circumstances shall have rendered them destructive to his people here.  And, to render this grievance still more oppressive, his Majesty, by his instructions, has laid his Governors under such restrictions, that they can pass no law of any moment, unless it have such suspending clause:  so that, however immediate may be the call for legislative interposition, the law cannot be executed till it has twice crossed the Atlantic, by which time the evil may have spent its whole force.

’But in what terms reconcilable to Majesty, and,at the same time to truth, shall we speak of a late instruction to his Majesty’s Governor of the colony of Virginia, by which he is forbidden to assent to any law for the division of a county, unless the new county will consent to have no representative in Assembly?  That colony has as yet affixed no boundary to the westward.  Their Western counties, therefore, are of indefinite extent.  Some of them are actually seated many hundred miles from their Eastern limits.  Is it possible, then that his Majesty can have bestowed a single thought on the situation of those people, who, in order to obtain justice for injuries, however great or small, must, by the laws of that colony, attend their county court at such a distance, with all their witnesses, monthly, till their litigation be determined?  Or does his Majesty seriously wish, and publish it to the world, that his subjects should give up the glorious right of representation, with all the benefits derived from that, and submit themselves to be absolute slaves of his sovereign will?  Or is it rather meant to confine the legislative body to their present numbers, that they may be the cheaper bargain, whenever they shall become worth a purchase?

’One of the articles of impeachment against Tresilian and the other Judges of Westminster Hall, in the reign of Richard the Second, for which they suffered death, as traitors to their country, was, that they had advised the King that he might dissolve his Parliament at any time:  and succeeding Kings have adopted the opinion of these unjust Judges.  Since the establishment, however, of the British constitution, at the glorious Revolution, on its free and ancient principles, neither his Majesty nor his ancestors have exercised such a power of dissolution in the island of Great Britain;* and, when his Majesty was petitioned by the united voice of his people there to dissolve the present Parliament, who had become obnoxious to them, his Ministers were heard to declare, in open Parliament, that his Majesty possessed no such power by the constitution.  But how different their language, and his practice, here!  To declare, as their duty required, the known rights of their country, to oppose the usurpation of every foreign judicature, to disregard the imperious mandates of a Minister or Governor, have been the avowed causes of dissolving Houses of Representatives in America.  But if such powers be really vested in his Majesty, can he suppose