Page:A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1775) (IA declarationofpeo00shar).djvu/278

to their own situation,” &c. yet it must be apparent that, if they carry with them any Laws at all, it must be by virtue of their natural Right as Englishmen, whereby they are certainly as much entitled to all; (I mean all the English Laws that were in being when these several Colonies respectively were established;) and therefore, though they used (in the infant state of each Colony) “only so much of the English Law as was applicable to their own situation” (and it is absurd to suppose that they would use more, whether intitled to it or not,) yet this does not affect their undoubted Right to the whole; which Right descends to posterity and successors in the same manner as all other inheritances; it being, indeed, their very best inheritance (78): And Equity surely entitles the increasing Colonies (continually as occasions