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which he has taken, perhaps, on his own soil; an instance of despotism, to which no parallel can be produced in the most arbi- trary ages of British history. By one other act, passed in the twenty-third year of the same reign, the iron which we make, we are forbidden to manufacture; and, heavy as that article is, and necessary in every branch of husbandry, besides commission and insurance, we are to pay freight for it to Great Britain, and freight for it back again, for the purpose of supporting, not men, but ma- chines, in the island of Great Britain. In the same spirit of equal and impartial legislation, is to be viewed the act of Parliament, passed in the fifth year of the same reign, by which American lands are made subject to the demands of British creditors, while their own lands were still continued unanswerable for their debts ; from which, one of these conclusions must necessarily follow, either that justice is not the same thing in America as in Britain, or else, that the British Parliament pay less regard to it here than there. But, that we do not point out to his Majesty the injustice of these acts, with intent to rest on that principle the cause of their nullity ; but to shew that experience confirms the propriety of those political principles, which exempt us from the jurisdiction of the British Parliament. ‘The true ground on which we declare these acts void, is, that the British Parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.
That these exercises of usurped power have not been confined to instances alone, in which themselves were interested ; but they have also intermeddled with the regulation of the internal affairs of the colonies. ‘The act of the 9th of Anne for establishing a post office in America, seems to have had little connection with British convenience, except that of accommodating his Majesty’s ministers and favorites with the sale of a lucrative and easy office.
That thus have we hastened through the reigns which preceded his Majesty’s, during which the violations of our rights were less alarming, because repeated at more distant intervals, than that ra- pid and bold succession of injuries, which is likely to distinguish the present from all other periods of American story. Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment, into which one stroke of Parliamentary thunder has volved us, before another more heavy and more alarming is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day ; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.
