If they are condemned unheard, it is because there is no need of a trial.  The crime is manifest and notorious.  All trial is the investigation of something doubtful.  An Italian philosopher observes, that no man desires to hear what he has already seen.

If their assemblies have been suddenly dissolved, what was the reason?  Their deliberations were indecent, and their intentions seditious.  The power of dissolution is granted and reserved for such times of turbulence.  Their best friends have been lately soliciting the king to dissolve his parliament; to do what they so loudly complain of suffering.

That the same vengeance involves the innocent and guilty, is an evil to be lamented; but human caution cannot prevent it, nor human power always redress it.  To bring misery on those who have not deserved it, is part of the aggregated guilt of rebellion.

That governours have been sometimes given them, only that a great man might get ease from importunity, and that they have had judges, not always of the deepest learning, or the purest integrity, we have no great reason to doubt, because such misfortunes happen to ourselves.  Whoever is governed, will, sometimes, be governed ill, even when he is most “concerned in his own government.”

That improper officers or magistrates are sent, is the crime or folly of those that sent them.  When incapacity is discovered, it ought to be removed; if corruption is detected, it ought to be punished.  No government could subsist for a day, if single errours could justify defection.

One of their complaints is not such as can claim much commiseration from the softest bosom.  They tell us, that we have changed our conduct, and that a tax is now laid, by parliament, on those who were never taxed by parliament before.  To this, we think, it may be easily answered, that the longer they have been spared, the better they can pay.

It is certainly not much their interest to represent innovation as criminal or invidious; for they have introduced into the history of mankind a new mode of disaffection, and have given, I believe, the first example of a proscription published by a colony against the mother-country.

To what is urged of new powers granted to the courts of admiralty, or the extension of authority conferred on the judges, it may be answered, in a few words, that they have themselves made such regulations necessary; that they are established for the prevention of greater evils; at the same time, it must be observed, that these powers have not been extended since the rebellion in America.

One mode of persuasion their ingenuity has suggested, which it may, perhaps, be less easy to resist.  That we may not look with indifference on the American contest, or imagine that the struggle is for a claim, which, however decided, is of small importance and remote consequence, the Philadelphian congress has taken care to inform us, that they are resisting the demands of parliament, as well for our sakes as their own.