Considerations on the Measures Carrying on With...
“The inhabitants of our colonies in North America are supposed to consist of about two millions of persons; they occupy and possess a very extensive territory, much larger than Great Britain; …they have felled the forests; they have cleared and tilled the land, they have planted it, they have sown it, they have stocked it with cattle; they have built themselves houses; they have entered into exchange and commerce; they have spared and saved for a future day or for their families; they have by many and various means acquired many and various sorts of property; they are by nature entitled to welfare and happiness, and to seek and pursue those blessings,… they have for that end a right to freedom in their governments and to security in their persons and properties; none are warranted to deprive or dispossess them of these things; should on the contrary one man or a body of men advance any claim, which tended to enslave all the persons or to unsettle all the property of this great community, to divest them of every thing, which they possess and to leave them nothing, which they could call their own, of all that they have thus inherited earned or acquired; the very enormity, the evil and unnatural consequences of such a proposition would of themselves sufficiently shew its absurdity, weakness and unreasonableness.”
View Considerations on the measures carrying on with respect to the British colonies in North America in the Rare Books Collection in the Digital Library.