This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.
This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.
This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.
This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.
This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.
This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.
This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.
Fisher Ames was a leading New England Federalist and sublime critic of Jacobin Democracy and the French Revolution. During the presidency of George Washington, he was the leader of his party in the House of Representatives. Ames was active in public life from 1787 through 1807 and was instrumental in one drafting of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
This essay denies any claim to unlimited supremacy. Such a view asserts an infallibility that belongs only to God, “not Parliaments.” The writer then extends the point to insist that colonies may go so far as to separate, when they have “come of age.” Thus, “in consequence of an unanimity, nay a majority of voices,” they may “throw off all subjection to the… parent state.” Both Wesley and Johnson are excoriated for dipping their pens “deep in prerogative poison, and aristocratic infection.”
Siding with Richard Price’s earlier work in favor of colonial rights but dismayed that it did not get the attention it deserved, the writer of this essay set out to counter the attack on “the laws and constitution” by those “endeavoring to persuade the consciences of the subjects, that they are bound to obey commands, unconstitutional and illegal.” Americans, the essay went on, did no wrong, but were “an increasing people, daily improving in arts and science…and wealth.” This “was their crime.”
