infused into that army by which you rule, as well as into the whole body of the nation, principles which after a time must disable you in the use you resolve to make of it.  The king is to call out troops to act against his people, when the world has been told, and the assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troops ought not to fire on citizens.  The colonies assert to themselves an independent constitution and a free trade.  They must be constrained by troops.  In what chapter of your code of the rights of men are they able to read that it is a part of the rights of men to have their commerce monopolized and restrained for the benefit of others?  As the colonists rise on you, the negroes rise on them.  Troops again,—­massacre, torture, hanging!  These are your rights of men!  These are the fruits of metaphysic declarations wantonly made and shamefully retracted!  It was but the other day that the farmers of land in one of your provinces refused to pay some sorts of rents to the lord of the soil.  In consequence of this, you decree that the country-people shall pay all rents and dues, except those which as grievances you have abolished; and if they refuse, then you order the king to march troops against them.  You lay down metaphysic propositions which infer universal consequences, and then you attempt to limit logic by despotism.  The leaders of the present system tell them of their rights, as men, to take fortresses, to murder guards, to seize on kings without the least appearance of authority even from the Assembly, whilst, as the sovereign legislative body, that Assembly was sitting in the name of the nation; and yet these leaders presume to order out the troops which have acted in these very disorders, to coerce those who shall judge on the principles and follow the examples which have been guarantied by their own approbation.

The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject all feodality as the barbarism of tyranny; and they tell them afterwards how much of that barbarous tyranny they are to bear with patience.  As they are prodigal of light with regard to grievances, so the people find them sparing in the extreme with regard to redress.  They know that not only certain quit-rents and personal duties, which you have permitted them to redeem, (but have furnished no money for the redemption,) are as nothing to those burdens for which you have made no provision at all; they know that almost the whole system of landed property in its origin is feudal,—­that it is the distribution of the possessions of the original proprietors made by a barbarous conqueror to his barbarous instruments,—­and that the most grievous effects of the conquest axe the land-rents of every kind, as without question they are.