little less than a forcible opposition to the execu-
tion of those acts of parliament, or, in the lan-
guage of the statute of treason, a levying war
against the King. And in the conduct of this
opposition (even if we suppose for a moment
that the opposition itself could be justified upon
the principles of the law of nature, which in
some cases of extreme necessity allows of a re-
sistance against illegal exercises of power), they
have not behaved with that openness and candour
that would have been suitable to the dignity of
their pretensions, but have persecuted both those
of their own countrymen who presumed to
differ from them in opinion, and the King's
troops who were sent thither to preserve the
public peace, with the utmost malice and in-
justice. It has been deemed a crime to affirm
that the authority of the British parliament was
supreme in all respects throughout all the domi-
nions of the crown of
Great Britain, and that a
forcible resistance to the acts established by it was
unlawful; and those bold and honest men who
have ventured to affirm this have been stigma-
tized by the name of tories, as persons insensible
of public liberty and devoted to the old exploded
doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance,
And it has been made a crime of a still blacker
die to continue a commercial intercourse with the
mother-country, or to refuse to enter into their
non-importation agreements, or illegal combina-
tions to distress her trade. And those who have
presumed to do so, in the pursuit of their usual