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"the colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be subordinate unto and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain," and that the king, with the advice and consent of parliament, "had, hath, and of right ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever."[1]
§ 170. It does not appear, that this declaratory act of 6 Geo. 3, met with any general opposition among those statesmen in England, who were most friendly to America. Lord Chatham, in a speech on the 17th of December, 1765, said, "I assert the authority of this country over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of government and legislation. But, (he added,) taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power — taxes are the voluntary grant of the people alone."[2] Mr. Burke, who may justly be deemed the leader of the colonial advocates, maintain-- ↑ 6 Geo. 3, ch. 12; Stokes's Colon. 28, 29. See also Marshall on Colon, ch. 13, p. 353; Vaughan R. 300, 400; 1 Pitkins's Hist. 123.
- ↑ Mr. Burke has sketched with a most masterly hand the true origin of this resistance to the power of taxation. The passage is so full of his best eloquence, and portrays with such striking fidelity the character of the colonists, that, notwithstanding its length, I am tempted to lay it before the reader in this note.
"In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the pre-dominating feature, which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous aifection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untraceable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth; and this from a groat variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.
"First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation, which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you, when this part of
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