your fellow-subjects in America was concerted, | America, and the inestimable right of trial by and has ever since been pertinaciously carrying jury taken away, in cases that touch both life into execution. and property. It was ordained that whenever Prior to this era you were content with draw-offences should be committed in the colonies ing from us the wealth produced by our commerce: you restrained your trade in every way that could conduce to your emolument. You exercised unbounded sovereignty over the sea. You named the ports and nations to which alone our merchandise should be carried, and with whom alone we should trade; and though some of these restrictions were grievous, we nevertheless did not complain. We looked up to you as to our parent state, to which we were bound by the strongest ties, and were happy in being instrumental to your prosperity and your grandeur. We call upon you, yourselves, to witness our loyalty and attachment to the common interest of the whole empire. Did we not, in the last war, add all the strength of this vast continent to the force which repelled our common enemy? Did we not leave our native shores and meet disease and death to promote the success of British arms in foreign climates? Did you not thank us for our zeal, and even reimburse us large sums of money, which you confessed we had advanced beyond our proportion, and far beyond our abilities? You did. To what causes, then, are we to attribute the sudden change of treatment, and that system of slavery, which was prepared for us at the restoration of peace? Before we had recovered from the distresses which ever attend war, an attempt was made to drain this country of all its money, by the oppressive stamp act. Paint, glass, and other commodities, which you would not permit us to purchase of other nations, were taxed; nay, although no wine is made in any country, subject to the British state, you prohibited our procuring it of foreigners without paying a tax, imposed by your Parliament, on all we imported. These, and many other impositions, were laid upon us, most unjustly and unconstitutionally, for the express purpose of raising a revenue. In order to silence complaint, it was indeed provided that this revenue should be expended in America for its protection and defence. These exactions, however, can receive no justification from a pretended necessity of protecting and defending us. They are lavishly squandered on court favorites and ministerial dependants, generally avowed enemies to America, and employing themselves by partial representations to traduce and embroil the colonies. For the necessary support of government here, we ever were and ever shall be ready to provide. And whenever the exigencies of the state may require it, we shall, as we have heretofore done, cheerfully contribute our full proportion of men and money. To enforce this unconstitutional and unjust scheme of taxation, every fence that the wisdom of our British ancestors had carefully erected against arbitrary power, has been violently thrown down in against particular acts, imposing various duties and restrictions upon trade, the prosecutor might bring his action for the penalties in the Courts of Admiralty, by which means the subject lost the advantage of being tried by an honest, uninfluenced jury of the vicinage, and was subjected to the sad necessity of being judged by a single man, a creature of the crown, and according to the course of a law which exempts the prosecutor from the trouble of proving his accusation, and obliges the defendant either to evince his innocence or to suffer. To give this new judicatory the greater importance, and as if with design to protect false accusers, it is further provided, that the judge's certificate of there having been probable causes of seizure and prosecution, shall protect the prosecutor from actions at common law for recovery of damages. By the course of our law, offences committed in such of the British dominions in which courts are established, and justice duly and regularly administered, shall be there tried by a jury of the vicinage. There the offenders and the witnesses are known, and the degree of credibility to be given to their testimony can be ascertained. In all these colonies justice is regularly and impartially administered; and yet, by the construction of some, and the direction of other acts of Parliament, offenders are to be taken by force, together with all such persons as may be pointed out as witnesses, and carried to England, there to be tried in a distant land, by a jury of strangers, and subject to all the disadvantages that result from the want of friends, want of witnesses, and want of money. When the design of raising a revenue from the duties imposed on the importation of tea into America, had in great measure been rendered abortive by our ceasing to import that commodity, a scheme was concerted by the ministry with the East India Company, and an act passed, enabling and encouraging them to transport and vend it in the colonies. Aware of the danger of giving success to this insidious manoeuvre, and of permitting a precedent of taxation thus to be established among us, various methods were adopted to elude the stroke. The people of Boston, then ruled by a governor whom, as well as his predecessor, Sir Francis Bernard, all America considers as her enemy, were exceedingly embarrassed. The ships which had arrived with the tea were, by his management, prevented from returning. The duties would have been paid; the cargoes landed aud exposed to sale; a governor's influence would have procured and protected many purchasers. While the town was suspended by deliberations on this important subject the tea was destroyed. Even supposing a trespass was thereby committed, and the proprietors of the tea entitled to damages, the courts of law were open, and judges, appointed by the crown, presided in them. The East India Company, however, did not think proper to commence any suits, nor did they even demand satisfaction, either from individuals or from the community in general. The ministry, it seems, officiously made the case their own, and the great council of the nation descended to intermeddle with a dispute about private property. Divers papers, letters, and other unauthenticated ex parte evidence, were laid before them. Neither the persons who destroyed the tea, nor the people of Boston, were called upon to answer the complaint. The ministry, incensed by being disappointed in a favorite scheme, were determined to recur from the little arts of finesse to open force and unmanly violence. The port of Boston was blocked up by a fleet, and an army placed in the town. Their trade was to be suspended, and thousands reduced to the necessity of gaining subsistence from charity, till they should submit to pass under the yoke and consent to become slaves, by confessing the omnipotence of Parliament, and acquiescing in whatever disposition they might think proper to make of their lives and property. Let justice and humanity cease to be the boast of your nation! Consult your history; examine your records of former transactions; nay, turn to the annals of the many arbitrary states and kingdoms that surround you, and show us a single instance of men being condemned to suffer for imputed crimes, unheard, unquestioned, and without even the specious formality of a trial; and that, too, by laws made expressly for the purpose, and which had no existence at the time of the fact committed. If it be difficult to reconcile these proceedings to the genius and temper of your laws and constitution, the task will become more arduous when we call upon our ministerial enemies to justify, not only condemning men untried and by hearsay, but involving the innocent in one common punishment with the guilty, and for the act of thirty or forty to bring poverty, distress, and calamity on thirty thousand souls, and those not your enemies, but your friends, brethren, and fellow-subjects. It would be some consolation to us if the catalogue of American oppressions ended here. It gives us pain to be reduced to the necessity of reminding you, that under the confidence reposed in the faith of government, pledged in a royal charter from a British sovereign, the forefathers of the present inhabitants of the Massachusetts Bay left their former habitations, and established that great, flourishing, and loyal colony. Without incurring or being charged with a forfeiture of their rights, without being heard, without being tried, without law and without justice, by an act of Parliament their charter is destroyed, their liberties violated, their constitution and form of government changed; and all this upon no better pretence than because in one of their towns a trespass was committed on some merchandise, said to belong to one of the companies, and because the ministry were of opinion that such high political regulations were necessary to compel due subordination and obedience to their mandates. Nor are these the only capital grievances under which we labor. We might tell of dissolute, weak and wicked governors having been set over us; of legislatures being suspended for asserting the rights of British subjects; of needy and ignorant dependents on great men advanced to the seats of justice, and to other places of trust and importance; of hard restrictions on commerce, and a great variety of lesser evils, the recollection of which is almost lost under the weight and pressure of greater and more poignant calamities. Now mark the progression of the ministerial plan for enslaving us. Well aware that such hardy attempts to take our property from us; to deprive us of that valuable right of trial by jury; to seize our persons, and carry us for trial to Great Britain; to blockade our ports; to destroy our charters and change our forms of government; would occasion, and had already occasioned, great discontent in the colonies, which might produce opposition to these measures, an act was passed to protect, indemnify, and screen from punishment, such as might be guilty even of murder, in endeavoring to carry their oppressive edicts into execution; and by another act, the dominion of Canada is to be so extended, modelled and governed, as that, by being disunited from us, detached from our interests, by civil as well as religious prejudices; that by their numbers daily swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by their devotion to an administration so friendly to their religion, they might become formidable to us, and on occasion be fit instruments, in the hands of power, to reduce the ancient free Protestant colonies to the same state of slavery with themselves. This was evidently the object of the act; and in this view, being extremely dangerous to our liberty and quiet, we cannot forbear complaining of it, as hostile to British America. Superadded to these considerations, we cannot help deploring the unhappy condition to which it has reduced the many English settlers who, encouraged by the royal proclamation, promising the enjoyment of all their rights, have purchased estates in that country. They are now the subjects of an arbitrary government, deprived of trial by jury, and when imprisoned, cannot claim the benefit of the habeas corpus act that great bulwark and palladium of English liberty. Nor can we suppress our astonishment, that a British Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country, a religion that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world. This being a true state of facts, let us beseech | shall consider your enemies as our enemies, you to consider to what end they may lead. and your interest as our own. Admit that the ministry, by the powers of But, if you are determined that your minisBritain and the aid of our Roman Catholic ters shall wantonly sport with the rights of neighbors, should be able to carry the point of mankind-if neither the voice of justice, the taxation, and reduce us to a state of perfect dictates of the law, the principles of the Conhumiliation and slavery: such an enterprise stitution, or the suggestions of humanity, can would doubtless make some addition to your restrain your hands from shedding human national debt, which already presses down your blood, in such an impious cause, we must then liberties, and fills you with pensioners and tell you, that we will never submit to be hewplacemen. We presume, also, that your com- ers of wood or drawers of water, for any merce will somewhat be diminished. However, ministry, or nation in the world. suppose you should prove victorious, in what condition will you then be? What advantages or laurels will you reap from such a conquest? May not a ministry, with the same armies enslave you? It may be said, you will cease to pay them-but remember the taxes from America, the wealth, and we may add the men, and particularly the Roman Catholics of this vast continent, will then be in the power of your enemies; nor will you have any reason to expect that after making slaves of us, many among us should refuse to assist in reducing you to the same abject state. Do not treat this as chimerical. Know that in less than half a century, the quit rents reserved to the Crown, from the numberless grants of this vast continent, will pour large streams of wealth into the royal coffers, and if to this be added the power of taxing America at pleasure, the Crown will be rendered independent of you for supplies, and will possess more treasure than may be necessary to purchase the remains of liberty in your island. In a word, take care that you do not fall into the pit that is preparing for us. We believe there is yet much virtue, much justice, and much public spirit in the English nation. To that justice we now appeal. You have been told that we are seditious, impatient of government, and desirous of independency. Be assured that these are not facts, but calumnies. Permit us to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you, to be our greatest glory, and our greatest happiness; we shall ever be ready to contribute all in our power to the welfare of the empire; we Place us in the same situation that we were in, at the close of the last war, and our former harmony will be restored. But lest the same supineness, and the same inattention to our common interest, which you have for several years shown, should continue, we think it prudent to anticipate the consequences. X By the destruction of the trade of Boston, the ministry have endeavored to induce submission to their measures. The like fate may befall us all. We will endeavor, therefore, to live without trade, and recur for subsistence to the fertility and bounty of our native soil, which will afford us all the necessaries, and some of the conveniences of life. We have suspended our importation from Great Britain and Ireland; and, in less than a year's time, unless our grievances should be redressed, shall discontinue our exports to those kingdoms, and the West Indies. It is with the utmost regret, however, that we find ourselves compelled, by the overruling principles of self-preservation, to adopt measures detrimental in their consequences, to numbers of our fellow-subjects in Great Britain and Ireland. But, we hope, that the magnanimity and justice of the British nation will furnish a Parliament of such wisdom, independence, and public spirit, as may save the violated rights of the whole empire, from the devices of wicked ministers and evil counsellors, whether in or out of office; and thereby restore that harmony, friendship, and fraternal affection between all the inhabitants of his Majesty's kingdoms and territories, so ardently wished for by every true and honest American. EDMUND RANDOLPH. THOMAS RANDOLPH, the poet and cotemporary of Ben Jonson, and who, before "death put a stop to his rising genius and fame," had gained a sterling reputation among the wits of his age, was the great-uncle of Sir John, the grandfather of Edmund Randolph. The family were high Loialists, in the civil wars, and being entirely broken and dispersed, Sir John's father* determined, as many other Cavaliers did, to try his fortune in the Western world. From his earliest childhood, Sir John evinced a great propensity to letters; to improve which he was first put under the care of a Protestant clergyman, who came over among the French Refugees. But afterwards he received a more complete education at William and Mary College, in Virginia. He finished his studies in the law, in Gray's Inn and the Temple; and having put on his Barrister's gown, returned to his native country, where, from his first appearance at the bar, he was ranked among the practitioners of the first figure and distinction. At the time of the disputes in New York relative to the establishment of a new Court of Exchequer, Sir John expressed his sentiments upon the subject, which were clear and forcible, and now form a part of the judicial history of that State. In the autumn of 1731, he went to England and "presented to his Majesty a state of the colony of Virginia, drawn up with great accuracy, which his Majesty was pleased to receive very graciously, and to confer the honor of knighthood on the said gentleman." After his return to Virginia, he was elected Speaker of the House of Burgesses, and on the twenty-eighth of August, 1734, delivered his inaugural before that body. "If I shall endeavor," he said, "to make the established rules of our proceedings subservient to my own fancies and humors, or interests; or shall bring into this chair a restlessness and impatience about points that may be carried against my sentiments, or shall pretend to any authority of swaying any member in his opinion; I say, then I shall deserve to have no influence upon your proceedings, but do not doubt, nay, I hope, you will mortify me with the utmost of your contempt for the inconsistence of my theory and practice. And if I shall happen to succeed better, I will pretend to no other praise but that of not having deceived the expectations of so many worthy gentlemen who have continued to heap upon me such a series of favors, which, so long as I retain the memory of any thing, I must look upon as the chief foundation of the credit and reputation of my life."§ In March, 1737, Sir John Randolph died at the age of forty-four years, and was interred in the chapel of William and Mary College. According with his directions, he was borne to the place of interment "by six honest, industrious, poor housekeepers of Bruton parish, who were * This was William Randolph, of Turkey Island, in Virginia. Little is known of him. Tradition says that he came over from Yorkshire poor, and made his living by building barns, and by his industry acquired large possessions of land. + Sir John's letter on this subject, is published in the appendix of Smith's History of New York. Ed. 1830. Vol 1, page 874. New York Historical Society's Collections. Bradford's American Weekly Mercury, Jan. 30th-Feb. 6th, 1732-8. The editor of this paper, after noticing these facts, concludes: "The public is impatient to see the contents of those papers, which are said to be designed for public good." § A full report of this speech is published in the American Weekly Mercury, Sept. 19–26, 1794 to have twenty pounds divided among them, and attended by a numerous assembly of gentlemen and others, who paid the last honors to him with great solemnity, decency and respect."* Edmund Randolph was born on the tenth of August, 1753. His father early adhered to the cause of Great Britain, joined the fortunes of Lord Dunmore, and finally disinherited his son for refusing to follow in the same course. Of the youth and early education of Edmund Randolph we have no particulars. At the age of twenty-two years, in August, 1775, he joined the American army at Cambridge, and was taken into the military family of General Washington as an aid-de-camp. He remained here but a short time, being recalled to Virginia in the following November, by the death of his uncle, Peyton Randolph. In 1776 he was delegated to the Virginia Convention as the alternate of George Wythe, and before the termination of the year was elected Mayor of Williamsburg, the city he represented in the Convention. Subsequently he was appointed Attorney-General of the State of Virginia, under the new constitution, and at a future session of the House of Delegates he was elected its clerk. In the practice of his profession, which was the law, his success was eminent and extraordinary. Clients filled his office, and beset him on his way from the office to the court-house, "with their papers in one hand and their guineas in the other." He was a member of the Continental Congress from 1779 until 1782, and in 1786 was elected Governor of Virginia, succeeding in that office Patrick Henry. The same year he was chosen a delegate to the Annapolis Convention, and subsequently to the Convention which met at Philadelphia in 1787, to revise the articles of confederation. His career in that assembly was marked and effective.§ He afterward was a member of the Virginia Convention, summoned to ratify the Federal Constitution. President Washington appointed him the first Attorney-General under the federal system, and in 1795 he was elevated to the office of Secretary of State, as successor of Mr. Jefferson. He remained in this position but a short time, resuming the practice of the law at Richmond in the autumn of the following year. At the celebrated trial of Aaron Burr, on the charge of treason, in May, 1807, Mr. Randolph was associated with Luther Martin and other distinguished lawyers, in the defence of that unfortunate man. He died on the twelfth of September, 1813, in Frederic (now Page) county, Virginia, in the sixtieth year of his age, leaving an extremely valuable manuscript history of Virginia, in which he occupies a prominent position. This never appeared in print, and finally was destroyed.] * Obituary notice of Sir John Randolph, published in the Virginia Gazette, of March 11th, 1737, and reproduced in the Virginia Historical Register, Vol. 4, page 138. + John Randolph, the father of Edmund, was attorney-general of Virginia, under the royal government. He was a brother of Peyton Randolph, president of the Continental Congress. Virginia Convention of 1776, by Hugh Blair Grigsby, page 76, et seq. § As chief magistrate of Virginia, it became the duty of Mr. Randolph to secure the attendance of Washington upon the Federal Convention. This matter he managed with great tact and delicacy; and, by the aid of other friends, he succeeded in overcoming the scruples of the illustrious patriot, then reposing in the retirement of Mount Vernon. Governor Randolph's conduct with regard to the constitution might seem to be marked by inconsistency, if we were not able to explain it by the motive of disinterested patriotism from which he evidently acted. He brought to the convention the most serious apprehensions for the fate of the Union. But he thought that the dangers with which it was surrounded might be averted, by correcting and enlarging the Articles of Confederation. When, at length, the government, which was actually framed, was found to be a system containing far greater restraints upon the powers of the States than he believed to be either expedient or safe, he endeavored to procure a vote authorizing amendments to be submitted by the State conventions, and to be finally decided on by another general convention. This proposition was rejected, and he declined to sign the constitution desiring to be free to oppose or advocate its adoption, when it should come before his own State, as his judgment might dictate.-Curtis's History of the Constitution, Vol. 1, page 481: Madison Papers, While Mr. Wirt was preparing his eloquent Life of Patrick Henry, he saw and consulted this manuscript. Some years after, it was destroyed by a fire at New Orleans, while in the possession of a grandson of Edmund Randolph.—Preface of Wirt's Patrick Henry, page 11. Grigsby's Virginia Convention of 1776, page 78. |