’But that one other act passed in the same seventh year of his reign, having been a peculiar attempt, must ever require peculiar mention.  It is entitled “an act [Act suspending Legislature of New York.]

’One free and independent legislature hereby takes upon itself to suspend the powers of another, free and independent as itself.  Thus exhibiting a phenomenon unknown in nature, the creator and creature of its own power.  Not only the principles of common sense, but the common feelings of human nature must be surrendered up, before his Majesty’s subjects here can be persuaded to believe, that they hold their political existence at the will of a British Parliament.  Shall these governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the American public be ever so great?  Can any one reason be assigned, why one hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the states of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them in virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength?  Were this to be admitted, instead of being a free people, as we have hitherto supposed, and mean to continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves, not of one, but of one hundred and sixty thousand tyrants; distinguished, too, from all others, by this singular circumstance, that they are removed from the reach of fear, the only restraining motive which may hold the hand of a tyrant.

’That, by “an act to discontinue in such manner, and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America,” [14 G.3.] which was passed at the last session of the British Parliament, a large and populous town, whose trade was their sole subsistence, was deprived of that trade, and involved in utter ruin.  Let us for a while, suppose the question of right suspended, in order to examine this act on principles of justice.  An act of Parliament had been passed, imposing duties on teas, to be paid in America, against which act the Americans had protested, as inauthoritative.  The East India Company, who till that time had never sent a pound of tea to America on their own account, step forth on that occasion, the asserters of Parliamentary right, and send hither many ship-loads of that obnoxious commodity.  The masters of their several vessels, however, on their arrival in America, wisely attended to admonition, and returned with their cargoes.  In the province of New England alone, the remonstrances of the people were disregarded, and a compliance, after being many days waited for, was flatly refused.  Whether