Liberties of England

“ I know, too, that the laws of England are sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as I can wish; and as I shall never depart from the just rights and prerogatives of the crown, so I shall never invade any man's property. I have often before ventured my life in defence of this nation, and shall go as far as any man in preserving it in all its just rights and liberties. ”

“ We say, that the contrary doctrine deprives us of English liberties; as to British liberties, we scarcely know what they are, as the liberties of England and Scotland are not precisely the same to this day. English liberties are but certain rights of nature, reserved to the citizen by the English constitution, which rights cleaved to our ancestors when they crossed the Atlantic, and would have inhered in them if, instead of coming to New England, they had gone to Otaheite or Patagonia, even although they had taken no patent or charter from the king at all. ”

“ And where also by the statute called, 'The Great Charter of the Liberties of England,' it is declared and enacted, that no freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseised of his freeholds or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled ”

“ It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration?
2. Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor? ”

“ On that great day, and in that great company, the King signed Magna Charta—the great charter of England—by which he pledged himself to maintain the Church in its rights; to relieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of the crown—of which the Barons, in their turn, pledged themselves to relieve thier vassals, the people; to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and boroughs; to protect foreign merchants who came to England; to imprison no man without a fair trial ”

“ The destinies of England in fact rested with her worst king. His tyranny, brutality, and disregard of his subjects' rights, induced a crisis which laid the corner-stone of England's future, and buttressed her liberties for all time.
At a similar crisis in France, two centuries later, the king (Charles VII.) made common cause with the people against the barons or dukes. In England, in the 13th Century, the barons and people were drawn together against the King. They framed a Charter, its provisions securing protection and justice to every freeman in England. ”

“ The Parliament, strong enough and resolute enough to know that they would lower his tone, cared little for what he said, and laid before him one of the great documents of history, which is called the Petition of Right, requiring that the free men of England should no longer be called upon to lend the King money, and should no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do so; further, that the free men of England should no longer be seized by the King’s special mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their rights and liberties and the laws of their country. ”

“ And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated or attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and lastly to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence. And all these rights and liberties it is our birthright to enjoy entire; unless where the laws of our country have laid them under necessary restraints. ”

“ Tis therefore the Grand Interest of New-England to remain subject to the Crown of England, and by their dutiful Behaviour to merit the Removal of those few Hardships and Inconveniences they complain of; no other Power can, or will protect them, and next to their own, tis impossible their Religion and Civil Liberties should be in better Hands than in a Parliament of England. ”

“ The question appears to us, to be no other, than, whether we are the subjects of absolute unlimited power, or of a free government, formed on the principles of the English constitution. If your Excellency's doctrine be true, the people of this province hold their lands of the Crown and people of England; and their lives, liberties, and properties, are at their disposal, and that, even by compact and their own consent. They were subject to the King as the head alterius populi of another people, in whose Legislative they have no voice or interest. ”

“ When formerly the Kings of England have encroached upon the Liberties of their Subjects, the subjects have thought it their Duty to themselves and their Posterity to contend with them until they were restored to the footing of the Constitution. The events of such struggles have sometimes proved fatal to Crowned Heads—perhaps they have never issued but Establishments of the People's Liberties. ”

“ The absolute rights of every Englishman (which, taken in a political and extensive sense, are usually called their liberties) as they are founded on nature and reason, so they are coeval with our form of government; though subject at times to fluctuate and change: their establishment (excellent as it is) being still human. ”

“ It is true that at the time of our Revolution popular liberty had greatly advanced in England, but as the pay of the men was very small and the most of the service required in distant colonies, many of which were barbarous, and few equally advanced with England in civil liberties, few but the idle and vicious could be induced to surrender the rights then dawning upon them at home, and separate themselves for years from civilization, friends, and kindred ”

“ The friends, therefore, to absolute power, sensible that the original constitution is against them, choose to look no farther back than the Conquest. Then, say they, the Saxon government and laws were extinguished, the English by the Conquest lost their rights, the foreigners had no title to English liberties, and the Conqueror and his son William acted as despotic monarchs. Therefore, their successors had the same right, and it was treason to think of controuling them. But how little foundation there is for this doctrine, may appear from what I observed on the reign of the Conqueror. ”

“ All Persons born in the British American Colonies are by the laws of God and nature, and by the Common law of England, exclusive of all charters from the Crown, well Entitled, and by the Acts of the British Parliament are declared to be entitled to all the natural essential, inherent & inseperable Rights Liberties and Privileges of Subjects born in Great Britain, or within the Realm. ”

“ It is very observable, that, as England is almost the only country in Europe that hath preserved its liberties, so was it the first wherein the kings set up for absolute power: and the preservation of them, I apprehend, was in a great measure owing thereto, that this claim was started there when the feudal principles, and the spirit of independency, except only in feudal matters, were in their vigour, and consequently raised such a spirit of jealousy and watchfulness, as, though it hath sometimes slept, could never be extinguished ”

“ England has been called, and truly, "the mother of constitutions and the constitutional system." Our principles of national and individual liberty are so inseparable from true government that where they are not found, a real, beneficial, political institution does not exist. ”

“ In the seventeenth century it inspires the statesmen of England not only with the ardour for constitutional freedom, but engages them in ceaseless and not unavailing efforts towards a deeper conception of justice and of liberty, foreshadowing unconsciously the ideals of later times. ”

“ It spreads out a large and liberal platform of common liberty upon which we may all unite forever.” The whole matter he sums up by saying that the spirit of England loves not conquest or vast empire for the sake of wealth, but “this is the peculiar glory of England: those who have and who hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true, and the only true, Englishmen.” ”

“ By the struggle for liberty in England, from the days of King John, to the last happy revolution, the constitution has been gradually changing for the better; and upon the more rational principles, that all men, by nature, are in a state of equality in respect of jurisdiction and dominion, power in England has been more equally divided. And thus, also in America, though we hold our lands agreeably to the feudal principles of the King ”

“ Is this a Christian land? A land of freedom? Can such things be and pass us by like a summer's cloud, unheeded? Forbid it; every drop of English blood in every vein that does not proclaim its owner bastard. Will the gentlemen of England support or wink at such proceedings? They have a great stake in their country; they hold great estates, and they are bound in duty and in honor to consider them as retaining fees on the part of their country for upholding its rights and privileges. Surely they will at length awake and find they have duties to perform. ”

“ It was the system under which England had become free, and great, and powerful; under which, in her alone of all modern states, liberty had been found to coexist with law, and progress with order; under which wealth had increased without producing divisions, and power grown up without inducing corruption; the system which had withstood the shocks of two centuries, and created an empire unsurpassed since the beginning of the world in extent and magnificence. ”

“ In a free constitution, like that of which we speak, the prince and the people will often fall into situations where they seem to encroach, or actually do so, on the rights of one another. But it is never on slight grounds that the people will be prevailed upon to take arms against their chief magistrate. After all, had England been an absolute monarchy, Was it thence proper and just that it should remain in that situation? There are rights which it is impossible that men can either lose or forfeit. ”

“ But the King of England was even then the guiding mind of Europe. I now demand, what was the redeeming policy of that pre-eminent sovereign? It was, never to despair of the triumph of principle; never to doubt of the ultimate fortunes of good in a contest with evil; and never to hesitate in calling upon a great and free people for the defence of that constitution which had made them great and free. ”

“ England should venerate the attachment to Liberty amidst all its excesses; and, instead of indignation or scorn, it would be most becoming them, in the present instance, to declare their applause, and to say to the Colonies—“We excuse your mistakes. We admire your spirit. It is the spirit that has more than once saved ourselves. We aspire to no dominion over you. We understand the rights of men too well to think of taking from you the inestimable privilege of governing yourselves ”

“ So national are our institutions, so completely have they arisen from the temper and adapted themselves to the character of the people, that when for a season they were apparently annihilated, the people of England voluntarily returned to them, and established them with renewed strength and renovated vigour.
The constitution of England is again threatened, and at a moment when the nation is more prosperous, more free, and more famous than at any period of its momentous and memorable career. ”

“ The dynasty of right divine has been expelled; the national sovereignty has been not only recognized, but exercised, more clearly than it had ever been in Europe, because, in the English Revolution of 1788, there were applied again in England the principles of legitimacy. ”

“ The King whose wickedness became a proverb, who surrounded himself with the kindred ruffians of every nation, and the King whose chief fault was that he could never say No to his wife or his mother, helped alike to call forth the spirit of resistance, to draw all Englishmen of whatever origin nearer together, and thereby to work out the great work of giving England a free and lasting Constitution. ”

“ Although weighed down with an immense mass of obsolete law and custom, shall we say that England leads the van in integrity of principle and devotion to human rights? Although the doctrine of divine right was exploded long ago, England loyally holds to her Queen. ”

“ Apart from the inhumanity of this procedure, from its unchristian character, from its proselytizing effects, we protest against it in the name of law, of right, and of human liberty. The common law of England is our heritage, and by that common law “no power on earth, except the authority of parliament, can send any subject of England out of the land against his will ”

“ Freedom in England has not been wrought by cataclysm as in France, but has unfolded like a plant from a life within; impeded and arrested sometimes, but patiently biding its time, and then steadily and irresistibly pressing outward; one leaf after another freeing itself from the detaining force. Only a few more remain to be unclosed, and we shall behold the consummate flower of fourteen centuries;—centuries in which the most practical nation in the world has steadily pursued an ideal—the ideal of individual freedom subordinated only to the good of the whole! ”