the Colonies has been for
some years past very unhappy. Parliament, on the one hand, has been
taxing the Colonies, and they, on the other hand, have been petitioning
and remonstrating against it, apprehending they have constitutionally an
exclusive right of taxing themselves, and that without such a right,
their condition would be but little better than slavery.

Possessed of these sentiments, every new measure of Parliament tending
to establish and confirm a tax on them renews and increases their
distress, and it is particularly encreased by the Act lately made,
empowering the East India Company to ship their tea to America. This
Act, in a commercial view, they think introductive of monopolies, and
tending to bring on them the extensive evils thence arising. But their
great objection to it is from its being manifestly intended (tho' that
intention is not expressed therein,) more effectually to secure the
payment of the duty on tea, laid by an Act of Parliament passed in the
7^th year of his present Majesty, entitled, "An Act for granting certain
duties in the British colonies and plantations in America," which Act in
its operation deprives the colonists of the right above mentioned (the
exclusive right of taxing themselves), which they hold to be so
essential a one that it cannot be taken away or given up, without their
being degraded, or degrading themselves below the character of men.

It not only deprives them of that right, but enacts that the monies
arising from the duties granted by it may be applied "as his Majesty or
his successors shall think proper or necessary for defraying the charges
of the administration of justice and the support of the civil
government, in all or any of the said colonies or plantations."

This clause of the Act has already operated in some of the colonies, and
in this colony in particular, with regard to the support of civil
government, and thereby has operated in diminution of its charter rights
to the great grief of the good people of it, who have been and still are
greatly alarmed by repeated reports, that it is to have a further
operation with respect to the defraying the charge of the administration
of justice, which would not only be a further diminution of those
rights, but tend in all constitutional questions, and in many other
cases of importance to bias the judges against the subject. They humbly
rely on the justice and goodness of his Majesty for the restitution and
preser