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have liberty to pass into Boston with the following goods and articles for her voyage: 6 trunks, 1 chest, 3 beds and bedding, 6 wethers, 2 pigs, 1 small keg pickled tongues, some hay, 3 bags of corn and such other goods as she thinks proper." The following permit was granted: "To the colony guard-Permit Lady Frankland of Hopkinton, with her attendants, goods and the provisions above mentioned, to pass to Boston. By express order of committee of safety, Benjamin Church, chairman, headquarters, May 15th, 1775."

But the people of Hopkinton, because she was a Royalist, prevented her leaving, stole her goods and abused her attendants, until she brought the matter before Congress. May 18th Congress agreed that: "Lady Frankland be permitted to pass to Boston with the following articles: 7 trunks, all the beds and furniture with them, all boxes and crates, a basket of chickens, a bag of corn, 2 barrels and a hamper, 2 horses and 2 chaises and all the articles in the chaises except arms and ammunition, 1 phaeton, some tongues, ham and veal, sundry small bundles, which are to be examined by a committee of Congress."

May 19th, Col. Bond, with a guard of six men appointed to escort her to Boston, passed her through the lines, where a copy of the congressional resolution was shown. She lived in Boston during the siege at her house on Garden Court Street and departed with the British, March 17th, 1776. She went to Bath, England, where she died in 1783.

CHAPTER V.

Declaration of Independence.

With the continued violation of every constitutional arrangement by the London Parliament going out of its own constituency to invade the constituency of the united provinces, which were fiefs of the Crown, besides independent within themselves, with a state of hostility progressing, a declaration of independence became absolutely necessary. The extreme loyalists held that that declaration should have been against parliament alone and not made to include the King. But the major part of colonials-royalists as well as republicans agreed that the King, already of an unconstitutional dynasty in Britain, had forfeited all rights to allegiance in America by combining against his own prerogative in the colonies, which the colonists up to this time had maintained for him by force of arms. Therefore, exercising this right, the colonies, by their Congress, on July 4th, 1776, declared their independence.

The extreme loyalists viewed it in this manner: Ryerson's "Loyalists of America," Vol. I., p. 496, says: "The Declaration of Independence was a renunciation of all the principles on which the General Congress, Provincial Legislatures and Conventions professed to act from the beginning of the contest." (p. 499) "It was a violation of good faith to the statesmen and numerous other parties in England, in and out of parliament, who had supported the agents and character of the colonists during the whole contest." (p. 501) "It was also a violation of good faith and justice to their colonial fellow-countrymen who continued to adhere to connection with the mother country on principles professed in all times past by the separatists themselves." (p. 504) "It was the commencement of persecution, proscription and confiscation of property against those who refused to renounce the oath they had taken, and the principles and traditions which, until then, had been acknowledged by their persecutors as well."

As government by "Constitutional" means is inimical to revolutionary methods, the Declaration of Independence from the government and authority of Great Britain rests on the assumption that that government and authority had departed from "Constitutional measures," and had commenced illegitimate and revolutionary action in the colonies, usurping the rights and privileges involved in the colonial charters.

By this declaration infringements of the colonial constitution are held to be sufficient justifications for rebellion, and such infringements are deemed not only tyrannical, but as unconstitutional, they absolve from their allegiance those who adhere to constitutional methods. This absolution from allegiance is a relief granted in that system of law which is the origin of modern law-namely, the Feudal System. It is exercised by the liegeman, the vassal and the grand feudatory whenever their suzerain or feudal superior is lacking in those observances agreed on at the beginning of the feude. In Glasson's Historie du Droit et des Institution de la France, the ethics of this system are treated of minutely and historically. The two parts of the contract which exist between the governed and the ruler in feudal law are fealty and mandium. The governed consents to the rulership and plan of government by an oath to maintain it against every foe. The ruler promises not to depart from the plan and government to which the governed has consented and sworn to maintain. In the feudal law, every man's consent is asked by some feudal superior, and if he be unwilling to be bound by ties of authority to one, he has liberty to turn to another. But after he has once consented by his feud, by his agreement he can be released from it only by a failure on the part of the one to whom he has bound himself by fealty to perform the obligation of the contract.

An illustrious example preserved in English History of this absolution of allegiance on the part of the liegemen, vassals and grand-feudatories towards their feudal superior the king, on account of his failure to perform his mandium, is mentioned in Stubb's "Constit. Hist. of Eng., Vol. III., p. 380, when Sir William Trussel, proctor of the Lords and Commons, dissolved the kingship of

Edward II. in 1327 with the following words :-"I, William Trussell, proctor of the Prelates, Earls and Barons, and others having full and sufficient power, declare that the hommage and fealty to you, Edward, once King of England, has ceased to exist, and that you are no more King of this realm." Then Sir Thomas Blount, steward of the Household, broke his staff of office in token that his master had ceased to reign. The accusations brought against Edward II. by Stratford were that he "had thrown all the business of state on his favorites, had listened to no complaints against them and had allowed them to commit acts of illegal oppression, which he, himself, had neither the will, nor the energy, to command." But they did not pretend to invade the legitimate prerogative of the Crown or to alter the succession and dynasty.

THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE commences with an introduction in which it is declared that the reasons for it should be made known. This is just and proper. After which is related some "self-evident truths," which are out of place in a declaration of the reasons or causes, for independence and which belong to theoretical or speculative government.

The causes for the Declaration are enumerated finally, many of which are exaggerated, but the principal ones are valid enough to dissolve the allegiance between the colonies and the London government. The colonial charters whose infringements are claimed hereby had been granted by the Stuart Dynasty which had been set aside unconstitutionally in Britain, and the Hanoverian Dynasty being seated on the British throne in place thereof had been adverse to these charters which had been granted by the legitimate House. The cause in general for absolution from allegiance is contained in Article 13-"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitutions (i.e., Charters), and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation."

The colonial justification is:-To maintain chartered rights and privileges. By publishing this justification the support of the major part of the colonials was obtain

ed, a few preferring to abide by their allegiance notwithstanding that they had the right, by a lack of mandium of their suzerain to withdraw.

Second Declaration of Independence.

The government of the Continental Congress which was established in this justification, however, from 1776 to 1781, proceeded to exercise the prerogatives of government contrary to the publication which they had made and as subersive of the chartered rights and privileges of the Constitutions of the colonies, as the abuses of authority which had been ascribed to the British government in this publication. The result was another Declaration of Independence on the part of those who adhered to a strict and legal interpretation of the colonial charters. This second Declaration issued by a number of the noblest colonists justifies itself in the following manner for withdrawing support from this congress which had, in its turn, violated its trust, or mandium.

The following is an abstract of this "declaration" as it appeared in Rivington's Royal Gazette, of New York, November 17th, 1781:-"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for men, in order to preserve their lives, liberties and properties, and to secure to themselves and to their posterity that peace, liberty and safety are entitled, to throw off and renounce all allegiance to a government which under the insidious pretences of securing those inestimable blessings to them, has wholly deprived them of any security of either life, liberty, property, peace or safety, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the injuries and oppressions, the arbitrary and dangerous proceedings which impel them to transfer their allegiance from such, their oppressors, to those who have offered to become their protectors"

"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends (life, liberty and happiness) it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. It is not prudent to change for light and transient causes, but when a long train of the most licentious and despotic abuses evinces a design to reduce them under anarchy and the distractions of democracy

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