At length, when, after repeated refusals to hear or to conciliate, an
act dissolving your government, by putting your people in America out of
your protection, was passed, your ministers suffered several months to
elapse without affording to them, or to any community or any individual
amongst them, the means of entering into that protection, even on
unconditional submission, contrary to your Majesty's gracious
declaration from the throne, and in direct violation of the public
faith.
We cannot, therefore, agree to unite in new severities against the
brethren of our blood for their asserting an independency, to which we
know, in our conscience, they have been necessitated by the conduct of
those very persons who now make use of that argument to provoke us to a
continuance and repetition of the acts which in a regular series have
led to this great misfortune.
The reasons, dread Sir, which have been used to justify this
perseverance in a refusal to hear or conciliate have been reduced into a
sort of Parliamentary maxims which we do not approve. The first of these
maxims is, "that the two Houses ought not to receive (as they have
hitherto refused to receive) petitions containing matter derogatory to
any part of the authority they claim.
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