Note 301 — Chapter XIV
Reading edition
The following are the concluding paragraphs of this petition to the King, dated 20th January, 1768:
"With great sincerity permit us to assure your Majesty, that your subjects of this province ever have and will continue to acknowledge your Majesty's High Court of Parliament as the supreme legislative power of the whole empire, the superintending authority of which is clearly admitted in all cases that can consist with the fundamental rights of nature and the constitution, to which your Majesty's happy subjects in all parts of your empire conceive they have a just and equitable claim.
"It is with the deepest concern that your humble suppliants would represent to your Majesty, that your Parliament, the rectitude of whose intentions is never to be questioned, has thought proper to pass divers Acts imposing taxes on your Majesty's subjects in America, with the sole and express purpose of raising a revenue. If your Majesty's subjects here shall be deprived of the honour and privilege of voluntarily contributing their aid to your Majesty in supporting your government and authority in the province, and defending and securing your rights and territories in America, which they have always hitherto done with the utmost cheerfulness: if these Acts of Parliament shall remain in force, and your Majesty's Commons in Great Britain shall continue to exercise the power of granting the property of their fellow-subjects in this province, your people must then regret their unhappy fate in having only the name left of free subjects.
"With all humility we conceive that a representation of your Majesty's subjects of this province in the Parliament, considering their local circumstances, is utterly impracticable. Your Majesty has heretofore been graciously pleased to order your requisitions to be laid before the representatives of your people in the General Assembly, who have never failed to afford the necessary aid to the extent of their ability, and sometimes beyond it; and it would be ever grievous to your Majesty's faithful subjects to be called upon in a way that should appear to them to imply a distrust of their most ready and willing compliance.
"Under the most sensible impressions of your Majesty's wise and paternal care for the remotest of your faithful subjects, and in full dependence on the royal declarations in the Charter of this province, we most humbly beseech your Majesty to take our present unhappy circumstances under your Royal consideration, and afford us relief in such manner as in your Majesty's great wisdom and clemency shall seem meet." (Prior Documents, etc., pp. 175-7.)