The origin of government has in all ages no less perplexed the heads of lawyers and politicians, than the origin of evil has embarrassed divines and philosophers: And 'tis probable the world may receive a satisfactory solution on both those points of enquiry at the same time.

The various opinions on the origin of government have been reduced to four. 1. That dominion is founded in grace. 2. On force or meer power. 3. On compact. 4. On property.

The first of these opinions is so absurd, and the world has paid so very dear for embracing it, especially under the administration of the Roman pontiffs, that mankind seem at this day to be in a great measure cured of their madness in this particular; and the notion is pretty generally exploded, and his'd off the stage.

To those who lay the foundation of government in force and meer brutal power, it is objected; that, their system destroys all distinction between right and wrong; that it overturns all morality, and leaves it to every man to do what is right in his own eyes; that it leads directly to scepticism, and ends in atheism. When a man's will and pleasure is his only rule and guide, what safety can there be either for him or against him, but in the point of a sword?

On the other hand the gentlemen in favor of the original compact have been often told that their system is chimerical and unsupported by reason or experience. Questions like the following have been frequently asked them, and may be again.

"When and where was the original compact for introducing government into any society, or for creating a society, made? Who were present and parties to such compact? Who acted for infants and women, or who appointed guardians for them? Had these guardians power to bind both infants and women during life, and their posterity after them? Is it in nature or reason that a guardian should by his own act perpetuate his power over his ward, and bind him and his posterity in chains? Is not every man born as free by nature as his father? Has he not the same natural right to think and act and contract for himself? Is it possible for a man to have a natural right to make a slave of himself or of his posterity? Can a father supersede the laws of nature? What man is or ever was born free, if every man is not? What will there be to distinguish the next generation of men from their forefathers, that they should not have had the same right to make original compacts as their ancestors had? If every man and woman born or to be born has, and will have, a right to be consulted, and must accede to the original compact before they can with any kind of justice be said to be bound by it, will not the compact be every forming and never finished, ever making but never done? Can it with propriety be called a compact original or derivative, that is ever in treaty but never concluded?"

When it has been said that each man is bound as soon as he accedes and that the consent may be either express or tacit, it has been asked, “What is a tacit  content or compact? Does it not appear plain that those who refuse their assent cannot be bound? If one is at liberty to accede or not, is he not also at liberty to recede on the discovery of some intolerable fraud and abuse that has been palmed upon him by the rest of the high contracting parties? Will not natural equity in several special cases rescind the original compacts of a great men as effectually as those of little men are rendered null and void in the ordinary course of a court of chancery?

There are other questions which have been started, and a resolution of them demanded, which may perhaps be deemed indecent by those who hold the prerogatives of an earthly monarch, and even the power of a plantation government, so sacred as to think it little less than blasphemy to enquire into their origin and foundation: while the government of the supreme ruler of the universe is every day discussed with less ceremony and decency than the administration of a petty German prince. I hope the reader will consider that I am present only mentioning such questions as have been put by high-flyers & others in church and state, who would exclude all compact between a Sovereign and his people, without offering my own sentiments upon them; this however I presume I may be allowed hereafter to do without offence. Those who want a full answer to them may consult Mr. Locke's discourses on government, M. De Vattel's law of nature and nations, and their own consciences.

“What state were Great Britain, Ireland, and the plantations left in by the abdication of James II? Was it in a nature or of civil government? If a state of civil government, where were the supreme legislative and executive powers from the abdication to the election of William and Mary? Could the Lords and Commons be called a complete Parliament or supreme power without a King to head them? Did any law of the land or any original compact previous to the abdication provide that on such an event the supreme power should devolve on the two houses? Were not both houses so manifestly puzzled with the novelty and strangeness of the event, and so far from finding any act of Parliemnt, book case, or precedent to help them that they dispute in solemn conference by what name to call the action, and at last gave it one as new in our language and in that of Parliament as the thing itself was in fact?”*

[Otis adds the following footnote: *On King James’ leaving the kingdom and abdicating the government, the Lords would have the word desertion made use of bu the Commons thought it was not comprehensive enough, for that the King might then have liberty of returning. The Scots rightly called it a forfeiture of the crown, and this in plain English is the sense of the term abdication as by the Convention and every Parliament since applied. See the history and debates of the Convention, and the acts then made.]

If on this memorable and very happy event the three kingdoms and the dominions fell back into a state of nature, it will be asked “Whether every man and woman were not then equal? If so, had not every one of them a natural and equitable right to be consulted in the choice of a new King or in the formation of a new original compact  or government in any new form had been made? Might not the nation at that time have rightfully changed the monarchy into a republic or any form that might seem best? Could any change from a state of nature take place without universal consent, or at least without the consent of the majority of the individuals? Upon the principles of the original compact as commonly explained and understood, could a few hundred men who before the dissolution of government had been called,and in fact were, lords, knights and gentlemen have lawfully made that glorious deliverer and defender William III rightful King?” Such as one he certainly was, and such have been all his illustrious successors to the present happy times, when we have the joy to see the scepter swayed in justice, wisdom, and mercy by our lawful sovereign, George the Third, a prince who glories in being a Briton born, and whom may God long preserve and prosper.

“If upon the abdication all were reduced to a state of nature, had not apple women and orange girls as good a right to give their respectable suffrages for a new King as the philosopher, courtier, petite-maître, and politician? Were these and ten millions of others such ever more consulted on that occasion than the multitude now are in the adjustment of that real modern farce, an election of a King of the Romans, which serves as a contrast to the grandeur of the ancient republics, and shows the littleness of the modern German and some other gothic constitutions in their present degenerate state?

“In the election of William III, were the votes of Ireland and the plantations ever called for or once thought of till the affair was settled? Did the Lords and Commons who happened to be then in and about Westminster represent and act for the individuals not only of the three kingdoms but for all the freeborn and as yet unconquered possessors and proprietors of their own money-purchased, blood purchases plantations, which, till lately, have been defended with little or not assistance from Great Britain? Were not those who did not vote in or for the new model at liberty upon the principles of compact to remain in what some call the delectable state of nature, to which by the hypothesis they were reduced, or to join themselves to any other state whose solemn league and covenant they could subscribe? Is it not a first principle of the original compact that all who are bound should bind themselves? Will not common sense without much learning or study dictate obvious answers to all the above questions? And, say the opposers of the original compact and of the natural equality and liberty of mankind, will not those answers infallibly show that the doctrine is a piece of metaphysical jargon and systematical nonsense?” Perhaps not.

With regard to the fourth opinion, that dominion is founded in property,  what is it but playing with words? Dominion in one sense of the term is synonymous with property, so one cannot be called the foundation of the other but one name may appear to be the foundation or cause of another.

Property cannot be the foundation of dominion as synonymous with government; for on the supposition that property has a precarious existence antecedent to government, and thought it is also admitted that the security of property is one end of government but that of little estimation even in the view of a miser  when life and liberty of locomotion and further accumulation are placed in the competition, it must be a very absurd way of speaking to assert that one end of government is the foundation of government. If the ends of government are to be considered as its foundation, it cannot with truth or propriety be said that government is founded on any one  of these ends; and therefore government is not founded on property or its security alone, but at least on something else in conjunction. It is however true in fact and experience, as the great and incomparable Harrington

The end of government being the good of mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to provide for the security, the quiet, and happy enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. There is no one act which a government can have a right to make that does not tend to the advance-mewnt of the security, tranquillity, and prosperity of the people. If life, liberty, and property could be [11] enjoyned in as great perfection in solitude as in soci-ety there would be no need of government. But the experience of ages has proved that such is the na-ture of man, a weak, imperfect being, that the valu-able ends of life cannot be obtained without the union and assistance of many. Hence tis clear that men cannot live apart or independent of each other. In solitude men would perish, and yet they cannot live together without contests. These contests re-quire some arbitrator to determine them. The ne-cessity of a common, indifferent, and impartial judge makes all men seek one, though few find him in the sovereign power of their respective states or anywhere else in subordinaton to it....

I know of no human law founded on the law of nature to restrain him from separating himself from all the species if he can find it in his heart to leave them, unless it should be said it is against the great law of self-preservation: but of this every man will think himself his own judge.

The few hermits and misanthropes that have ever existed show that those states are unnatural. If we were to take out from them those who have made great worldly gain of their godly hermitage and those who have been under the madness of enthusiasm or disappointed hopes in their ambitious projects for the detriment of mankind, perhaps there might not be left ten from Adam to this day.

The form of government is by nature and by right so far left to the individuals of each society that they may alter it from a simple democracy or government of all over all to any other form they please. Such alteration may and ought to be made by express compact. But how seldom this right has been asserted, history will abundantly show. For once that it has been fairly settled by compact, fraud, force, or acci-dent have determined it an hundred times. As the people have gained upon tyrants, these have been obliged to relax only till a fairer opportunity has put it in their power to encroach again.

But if every prince since Nimrod had been a tyrant, it would not prove a right to tyrannize. There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the law of nature and the grant of GOD Almight, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make them-selves so if they please. .

In order to form an idea of the natural rights of the colonists, I presume it will be granted that they are men, the common children of the same Creator with their brethren of Great Britain. Nature has placed all such in a state of equality and perfect freedom to act within the bounds of the laws of na-ture and reason without consulting the will or regarding the humor, the passions, or whims of any other man, unless they are formed into a society or body politic. This it must be confessed is rather an abstract way of considering men than agreeable to the real and general course of nature. The truth is, as has been sown, men come into the world and into society at the same instant. But this hinders not but that the natural and original rights of each individual may be illustrated and explained in this way better than in any other.  We see here, by the way, a probability that this abstract consideration of men, which has its use in the reasoning on the principles of government, has insensibly led some of the greatest men to imagine some real general state of nature agreeable to this abstract conception, antecedent to and independent of society. This is certainly not the case in general, for most men become members of society form their birth, though separate independent states are really in the condition of perfect freedom and equality with regard to each other, and so are any number of individuals who separate themselves from a society of which they have formerly been members, for ill treatment or other good cause, with express design to found another. If in such case there is a real interval between the separation and the new conjunction, during such interval the individuals are as much detached and under the law of nature only as would be two men who should chance to meet on a desolate island.

The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black. No better reasons can be given for enslaving those of any color than such as Baron Montesquieu has humorously given as the foundation of that cruel slavery exercised over the poor Ethiopians, which threatens one day to reduce both Europe and America to the ignorance and barbarity of the darkest ages. Does it follow that >tis right to enslave a man because he is black? Will short curled hair like wool instead of Christian hair, as tis called by those whose hearts are as hard as the nether millstone, help the argument? Can any logical inference in favor of slavery be drawn from a flat nose, a long or a short face? Nothing better can be said in favor of a trade that is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish the idea of the in estimable value of liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman in needles and pins on the unhappy coast. It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own. To this cause must be imputed that ferocity, cruelty, and brutal barbarity that has long marked the general character of the sugar islanders…

The colonists, being men, have a right to be considered as equally entitled to all the rights of nature with the Europeans, and they are not to be restrained in the exercise of any of these rights but for the evident good of the whole community.

By being or becoming members of society they have not renounced their natural liberty in any greater degree than other good citizens, and if tis taken from them without their consent they are so far enslaved.

I also lay it down as one of the first principles from whence I intend to deduce the civil rights of the British colonies, that all of them are subject to and dependent on Great Britain, and that therefore as over subordinate governments the Parliament of Great Britain has an undoubted power and lawfuI authority to make acts for the general good that, by naming them, shall and ought to be equally binding as upon the subjects of Great Britain within the realm. This principle, I presume, will be readily granted on the other side the Atlantic. It has been practised upon for twenty years to my knowledge, in the province of the Massachusetts Bay; and I have ever received it that it has been so from the beginning in this and the sister provinces through the continent.

I am aware some will think it is time for me to retreat, after having expressed the power of the British Parliament in quite so strong terms. But ‘tis from and under this very power and its acts, and from the common law, that the political and civil rights of the colonists are derived: and upon those grand pillars of liberty shall my defense be rested. A present, therefore the reader may suppose that there is not one provincial charger on the continent; he may, if he pleases imagine all taken away, without fault or forfeiture, without trial or notice. I would have the reader carry his imagination still further, and suppose a time may come when instead of a process at common law the Parlimaent shall give a decisive bloew to every charter in American, and declare them all void…What could follow form all this that would shake one of the essential, natural, civil, or religious rights of the colonies? Nothing. They would be men, citizens, and British subjects after all. No act of Parliament can deprive them of the liberties of such, unless any will contend that an act of parliament can make slaves not only of one but of two millions of the commonwealth. And if so, why not of the whole? I freely own that I can find nothing in the laws of my country that would justify the Parliament in making one slave, nor did they ever professedly undertake to make one.

That the colonists, black and white, born here are freeborn British subjects, and entitled to all the essential civil rights of such is a truth not only manifest from the provincial charters, from the principles of the common law, and acts of Parliament, but from the British constitution, which was re-established at the Revolution with a professed design to secure the liberties of all the subjects to all generations....

The liberties of the subject are spoken of as their best birthrights. No one ever dreamed, surely, that these liberties were confined to the realm. At that rate no British subjects in the dominions could, without a manifest contradiction, be declared entitled to all the privileges of subjects born with the realm to all intents and purposes which are rightly given foreigners by Parliament after residing seven years. These expressions of Parliament as well as of the charters must be vain and empty sounds unless we are allowed the essential rights of our fellow sub-jects in Great Britain.

Now can there be any liberty where property is taken away without consent? Can it with any color of truth, justice, or equity be affirmed that the northern colonies are represented in Parliament? Has this whole continent of near three thousand miles in length, and in which and his other American dominions His Majesty has or very soon will have some millions of as good, loyal, and useful subjects, white and black, as any in the three kingdoms, the election of one member of the House of Commons?

Is there the least difference as to the consent of the colonists whether taxes and impositions are laid on their trade and other property by the crown alone or by the Parliament? As it is agreed on all hands the crown alone cannot impose them, we should be justifiable in refusing to pay them, but must and ought to yield obedience to an act of Parliament, though erroneous, till repealed. I can see no reason to doubt but the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, on real or personal, fixed ort floating property, in the colonies is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonists as British subjects and as men. I say men, for in a state of nature no man can take my property from me without my consent: if he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. If such a proceeding is a breach of the law of nature, no law of society can make it just. The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right....

We all think ourselves happy under Great Britain. We love, esteem, and reverence our mother country, and adore our King. And could the choice of independency be offered the colonies or subjection to Great Britain upon any terms above absolute slavery, I am convinced they would accept the latter. The ministry in all future generations may rely on it that British America will never prove undutiful till driven to it as the last fatal resort against ministerial oppression, which will make the wisest mad, and the weakest strong....

The sum of my argument is: that civil government is of God that the administrators of it were originally the whole people; that they might have devolved it on whom they pleased; that this devolution is fiduciary, for the good of the whole; that by the British constitution this devolution is on the King, Lords and Commons, the supreme, sacred and uncontrollable legislative power not only in the realm but through the dominions; that by the abdication, the original compact was broken to pieces; that by the Revolution it was renewed and more firmly established, and the rights and liberties of the subject in all parts of the dominions more fully explained and confirmed; that in consequence of this establishment and the acts of succession and union, His Majesty GEORGE III is rightful King and sovereign, and, with his Parliament, the supreme legislative of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging; that this constitution is the most free one and by far the best now existing on earth; that by this constitution every man in the dominions is a free man; that no parts of His Majesty's dominions can be taxed without their consent; that every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature; that the refusal of this would seem to be a contradiction in practice to the theory of the constitution; that the colonies are subordinate dominions and are now in such a state as to make it best for the good of the whole that they should not only be continued in the enjoyment of subordinate legislation but be also represented in some proportion to their number and estates in the grand legislature of the nation; that this would firmly unite all parts of the British empire in the greater peace and prosperity, and render it invulnerable and perpetual.