whether you yourselves were to be bond or free." That "the Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England." That "the taxes are a voluntary gift and grant. * * * The Commons of America * * * have ever been in the possession of this right, their Constitutional right, of giving and granting their own money. They would have been slaves if they had not enjoyed it."
But could there, now, be a greater absurdity than the contention that a Revolution, undertaken in support of this right, declared constitutional by Pitt, even before the adoption of our Constitution, had, in some mysterious way, been lost by their success in defending it?
That Pitt spoke correctly can be evidenced almost beyond limit. Thus Edmund Burke again told Parliament: "The people of the Colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, sir, is a nation which, still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored her freedom. The Colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant. * * * They are, therefore, not only devoted to Liberty, but to Liberty according to English ideas * * *. It happened, as you know, sir, that the greatest contests for freedom in this country, were, from the earliest times, chiefly upon the question of taxing * * *. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that * * * the people must, in effect, themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of Liberty could subsist. The Colonists drew from you, as with their life blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of Liberty, as with you, was fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing."
These fundamental rights having been always admitted by the best thought of England, it may be con-
