192 
HISTORY OF THE [book vi. 
sentative of the English state, to their emigration; 
and assuring them expressly, or by evident impli¬ 
cation, so long as they preserved their allegiance, 
the full and undisturbed enjoyment of those inhe¬ 
rent rights, which no climate nor compact can 
take away or diminish. 
$ 
Such, I conceive, was the ground on which the 
first English colonists claimed, among other rights, 
the great and important one of assenting to all laws 
by which they were to be bound; or, to speak 
somewhat more suitably to the actual situation of 
the people of England, of being bound by such 
laws only, as in their operation, should extend to, 
aiid bind the governors equally with the governed; 
the framers equally with all the rest of the king¬ 
dom:* and hence, the establishment in all the Bri¬ 
tish provinces of North America, and islands of 
the West Indies, of assemblies, or houses of re¬ 
presentatives, which, being freely chosen by the 
people, forming a part of, and living among the 
people, and occasionally to be resolved into the 
* By the principles of the British constitution, every man should 
be represented j but the deviation from a rule too nice for practice is 
safely born, because the interest of every particular member of par¬ 
liament stands as a pledge, that no individual in the kingdom can be 
oppressed. In other words, the great security which the people of 
Great Britain have, that their representatives shall not abuse their 
trust, is, that they cannot impose on others what they are not to feel 
themselves. ‘ If an act of parliament was made (says judge Hobart) 
constituting a man a judge in his own cause, it would be void by the 
law of nature.’ See an excellent speech of George Johnstone Esq. in 
the parliamentary debases for 1775, wherein this argument is enforcedo 
