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nal, if he happen to have offended on the American side, stripped of his privilege of trial by peers of his vicinage, removed from the place where alone full evidence could be obtained, without money, without counsel, without friends, without exculpatory proof, is tried before Judges predetermined to condemn. ‘The cowards who would suffer a countryman to be torn from the bowels of their society, in order to be thus offered a sacrifice to Parliamentary tyranny, would merit that everlasting infamy now fixed on the au- thors of the act! A clause, for a similar purpose, had been intro- duced into an act passed in the twelfth year of his Majesty’s reign, entitled, ‘ an act for the better securing and preserving his Majesty’s Dock-yards, Magazines, Ships, Ammunition and Stores ;? against which, as meriting the same censures, the several colonies have already protested.
That these are the acts of power, assumed by a body of men foreign to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws ; against which we do, on behalf of the inhabitants of British Ame- rica, enter this, our solemn and determined protest. And we do earnestly intreat his Majesty, as yet the only mediatory power be- tween the several states of the British empire, to recommend to his Parhament of Great Brita, the total revocation of these acts, which, however nugatory they be, may yet prove the cause of fur- ther discontents and jealousies among us.
That we next proceed to consider the conduct of his Majesty, as holding the Executive powers of the laws of these states, and mark out his deviations from the line of duty. By the constitution of Great Britain, as well as of the several American States, his Majesty possesses the power of refusing to pass into a law, any bill which has already passed the other two branches of the legislature. His Majesty, however, and his ancestors, conscious of the impro- priety of opposing their smgle opinion to the united wisdom of two Houses of Parliament, while their proceedings were unbiassed by interested principles, for several ages past, have modestly declined the exercise of this power, in that part of his empire called Great Britain. But, by change of circumstances, other principles than those of justice simply, have obtained an influence on their deter- minations. ‘The addition of new states to the British empire, has produced an addition of new, and, sometimes, opposite interests. It is now, therefore, the great office of his Majesty, to resume the exercise of his negative power, and to prevent the passage of laws by any one legislature of the empire, which might bear injuriously on the rights and interests of another. Yet this will not excuse the wanton exercise of this power, which we have seen his Majesty practise on the laws of the American legislatures. For the most
