express consent, contracted to observe the Navigation Act, and by our implied consent, by long usage and uninterrupted acquiescence, have submitted to the other Acts of Trade, however grievous some of them may be. This may be compared to a treaty of commerce, by which these distinct States are cemented together in perpetual league and amity. And if any further ratifications of this pact or treaty are necessary, the Colonies would readily enter into them, provided their other liberties were inviolate.

In this view, Acts of Parliament were merely propositions to change the terms of the Treaty or Compact of Alliance and Commerce, which were of no effect until assented to by the Houses of Representatives of the respective Colonies, representing the people of the Colonies, when they became amendments to the Treaty or Compact. Such a Union was merely temporary and inorganic. The King was the Chief Executive of a number of separate States, exercising inconsistent functions in his various official capacities. The Union was through the King as a natural person, not through the King in his official capacity. One man was simply exercising the functions which would usually be committed to several men on account of the inconsistency between the functions so exercised. In this view, any State of the Union had the right, in case of dissatisfaction, to withdraw from the partnership or voluntary association (or, to express it technically in the language of the public law, to secede from the Union), and there was no British Empire. The advocates of this view were anti-Imperialists.

Dickinson, on the other hand, starting with the same proposition that the Colonies were originally States (and hence originally independent and equal with the State of Great Britain), contended that, simultaneously with the origin of the Colonies as States, the people of the Colonies had entered into a compact with the people of Great Britain, evidenced by the Charters authenticated by the

signature of the King, that the Colonies, though States, should be and remain in a permanent and organic Union of subordination to the State of Great Britain on terms just to both parties. In this view, this whole original Treaty or Compact of Union had the effect to form the people of Great Britain and the people of the Colonies into a single political organism or State, composed of Great Britain, as the Imperial State, and of the Colonies, as subordinate Member-States, and called the British Federal Empire. The Treaty or Compact was the supreme law, or, in other words, the Constitution of the Empire, supreme over every governmental action of the States of the Empire, whether legislative or executive, and hence supreme over Acts of Parliament. In this view, no State of the Empire had any right to secede from the Empire. A change from member-statehood to independent statehood could result only from a dissolution and dismemberment of the State known as the British Federal Empire. The advocates of this theory were Federal-Imperialists.

Jefferson and Hamilton, neither of whom were members of the Continental Congress at its first session, expressed views in pamphlets which placed the former in the antiImperialist and the latter in the Federal-Imperialist party, though neither took an extreme view. Jefferson, in his Summary View of the Rights of British America, while taking generally the anti-Imperialist view, regarded the King as "the only mediatory power between the States of the British Empire."

On September 24, it was voted "that the Congress do confine themselves, at present, to the consideration of such rights as have been infringed by Acts of the British Parliament since the year 1763." This was a declaration that it was the purpose of Congress to demand only a restoration of the Constitution of the British Federal Empire as it existed at the close of the war in 1763.

Having thus narrowed the issue, the Congress proceeded to narrow it still further by determining the specific Acts of Parliament, the repeal of which they regarded as absolutely necessary to a settlement between the Colonies and Great Britain. The vote on this subject, which was, under the circumstances, a vote concerning the ultimatum which was to be addressed by the Colonies to Great Britain, was taken on October 5, on that day, Congress passed the following resolution:

Resolved: That the Committee appointed to prepare an Address to his Majesty be instructed to assure his Majesty that, in case the Colonies shall be restored to the state they were in at the close of the late war, by abolishing the system of laws and regulations for raising a revenue in America, for extending the powers of Courts of Admiralty, for the trial of persons beyond sea for crimes committed in America, for affecting the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and for altering the government and extending the limits of Canada, the jealousies which have been occasioned by such acts and regulations of Parliament would be removed and commerce again restored.

In the Declaration of Rights and Grievances of October 14, the terms of this ultimatum were followed, with the addition of a demand for a discontinuance of the annual statutes which Parliament had been in the habit of enacting, providing for the quartering of troops in America at the expense of the Colonies.

The declaration concerning the constitutional relationship between Great Britain and the Colonies was contained in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, and tenth resolutions, which were as follows:

4. That the foundation of English liberty and of all free government is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: and as the English colonists are not

represented, and from their local and other circumstances cannot properly be represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial Legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their Sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed: But from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interests of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such Acts of the British Parliament, as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole Empire to the Mother Country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America without their

consent.

5. That the respective Colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law.

6. That they are entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization; and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances.

7. That these, his Majesty's Colonies, are likewise entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or secured by their several codes of Provincial laws.

9. That the keeping a standing army in these Colonies in times of peace, without the consent of the Legislature of that Colony in which such army is kept, is against law.

10. That it is indispensably necessary to good government, and rendered essential by the English Constitution, that the constituent branches of the Legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several Colonies by a Council appointed, during pleasure, by the Crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.

Of these resolutions, the fourth and sixth were passed by less than a unanimous vote, though the record does not show the exact character of the vote.

The declaration concerning the rights of the individual inhabitants of the Colonies against the British Imperial Government were contained in the first, second, third, and eighth resolutions, all of which were adopted by a unanimous vote, and which were as follows:

1. That they are entitled to life, liberty and property: and they have never ceded to any foreign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.

2. That our ancestors, who first settled these Colonies, were at the time of their emigration from the Mother Country, entitled to all the rights, liberties and immunities of free and natural-born subjects within the Realm of England.

3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered or lost any of those rights, but that they were and their descendants now are entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.

8. That they have a right to peaceably assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the King; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.

It was declared by the Congress, in a subsequent part of the Declaration of Rights, that these rights of the Colonies and their inhabitants existed "by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English Constitution, and the several charters or contracts.

It is noticeable that in this Declaration, the principal ground on which the claims of the Colonies were based was "the laws of nature." While "the principles of the English Constitution" and "the several charters or contracts" were relied upon, the reliance was upon them only