“If our union was by compact, whom could the compact bind, but those that concurred in the stipulations?  We gave our ancestors no commission to settle the terms of future existence.  They might be cowards that were frighted, or blockheads that were cheated; but, whatever they were, they could contract only for themselves.  What they could establish, we can annul.

“Against our present form of government, it shall stand in the place of all argument, that we do not like it.  While we are governed as we do not like, where is our liberty?  We do not like taxes, we will, therefore, not be taxed:  we do not like your laws, and will not obey them.

“The taxes laid by our representatives, are laid, you tell us, by our own consent; but we will no longer consent to be represented.  Our number of legislators was originally a burden, and ought to have been refused; it is now considered as a disproportionate advantage; who, then, will complain if we resign it?

“We shall form a senate of our own, under a president whom the king shall nominate, but whose authority we will limit, by adjusting his salary to his merit.  We will not withhold a proper share of contribution to the necessary expense of lawful government, but we will decide for ourselves what share is proper, what expense is necessary, and what government is lawful.

“Till our counsel is proclaimed independent and unaccountable, we will, after the tenth day of September, keep our tin in our own hands:  you can be supplied from no other place, and must, therefore, comply, or be poisoned with the copper of your own kitchens.

“If any Cornishman shall refuse his name to this just and laudable association, he shall be tumbled from St. Michael’s mount, or buried alive in a tin-mine; and if any emissary shall be found seducing Cornishmen to their former state, he shall be smeared with tar, and rolled in feathers, and chased with dogs out of our dominions.

“From the Cornish congress at Truro.”

Of this memorial, what could be said, but that it was written in jest, or written by a madman?  Yet I know not whether the warmest admirers of Pennsylvanian eloquence, can find any argument in the addresses of the congress, that is not, with greater strength, urged by the Cornishman.

The argument of the irregular troops of controversy, stripped of its colours, and turned out naked to the view, is no more than this.  Liberty is the birthright of man, and where obedience is compelled, there is no liberty.  The answer is equally simple.  Government is necessary to man, and where obedience is not compelled, there is no government.

If the subject refuses to obey, it is the duty of authority to use compulsion.  Society cannot subsist but by the power, first of making laws, and then of enforcing them.

To one of the threats hissed out by the congress, I have put nothing similar into the Cornish proclamation; because it is too wild for folly, and too foolish for madness.  If we do not withhold our king and his parliament from taxing them, they will cross the Atlantick, and enslave us.