In conventions where the fate of the Const.i.tution was uncertain-notably Ma.s.sachusetts, Virginia, and New York-Federalists grudgingly agreed to recommend amendments for the first post-ratification Congress to consider. These concessions were necessary to secure the approval of these key states, but Federalists were careful to insist that ratification precede amendment, not the other way around. Similarly, some Anti-Federalists thought a second convention should be held to revise the Const.i.tution in light of the criticisms leveled against it. But Madison, Hamilton, and other Federalist leaders thought that would lead to political chaos, because the delegations sent to such a convention would come armed with all kinds of instructions limiting the room for compromise.

In the winter of 1789, the eleven ratifying states held elections for the new government. Everyone knew that George Was.h.i.+ngton would be the first president. More dramatic was the success Federalists enjoyed in the elections to Congress. Solid Federalist majorities would control both houses, and this seemed to deflate the expectation that the Const.i.tution would soon be amended. In Virginia, however, Madison had publicly committed himself to the cause of amendments, not because he believed they were necessary in themselves, but to reconcile moderate Anti-Federalists to the Const.i.tution. Once the new Congress met, he took upon himself the task of convincing Congress that the promises of 1788 had to be honored (pp. 613-627). Many members remained skeptical, but with Madison's prodding, twelve amendments were sent to the states for ratification in September 1789. Two years pa.s.sed before the ten that we now call the Bill of Rights were ratified.

Twenty-five years had pa.s.sed since the colonists first opposed the Stamp Act and invoked const.i.tutional arguments rooted in Anglo-American history. Two revolutions had occurred since. One led to a war of national liberation that allowed the United States to a.s.sume its place among the other politically independent nations of the earth. The other took the form of a const.i.tutional revolution that recast received ideas of government in a radically new form. For most Americans, these results have been so long accepted, and seem so familiar, that it is difficult to recall just how innovative they were at the time-and how much they depended on the contingencies of history. The colonists did not set out in 1765 or even in 1774 to establish an independent nation. Only a series of miscues by a poorly informed and miscalculating government in London made independence the inescapable consequence of colonial resistance. So, too, the whole idea of a written const.i.tution as supreme law was not something that many Americans grasped or fully comprehended when they started writing new charters in 1776. In many ways, it was an accidental byproduct of the situation in which Britain had placed them, and it took the better part of a decade for Americans to think through the implications of what they were doing. The great const.i.tutional debate of 1787 and 1788 provided the occasion for that reconsideration to take place. But that debate, too, came about only because individual states, like tiny Rhode Island, had thwarted every effort to amend the Articles of Confederation. Had any of those proposed amendments succeeded, the case for calling a special convention like the one that met at Philadelphia in May 1787 would have been far more difficult to make. Political change might then have taken a very different form, more modest and incremental.

But even the greatest historical events are often shaped by accidents and circ.u.mstances. The deeper question is this: What do those who have the chance to partic.i.p.ate in such events do when the opportunity, accidental or not, presents itself? The doc.u.ments presented in this book ill.u.s.trate how the Revolutionary generation seized the day. More than two centuries later, we are still wrestling with the consequences of their decisions.

Jack N. Rakove is W. R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. He was educated at Haverford College, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1975. He is the author of four books on the American Revolutionary era, including The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress ( 1979), James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic ( 1990, 2001 ), and Original Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress ( 1979), James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic ( 1990, 2001 ), and Original Meanings: Politics Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Const.i.tution and Ideas in the Making of the Const.i.tution, which received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History. His edited books include James Madison: Writings ( 1999), The Federalist: The Essential Essays James Madison: Writings ( 1999), The Federalist: The Essential Essays (2003), and (2003), and The Unfinished Election of 2000 (2001) The Unfinished Election of 2000 (2001). He writes frequently on issues relating to the original meaning of the Const.i.tution.

Publisher's Note: The editor has made no attempt to modernize the spelling or punctuation in the doc.u.ments collected in this volume. When these texts were written, rules of spelling and punctuation differed from what they are today. For one, consistency was not as important: "controling" and "controlling," "incroachments" and "encroachments," "percieved" and "perceived" can all be found in the same doc.u.ment. Similarly, the word "it's" sometimes appears as a possessive where we now use "its." Retaining these and other odd spellings and "incorrect" punctuation preserve these important American doc.u.ments in their original character.

THE IMPERIAL DISPUTE.

Thomas Hutchinson: The Address of the Governor (January 6, 1773 ) PAGE 5.

Benjamin Franklin: Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One (September 11, 1773) (September 11, 1773) PAGE 12.

Thomas Jefferson: A Summary View of the Rights of British America (July 1774)PAGE 20 BECAUSE THE DECLARATION OF Independence of 1776 was directed against King George III, it is often a.s.sumed that the American Revolution was a struggle against the evils of monarchy. In fact, the central dispute between Britain and its colonies was concerned with another issue entirely: Did Parliament have any authority to legislate for America, or were the colonists obliged to obey only those laws enacted by their own representative a.s.semblies? That was the great issue that was first agitated during the Stamp Act controversy of 1765-1766 and the dispute over the Townshend duties enacted in 1767.

After the Townshend duties were repealed, this dispute largely subsided. But it was unexpectedly revived in Ma.s.sachusetts in January 1773, when Governor Thomas Hutchinson rashly opened the winter session of the legislature with a speech explaining why Americans were not exempt from the jurisdiction of Parliament. Hutchinson was responding to recent attacks on his own administration launched by the Boston Committee of Correspondence. His speech was meant to quiet the opposition. Instead, it plunged Ma.s.sachusetts into still greater turmoil, as John Adams and James Otis reb.u.t.ted the governor's position in responses prepared for the two houses of the legislature.

These addresses were in turn reprinted in newspaper and pamphlet form, and consumed by interested readers in other colonies. The pamphlet and the newspaper essay were the princ.i.p.al forms of political expression in eighteenth-century America, and most political controversies soon found their way into one or the other. Many pamphlets originated as newspaper essays. Some were deeply learned and filled with scholarly citations. Others were more pungent or humorous, like Benjamin Franklin's Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, published in 1773. Franklin had been living in London for a good fifteen years when he published this essay. Though he still hoped that Britain and its colonies would remain united, he was increasingly frustrated by his dealings with British officials who dismissed the colonists' a.s.sertions of loyalty. As he did so often, Franklin used a light touch to support a serious conclusion: that British policy seemed design to alienate the Americans' natural affection for the mother country A year later, humor was no longer possible. The adoption of the Coercive or Intolerable Acts led American writers to demonstrate, once and for all, why the colonies could not be legally bound by acts of Parliament. One of the most influential publications opposing the Acts was a pamphlet that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote as instructions for the Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress. Jefferson's cogent prose in A Summary View of the Rights of British America A Summary View of the Rights of British America helped establish the reputation that led to his later authors.h.i.+p of the Declaration of Independence. helped establish the reputation that led to his later authors.h.i.+p of the Declaration of Independence.

-Thomas Hutchinson- THE ADDRESS OF THE GOVERNOR.

JANUARY 6, 1773His Excellency the Governor was pleased to open the a.s.sembly with the following Speech to both Houses, viz.

Gentlemen of the Council, and, Gentlemen of the House of Representatives.

I HAVE NOTHING IN special Command from his Majesty to lay before you at this Time; I have general Instructions to recommend to you, at all Times, such Measures as may tend to promote that Peace and Order upon which your own Happiness and Prosperity as well as his Majesty's Service very much depend. That the Government is at present in a disturbed and disordered State is a Truth too evident to be denied. The Cause of this Disorder appears to me equally evident. I wish I may be able to make it appear so to you, for then I may not doubt that you will agree with me in the proper Measures for the Removal of it. I have pleased myself, for several Years past, with Hopes that the Cause would cease of itself and the Effect with it, but I am disappointed, and I may not any longer, consistent with my Duty to the King and my Regard to the Interest of the Province, delay communicating my Sentiments to you upon a Matter of so great Importance. I shall be explicit and treat the Subject without Reserve. I hope you will receive what I have to say upon it with Candor, and, if you shall not agree in Sentiments with me, I promise you, with Candor likewise, to receive and consider what you may offer in Answer.

When our Predecessors first took Possession of this Plantation or Colony, under a Grant and Charter from the Crown of England, it was their Sense, and it was the Sense of the Kingdom, that they were to remain subject to the supreme Authority of Parliament. This appears from the Charter itself and from other irresistable Evidence. This Supreme Authority has, from Time to Time, been exercised by Parliament and submitted to by the Colony, and hath been, in the most express Terms, acknowledged by the Legislature and, except about the Time of Anarchy and Confusion in England which preceeded the Restoration of King Charles the Second, I have not discovered that it has been called in Question even by private or particular Persons until within seven or eight Years last past. Our Provincial or Local Laws have, in numerous Instances, had Relation to Acts of Parliament made to respect the Plantations in general and this Colony in particular, and in our Executive Courts both Juries and Judges have to all Intents and Purposes, considered such Acts as Part of our Rule of Law. Such a Const.i.tution, in a Plantation, is not peculiar to England but agrees with the Principles of the most celebrated Writers upon the Law of Nations that "when a Nation takes Possession of a distant Country and settles there, that Country, though separated from the princ.i.p.al Establishment or Mother Country, naturally becomes a Part of the State equally with its ancient Possessions."

So much however of the Spirit of Liberty breathes thro' all Parts of the English Const.i.tution, that although from the Nature of Government there must be one supreme Authority over the whole, yet this Const.i.tution will admit of subordinate Powers with legislative and executive Authority, greater or less according to local and other Circ.u.mstances. Thus we see a Variety of Corporations formed within the Kingdom with Powers to make and execute such Bylaws as are for their immediate Use and Benefit, the Members of such Corporations still remaining subject to the general Laws of the Kingdom. We see also Governments established in the Plantations which, from their separate and remote Situation, require more general and extensive Powers of Legislation within themselves than those formed within the Kingdom, but subject nevertheless, to all such Laws of the Kingdom as immediately respect them or are designed to extend to them, and accordingly we in this Province have, from the first Settlement of it, been left to the Exercise of our legislative and executive Powers, Parliament occasionally though rarely, interposing as in its Wisdom has been judged necessary.

Under this Const.i.tution, for more than One Hundred Years, the Laws both of the supreme and subordinate Authority were in general, duly executed, Offenders against them have been brought to condign Punishment, Peace and Order have been maintained and the People of this Province have experienced as largely the Advantages of Government, as, perhaps, any People upon the Globe, and they have from Time to Time in the most public Manner expressed their Sense of it and, once in every Year, have offered up their united Thanksgivings to G.o.d for the Enjoyment of these Privileges and, as often, their united Prayers for the Continuance of them.

At Length the Const.i.tution has been called in Question and the Authority of the Parliament of Great-Britain to make and establish Laws for the Inhabitants of this Province has been, by many, denied. What was, at first, whispered with Caution, was soon after openly a.s.serted in Print and, of late, a Number of Inhabitants in several of the princ.i.p.al Towns in the Province, have a.s.sembled together in their respective Towns and, having a.s.sumed the Name of legal Town Meetings, have pa.s.sed Resolves which they have ordered to be placed upon their Town Records, and caused to be printed & published in Pamphlets and News-Papers. I am sorry that it is thus become impossible to conceal what I could wish had never been made public. I will not particularize these Resolves or Votes and shall only observe to you, in general, that some of them deny the supreme Authority of Parliament, and so are repugnant to the Principles of the Const.i.tution, and that others speak of this supreme Authority, of which the King is a const.i.tuent Part and to every Act of which his a.s.sent is necessary, in such Terms as have a direct Tendency to alienate the Af fections of the People from their Sovereign who has ever been most tender of their Rights, and whose Person, Crown and Dignity we are under every possible Obligation to defend and support. In consequence of these Resolves, Committees of Correspondence are formed, in several of those Towns, to maintain the Principles upon which they are founded.

I know of no Arguments, founded in Reason, which will be sufficient to Support these Principles or to justify the Measures taken in Consequence of them. It has been urged, that the sole Power of making Laws is granted by Charter to a Legislature established in the Province, consisting of the King by his Representative the Governor, the Council and the House of Representatives-that by this Charter there are likewise granted or a.s.sured to the Inhabitants of the Province all the Liberties and Immunities of free and natural Subjects, to all Intents, Constructions and Purposes whatsoever, as if they had been born within the Realm of England-that it is Part of the Liberties of English Subjects, which has its Foundation in Nature, to be governed by Laws made by their Consent in Person or by their Representative-that the Subjects in this Province are not and cannot be Represented in the Parliament of Great-Britain and, consequently, the Acts of Parliament cannot be binding upon them.

I do not find, Gentlemen, in the Charter such an Expression as sole Power or any Words which import it. The General Court has, by Charter, full Power to make such Laws as are not repugnant to the Laws of England. A favourable Construction has been put upon this Clause when it has been allowed to intend such Laws of England only as are expres[s]ly declared to respect us. Surely then this is by Charter a Reserve of Power and Authority to Parliament to bind us by such Laws, at least, as are made expressly to refer to us and, consequently, is a Limitation of the Power given to the General Court. Nor can it be contended that by the Liberties of free and natural Subjects is to be understood an Exemption from Acts of Parliament because not represented there, seeing it is provided, by the same Charter, that such Acts shall be in Force; and if they that make the Objection to such Acts will read the Charter with Attention, they must be convinced that this Grant of Liberties and Immunities is nothing more than a Declaration and a.s.surance on the Part of the Crown that the Place to which their Predecessors were about to remove was and would be considered as Part of the Dominions of the Crown of England, and therefore that the Subjects of the Crown so removing, and those born there or in their Pa.s.sage thither or in their Pa.s.sage from thence, would not become Aliens but would throughout all Parts of the English Dominions, wherever they might happen to be, as well within the Colony, retain the Liberties and Immunities of free and natural Subjects, their Removal from or not being born within the Realm notwithstanding. If the Plantations be Part of the Dominions of the Crown, this Clause in the Charter does not confer or reserve any Liberties but what would have been enjoyed without it and what the Inhabitants of every other Colony do enjoy where they are without a Charter. If the Plantations are not the Dominions of the Crown will not all that are born here be considered as born out of the Ligeance of the King of England, and whenever they go into any Part of the Dominions will they not be deemed Aliens to all Intents and Purposes, this Grant in the Charter notwithstanding?

They who claim Exemption from Acts of Parliament by Virtue of their Rights as Englishmen, should consider that it is impossible the Rights of English Subjects should be the same, in every Respect, in all parts of the Dominions. It is one of their Rights as English Subjects to be governed by Laws made by Persons in whose Election they have, from Time to Time, a Voice-They remove from the Kingdom where, perhaps, they were in the full Exercise of this Right to the Plantations where it cannot be exercised or where the Exercise of it would be of no Benefit to them. Does it follow that the Government, by their Removal from one Part of the Dominions to another, loses its Authority over that Part to which they remove, and that they are freed from the Subjection they were under before; or do they expect that Government should relinquish its Authority because they cannot enjoy this particular Right? Will it not rather be said that, by this their voluntary Removal, they have relinquished for a Time at least, one of the Rights of an English Subject which they might if they pleased have continued to enjoy and may again enjoy whensoever they will return to the Place where it can be exercised?

They who claim Exemption, as Part of their Rights by Nature, should consider that every Restraint which Men are laid under by a State of Government is a Privation of Part of their natural Rights, and of all the different Forms of Government which exist, there can be no two of them in which the Departure from Natural Rights is exactly the same. Even in Case of Representation by Election, do they not give up Part of their natural Rights when they consent to be represented by such Person as shall be chosen by the Majority of the Electors, although their own Voices may be for some other Person? And is it not contrary to their natural Rights to be obliged to submit to a Representative for seven Years, or even one Year, after they are dissatisfied with his Conduct, although they gave their Voices for him when he was elected? This must therefore be considered as an Objection against a State of Government rather than against any particular Form.

If what I have said shall not be sufficient to satisfy such as object to the Supreme Authority of Parliament over the Plantations, there may something further be added to induce them to an Acknowledg ment of it which I think will well deserve their Consideration. I know of no Line that can be drawn between the supreme Authority of Parliament and the total Independence of the Colonies: It is impossible there should be two independent Legislatures in one and the same State, for although there may be but one Head, the King, yet the two Legislative Bodies will make two Governments as distinct as the Kingdoms of England and Scotland before the Union. If we might be suffered to be altogether independent of Great-Britain, could we have any Claim to the Protection of that Government of which we are no longer a Part? Without this Protection should we not become the Prey of one or the other Powers of Europe, such as should first seize upon us? Is there any Thing which we have more Reason to dread than Independence? I hope it will never be our Misfortune to know by Experience the Difference between the Liberties of an English Colonist and those of the Spanish, French or Dutch.

If then the Supremacy of Parliament over the whole British Dominions shall no longer be denied, it will follow that the meer Exercise of its Authority can be no Matter of Grievance. If it has been or shall be exercised in such Way and Manner as shall appear to be grievous, still this cannot be sufficient Grounds for immediately denying or renouncing the Authority or refusing to submit to it. The Acts and Doings of Authority in the most perfect Form of Government will not always be thought just and equitable by all the Parts of which it consists, but it is the greatest Absurdity to admit the several parts to be at Liberty to obey or disobey according as the Acts of such Authority may be approved or disapproved of by them, for this necessarily works a Dissolution of the Government. The Manner then of obtaining Redress must be by Representations and Endeavours, in such Ways and Forms as the established Rules of the Const.i.tution prescribe or allow in order to make any Matters alledged to be Grievances appear to be really such; but I conceive it is rather the meer Exercise of this Authority which is complained of as a Grievance, than any heavy Burdens which have been bro't upon the People by Means of it.

As Contentment and Order were the happy Effects of a Const.i.tution strengthened by universal a.s.sent and Approbation, so Discontent and Disorder are now the deplorable Effects of a Const.i.tution enfeebled by Contest and Opposition. Besides Divisions and Animosities which disturb the Peace of Towns and Families, the Law in some important Cases cannot have its Course, Offenders ordered by Advice of His Majesty's Council to be prosecuted, escape with Impunity and are supported and encouraged to go on offending, -the Authority of Government is bro't into Contempt, and there are but small Remains of that Subordination which was once very conspicious in this Colony, and which is essential to a well-regulated State.

When the Bands of Government are thus weakened, it certainly behoves those with whom the Powers of Government are intrusted to omit nothing which may tend to strengthen them.

I have disclosed my Sentiments to you without Reserve. Let me intreat you to consider them calmly and not to be too sudden in your Determination. If my Principles of Government are right let us adhere to them. With the same Principles our Ancestors were easy and happy for a long Course of Years together, and I know of no Reason to doubt of your being equally easy & happy. The People, influenced by you will forsake their unconst.i.tutional Principles and desist from their Irregularities which are the Consequence of them, they will be convinced that every Thing which is valuable to them depend upon their Connexion with their Parent State, that this Connexion cannot be continued in any other Way than such as will also continue their Dependance upon the supreme Authority of the British Dominions, and that, notwithstanding this Dependance, they will enjoy as great a Proportion of those Rights to which they have a Claim by Nature or as Englishmen as can be enjoyed by a Plantation or Colony.

If I am wrong in my Principles of Government or in the Inferences which I have drawn from them, I wish to be convinced of my Error. Independence I may not allow myself to think that you can possibly have in Contemplation. If you can conceive of any other const.i.tutional Dependance than what I have mentioned, if you are of Opinion that upon any other Principles our Connexion with the State from which we sprang can be continued, communicate your Sentiments to me with the same Freedom and Unreservedness as I have communicated mine to you.

I have no Desire, Gentlemen, by any Thing I have said to preclude you from seeking Relief, in a const.i.tutional Way, in any Cases in which you have heretofore or may hereafter suppose that you are aggrieved and, although I should not concur with you in Sentiment, I will, notwithstanding, do nothing to lessen the Weight which your Representations may deserve. I have laid before you what I think are the Principles of your Const.i.tution: If you do not agree with me I wish to know your Objections: They may be convincing to me, or I may be able to satisfy you of the Insufficiency of them: In either Case I hope, we shall put an End to those Irregularities, which ever will be the Portion of a Government where the Supreme Authority is controverted, and introduce that Tranquility which seems to have taken Place in most of the Colonies upon the Continent.

The ordinary Business of the Session I will not now particularly point out to you. To the enacting of any new Laws which may be necessary for the more equal and effectual Distribution of Justice, or for giving further Encouragement to our Merchandize, Fishery, and Agriculture, which through the Divine Favour are already in a very flouris.h.i.+ng State, or for promoting any Measures which may conduce to the general Good of the Province I will readily give my a.s.sent or Concurrence.

T. Hutchinson COUNCIL CHAMBER.

6 JANUARY 1773.

-Benjamin Franklin- RULES BY WHICH A GREAT EMPIRE MAY.

BE REDUCED TO A SMALL ONE.

SEPTEMBER 11, 1773[Presented privately to a late Minister, when he entered upon his Administration; and now first published.]

AN ANCIENT SAGE VALUED himself upon this, that tho' he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great City of a little one. The Science that I, a modern Simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse.

I address myself to all Ministers who have the Management of extensive Dominions, which from their very Greatness are become troublesome to govern, because the Multiplicity of their Affairs leaves no Time for fiddling.

I. In the first Place, Gentlemen, you are to consider, that a great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges. Turn your Attention therefore first to your remotest Provinces; that as you get rid of them, the next may follow in Order.

II. That the Possibility of this Separation may always exist, take special Care the Provinces are never incorporated with the Mother Country, that they do not enjoy the same common Rights, the same Privileges in Commerce, and that they are governed by severer Laws, all of your enacting, without allowing them any Share in the Choice of the Legislators. By carefully making and preserving such Distinctions, you will (to keep to my Simile of the Cake) act like a wise Ginger-bread Baker, who, to facilitate a Division, cuts his Dough half through in those Places, where, when bak'd, he would have it broken to Pieces.

III. These remote Provinces have perhaps been acquired, purchas' d, or conquer'd, at the sole Expence sole Expence of the Settlers or their Ancestors, without the Aid of the Mother Country. If this should happen to increase her Strength by their growing Numbers ready to join in her Wars, her Commerce by their growing Demand for her Manufactures, or her of the Settlers or their Ancestors, without the Aid of the Mother Country. If this should happen to increase her Strength by their growing Numbers ready to join in her Wars, her Commerce by their growing Demand for her Manufactures, or her Naval Power Naval Power by greater Employment for her s.h.i.+ps and Seamen, they may probably suppose some Merit in this, and that it ent.i.tles them to some Favour; you are therefore to forget it all, or resent it as if they had done you Injury. If they happen to be zealous Whigs, Friends of Liberty, nurtur'd in Revolution Principles, remember all that to their Prejudice, and contrive to punish it: For such Principles, after a Revolution is thoroughly established, are of no more Use, they are even odious and by greater Employment for her s.h.i.+ps and Seamen, they may probably suppose some Merit in this, and that it ent.i.tles them to some Favour; you are therefore to forget it all, or resent it as if they had done you Injury. If they happen to be zealous Whigs, Friends of Liberty, nurtur'd in Revolution Principles, remember all that to their Prejudice, and contrive to punish it: For such Principles, after a Revolution is thoroughly established, are of no more Use, they are even odious and abominable. abominable.

IV. However peaceably your Colonies have submitted to your Government, shewn their Affection to your Interest, and patiently borne their Grievances, you are to suppose them always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly. Quarter Troops among them, who by their Insolence may provoke the rising of Mobs, and by their Bullets and Bayonets suppress them. By this Means, like the Husband who uses his Wife ill from Suspicion, you may in Time convert your Suspicions into Realities.

V Remote Provinces must have Governors, and Judges, to represent the Royal Person, and execute every where the delegated Parts of his Office and Authority. You Ministers know, that much of the Strength of Government depends on the Opinion of the People; and much of that Opinion on the Choice of Rulers placed immediately over them. If you send them wise and good Men for Governors, who study the Interest of the Colonists, and advance their Prosperity, they will think their King wise and good, and that he wishes the Welfare of his Subjects. If you send them learned and upright Men for Judges, they will think him a Lover of Justice. This may attach your Provinces more to his Government. You are therefore to be careful who you recommend for those Offices.-If you can find Prodigals who have ruined their Fortunes, broken Gamesters or Stock-Jobbers, these may do well as Governors; for they will probably be rapacious, and provoke the People by their Extortions. Wrangling Proctors and petty-fogging Lawyers too are not amiss, for they will be for ever disputing and quarrelling with their little Parliaments. If withal they should be ignorant, wrong-headed and insolent, so much the better. Attorneys Clerks and Newgate Solicitors Remote Provinces must have Governors, and Judges, to represent the Royal Person, and execute every where the delegated Parts of his Office and Authority. You Ministers know, that much of the Strength of Government depends on the Opinion of the People; and much of that Opinion on the Choice of Rulers placed immediately over them. If you send them wise and good Men for Governors, who study the Interest of the Colonists, and advance their Prosperity, they will think their King wise and good, and that he wishes the Welfare of his Subjects. If you send them learned and upright Men for Judges, they will think him a Lover of Justice. This may attach your Provinces more to his Government. You are therefore to be careful who you recommend for those Offices.-If you can find Prodigals who have ruined their Fortunes, broken Gamesters or Stock-Jobbers, these may do well as Governors; for they will probably be rapacious, and provoke the People by their Extortions. Wrangling Proctors and petty-fogging Lawyers too are not amiss, for they will be for ever disputing and quarrelling with their little Parliaments. If withal they should be ignorant, wrong-headed and insolent, so much the better. Attorneys Clerks and Newgate Solicitors1 will do for will do for Chief-Justices, Chief-Justices, especially if they hold their Places during your especially if they hold their Places during your Pleasure: Pleasure:-And all will contribute to impress those ideas of your Government that are proper for a People you would wish to renounce it.

VI. To confirm these Impressions, and strike them deeper, whenever the Injured come to the Capital with Complaints of Mal-administration, Oppression, or Injustice, punish such Suitors with long Delay, enormous Expence, and a final Judgment in Favour of the Oppressor. This will have an admirable Effect every Way The Trouble of future Complaints will be prevented, and Governors and Judges will be encouraged to farther Acts of Oppression and Injustice ; and thence the Pe