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that province only. Besides the text of their proceedings, his own note X, proves this. ‘The first proposition for a general cor- respondence between the several states, and for a General Con- gress, was made by our meeting of May, 1774. Botta, copy- ing Marshall, has repeated his error, and so it will be handed on from copyist to copyist, ad infinitum. Here follow my proposition, and the more prudent one which was adopted.
Resolved, That it be an instruction to the said deputies, when assembled in General Congress, with the deputies from the other states of British America, to propose to the said Congress, that an humble and dutiful address be presented to his Majesty, begging leave to lay before him, as Chief Magistrate of the British empire, the united complaints of his Majesty’s subjects in America; com- plamts which are excited. by many unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations, attempted to be made by the legislature of one part of the empire, upon the rights which God, and the laws, have given equally and independently to all. 'To represent to his Ma- jesty that these, his States, have often individually.made humble application to his imperial 'Throne, to obtain, through its interven- tion, some redress of their injured rights; to none of which, was ever even an answer condescended. Humbly to hope that this, their joint address, penned in the language of truth, and divested of those expressions of servility, which would persuade his Majesty that we are asking favors, and not rights, shall obtain from his Ma- jesty a more respectful acceptance ; and this his Majesty will think we have reason to expect, when he reflects that he is no more than the chief officer of the people, appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers, to assist in working the great machine of government, erected for their use, and, consequently, subject to their superintendence ; and, in order that these, our rights, as well as the invasions of them, may be laid more fully be- fore his Majesty, to take a view of them, from the origin and first settlement of these countries.
To remind him that our ancestors, before their emigration to America, were the free inhabitants of the British dominions in Eu- rope, and possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed them, of going in quest of new habitations, and of there establish- ing new societies, under such laws and regulations as, to them, shall seem most likely to promote public happiness. That their Saxon ancestors had, under this universal law, in like manner, left their native wilds and woods in the North of Europe, had possess- ed themselves of the Island of Britain, then less charged with in- habitants, and had established there that system of laws which has
