Adams is not less high-toned. He expressed great satisfaction that the friends of liberty in Marblehead were active; that the pulse of the people of Plymouth beat high; that a great number in Cambridge petitioned for a town-meeting; that Roxbury was to act on Monday; and said, "May God grant that the love of liberty, and a zeal to support it, may enkindle in every town!"

The town, on the Twentieth of November, on the warrant of the selectmen, met in Faneuil Hall, to receive the report of the committee of correspondence. It was first read by the chairman, James Otis, and afterwards by the moderator, John Hancock. It consisted of three divisions, entitled, first, "A State of the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in particular," which was the portion allotted to Adams, and makes twelve pages of the pamphlet; second, "A List of the Infringements and Violations of those Rights," which was the part assigned to Warren, and makes sixteen pages; third, "A Letter of Correspondence with the other Towns," of six pages, and was Church's portion. The "Gazette says the report was "thoroughly examined and amended by the town, when it was accepted by a full vote, nemine contradicente. The town then voted that these proceedings be printed, and ordered the town-clerk to sign printed copies of the' same, in the name and behalf of the town, to be sent to the selectmen of each town and district in the province, and to such other gentlemen as the committee shall direct. Thus this matter is left to the candid consideration of our brethren and fellow-subjects in general." The town-meeting, about ten o'clock, P.M., was dissolved.

Six hundred copies of the report which had been adopted were printed, and sent out to the towns and to prominent Whigs in other colonies.

The first portion of this report consists mostly of a statement of abstract principles. The rights of the colonists are classified under three heads, entitled, "Rights as men, as Christians, and as subjects." Here are announced the right of expatriation in the face of the English maxim, "Once a subject, always a subject;" of just and true liberty, equal and impartial in matters spiritual and temporal, when the Dissenter in the mother-country was the subject of a penal code and civil disabilities; of the equality of all before the law; so that the report says, citing Locke, "There should be one rule of justice for rich and poor; for the favorite at court and the countryman at the plough." It developed the idea at length, that consent is the true basis of law; it affirmed that the legislature had no right to absolute, arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people, and could not justly assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary, arbitrary decrees; but was bound to see justice dispensed and rightly decided "by promulgated, standing, and known laws," interpreted by a judiciary as independent as far as possible of prince or people. The statement of the basis of personal freedom is radical: "If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential, natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation: the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily to become a

slave." The argument on taxation was re-iterated with great force; and it was denied that there could be any representation in parliament that would render taxation of the colonies by that body legal. It characterized Magna Charta as a constrained declaration of original, inherent, indefeasible, natural rights. It says, "That great author, that great jurist, and even that court-writer, Mr. Justice Blackstone, holds that this recognition was justly obtained, sword in hand; and peradventure it must be one day, sword in hand, again rescued and preserved from total oblivion."

The second portion of the report, which was assigned to Warren, enumerated, under ten heads, the "infringements and violations of rights;" and began with the remark, that they "would not fail to excite the attention of all who consider themselves interested in the happiness and freedom of mankind in general, and of this continent and province in particular." To frame an abstract of these ten counts of this indictment of the British Administration would be to repeat the instances already related of their violation. Three of the counts, however, show so strikingly the grasp there was in the public mind of great ideas, as to require comment.

The report says that parliament "assumed the powers of legislation, in all cases whatsoever, without obtaining the consent of the inhabitants, which is ever essentially necessary to the rightful establishment of such a legislature;" and it affirmed, in relation to a religious establishment, that "no power on earth can justly give either temporal or spiritual jurisdiction within this province, except the great and general court." It instanced, among the rankest vio

lations of this principle, the royal instructions, interfering with the tenure of the judiciary, rendering one branch of the legislature merely a ministerial engine, and threatening an entire destruction of the liberties of the people. "The province," it says, "has already felt such effects from these instructions, as, we think, justly entitle us to say, that they threaten an entire destruction of our liberties; and must soon, if not checked, render every branch of our Government a useless burden useless burden upon the people." This was the idea of local government on which Hutchinson so continuously dwelt.

The report presents as an indictment, "the extending the power of the courts of vice-admiralty to so enormous a degree, as deprives the people of the colonies, in a great measure, of their inestimable right to trials by juries; which has ever been justly considered as the grand bulwark and security of English property." It alleged that this right was also infringed in the acts for preserving His Majesty's dock-yards, and in a revival of an obsolete statute of Henry VIII. The British statute is commented on, wherein, while the estates and properties of the people of Great Britain are expressly guarded, those of the colonists are given up to the decision of one dependent, interested judge of admiralty. Thus our birthrights are taken from us, and that, too, with every mark of indignity, insult, and contempt. We may be harassed and dragged from one part of the continent to another, and finally be deprived of our whole property, by the arbitrary determination of one biassed, capricious judge of admiralty."

The report says, "The restraining us from erecting

slitting-mills, for manufacturing our iron, the natural produce of this country, is an infringement of that right with which God and nature have invested us, to make use of our skill and industry in procuring the necessaries and conveniences of life." The acts

were cited which restrained the manufacture of hats, the carrying wool even over a ferry, as oppression; and it is said that inhabitants "have often been put to the expense of carrying a bag of wool near a hundred miles by land," when the trouble might have been saved by passing over a river. Here is a manly protest against those trammels on colonial enterprise, which the great British economist pronounced a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.1

Here, too, is a demand, not for a government to supply work to those who live under it, but for the recognition of the right of each individual to select his field of work, to reap its fruits, and enjoy them in security. In a word, here freedom is asked for that industrial energy which has contributed so largely to the growth and glory of the country; and it was asked at a time when arbitrary restrictions on business and labor disgraced the legislation of civilized nations!

The last portion of the report, which was assigned to Church, was a brief but spirited "Letter of Corre

1 Adam Smith, in the "Wealth of Nations," printed in 1775, in alluding to the restrictions imposed on the colonies, says, "She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water, and even the carriage by land, upon horseback or in a cart, of hats, of wools, and woollen goods, of the produce of America." He remarks, "To prohibit a great people from making all they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind." These words were written in October, 1773. — Mc Culloch's Smith, 261.