Catharine Macaulay

“ It is not impossible, that after having tamely suffered the government, by a yearly increase of taxes, to beggar yourselves and your posterity, you may be led away with the delusive hope, that the Ministry, when they have the power to pick the pockets of your American brethren, will have the moderation to save those of their countrymen.
If these are your thoughts, my fellow citizens, little have you studied your own natures, and the experience of all ages; which must have convinced you, that the want of power is the only limitation to the exertion of human selfishness ”

“ Let the once-opulent trader, let the starving mechanic, bear witness to this truth, that our commerce has been declining with hasty steps for these last ten years:—Let the numerous half famished poor which we meet at every turn in our streets; let the needy gentry, whose honest independent ancestors have handed down to them a moderate income, and who find that income yearly sinking from bare sufficiency to poverty, bear witness, that the high price of all the necessaries of life, with the oppressive burden of our taxes, are very weighty evils. ”

“ Though men of true virtue, my fellow citizens, (that is, men who have a just regard for the rights of nature, for the general happiness of the human species, and for the happiness of their countrymen in particular) will not willingly associate with those of looser principles, yet they will undoubtedly endeavour to stop the career of that government, whose impolitic measures are every day adding numbers to the wretched mass of the ignorant, the needy, and the profligate. ”

“ With an entire supineness, England, Scotland, and Ireland, have seen the Americans, year by year, stripped of the most valuable of their rights; and, to the eternal shame of this country, the stamp act, by which they were to be taxed in an arbitrary manner, found no opposition, except from those who are particularly concerned, that the commercial intercourse between Great-Britain and her Colonies should meet with no interruption. ”

“ To oppose government with success, such honest individuals must make use of the assistance of the multitude, and consequently, of good and bad citizens, of the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, of the wise and the foolish, that is, of every man who will co-operate with them in their designs, whether he be led to such co-operation by the principle of justice, by interest, or by passion.
Though Quebec is situated beyond the Atlantic, my fellow citizens, you are still to remember that it is part of the British empire ”

“ Power is regarded by all men as the greatest of temporal advantages. The support given to Power, therefore, is an obligation; and, consequently, the protection given by governors to subjects, a positive duty. The subject can only be bound to obedience on the considerations of public good; but the Sovereign, on these considerations, and a thousand others equally binding, is tied to the exact observance of the laws of that constitution under which he holds his power. ”

“ There are others who, whilst they have the words, Freedom, Constitution, and Privileges, continually in their mouths, are using every mean in their power to render those limitations useless, which have from time to time been erected by our ancestors, as mitigations of that barbarous system of despotism imposed by the Norman tyrant on the inhabitants of this island.
These men attempt to persuade you, that those who appear the most anxious for the safety of their country, are the least interested in its welfare. ”

“ In these times of general discontent, when almost every act of our Governors, excites a jealousy and apprehension in all those who make the interests of the community their care, there are several among us who, dazzled with the sun-shine of a court, and fattening on the spoils of the people, have used their utmost endeavours to darken your understandings on those subjects, which, at this time, it is particularly your business to be acquainted with. ”

“ Even a conquered city has time given it to raise the contributions laid upon it, and may raise it in its own way. We have treated our Colonies worse that conquered countries. Neither Wales nor Ireland are taxed unheard and unrepresented in the British parliament, as the Colonies:——Wales sends members to parliament, and Ireland has done so; and as Ireland is not now represented in the British Parliament, neither is it taxed in the British Parliament. ”

“ The advantage of a second opportunity to correct a mistake, when the first has been neglected, is a happiness which few individuals, or bodies of men, experience; and a blessing which, if it oftener occurred in the affairs of life, would enable most of us to avoid the greater part of the misery which at present appears inseparable from the human state. ”

“ It is not to be supposed, that either the beauty of justice, the interests of liberty, or the welfare of individuals, as united to the common good, can have any avail with men, who, at this important crisis of British affairs, could reject the wise example set them by the city of London, and the county of Middlesex, in requiring a test from those they elected into the representative office ”

“ Your colonists, convinced that their safety depends on their harmony, are now united in one strong bond of union; nor will it be in the power of a Machiavel to take any advantage of those feuds and jealousies which formerly subsisted among them, and which exposed their liberties to more real danger than all the fleets and armies we are able to send against them. ”

“ They set before you in the strongest Colours, all those disadvantages which must attend that large independent power the sovereigns of Great-Britain will gain by the means of taxing, in an arbitrary manner, the Americans;—and they invite you, for these cogent reasons, to join with them in every legal method to disappoint the designs of our common foes. ”

“ They exhort you for the sake of that honour and justice for which this nation was once renowned,—they intreat you by all those ties of common interest which are inseparable to the subjects of free states, not to suffer your enemies to effect your slavery, in their ruin. ”

“ They have had the insolence to tell you, though in contradiction to the evidence of your feelings, that all goes well, that your Governors faithfully fulfil the duties of their office, and that there are no grievances worthy to be complained of but those which arise from that spirit of faction which, more or less, must ever exist in a limited monarchy.——These men have told you, that you are no judges of the state of your political happiness ”

“ Men who are rid of the numerous ills which narrow circumstances occasion, and this by pensions taken from the public treasure, may, from a selfishness inseparable from human nature, fancy that the times cannot be better ”

“ They have told you, that such candidates, by promising more than they were able to perform, only meant to delude you by an empty clamour of ineffectual zeal.—These men, in asserting that you are too profligate, too needy, and too ignorant to be adequate judges of your own business, endeavour to thrown disgrace and contempt on those who have made an indefinite promise of obeying the mandates of their constituents. ”

“ The anxious desire of preserving that harmony which had so long and so happily subsisted between the Parent State and her Colonies, occasioned the Americans to bear, with an almost blameable patience, the innovations which were continually made on their liberty ”

“ I will, however, wave a subject which must ever be an invidious one while there are so many of us in communion with the Roman church, and which is perhaps impertinent, because it carries with it the appearance of a remote danger, while so many nearer mischiefs demand our present and our earnest attention. ”

“ Among the body of Electors, however, there are undoubtedly many who, by the most cruel of undue influences,—that influence which the opulent exert over the needy, have in a manner been constrained to act contrary to judgment and inclination ”

“ Your Ministers also, deceived by present appearances, vainly imagine, because our rivals in Europe are encouraging us to engage beyond the possibility of a retreat, that they will reject the opportunity when it offers of putting a final end to the greatness and the glory of our empire ”