That Americans are intitled to freedom, is incontestible upon
every rational principle. All men have one common original :
they participate in one common nature, and consequently have
one common right. No reason can be assigned why one man
should exercise any power, or pre eminence over his fellow crea-
tures more than another; unless they have voluntarily vested
him with it. Since then, Americans have not by any act of
their's impowered the British Parliament to make laws for them,
it follows they can have no just authority to do it.

Besides the clear voice of natural justice in this respect, the
fundamental principles of the English constitution are in our
favour. It has been repeatedly demonstrated, that the idea of
legislation, or taxation, when the subject is not represented, is
inconsistent with that. Nor is this all, our charters, the express
conditions on which our progenitors relinquished their native
countries, and came to settle in this, preclude every claim of
ruling and taxing us without our assent.

Every subterfuge that sophistry has been able to invent, to
evade or obscure this truth, has been refuted by the most con-
clusive reasonings; so that we may pronounce it a matter of
undeniable certainty, that the pretenstions of Parliament are
contradictory to the law of nature, subversive of the British con-
stitution, and destructive of the faith of the most solemn com-
pacts.

What then is the subject of our controversy with the mother
country? -- It is this, whether we shall preserve that security to
our lives and properties, which the law of nature, the genius
of the British constitution, and our charters affords us; or whe-
ther we shall resign them into the hands of the British House of
Commons, which is no more privileged to dispose of them
than the Grand Mogul? -- What can actuate those men, who
labour to delude any of us into an opinion, that the object of
contention between the parent state and the colonies is only three
pence duty upon tea? or that the commotions in America ori-
ginate in a plan, formed by some turbulent men to erect it into
a republican goverment? The parliament claims a right to tax
us in all cases whatsoever : Its late acts are in virtue of that claim.
--How ridiculous then is it to affirm, that we are quarrelling for
the trifling sum of three pence a pound on tea ; when it is evi-
dently the principle against which we contend.