The New Hampshire Gazette And Historical Chronicle

Extract from the Protests of the dissenting Lords, against the Repeal of the American Stamp-Act.

PROTEST I. Page 4.

We are of Opinion, that the total Repealing of that Law, especially while such Resistance continues, would (as Governor Barnard says is their Intention) "make the Authority of Great-Britain contemptible hereafter;" and that such a Submission of King, Lords and Commons, under such Circumstances, in so strange and unheard of a Contest, would in Effect, surrender their ancient, unalienable Rights of supreme Jurisdiction, and give them exclusively to the subordinate Provincial Legislatures established by Prerogative; which was never intended or thought of, and is not in the Power of Prerogative to bestow; as they are inseparable from the three Estates of the Realm assembled in Parliament.

PROTEST II. Page 14. "Because we are convinced from the unanimous Testimony of the Governors, and other Officers of the Crown in America, that if, by a most unhappy Delay and Neglect to provide for the due Execution of the Law, and arming the Government there with proper Orders and Powers, repeatedly called for in vain, these Disturbances had not been continued and increased, they might easily have been quieted before they had attained to any dangerous Height: and we cannot, without feeling the most lively Sense of Grief and Indignation, hear Arguments drawn from the Progress of Evils, which should and might have been stopped in their first and feeble Beginnings, used for the still greater Evil of sacrificing to a present Relief the highest permanent Interests, and the whole Majesty, power and reputation of government; this afflicts us the more deeply, because it appears from many letters, that this Law, if properly supported by government, would from the peculiar circumstances attending the disobedience to it, execute itself without bloodshed. And it is said in one of the letters to Mr. Secretary C--w--y, "That the principal view is to intimidate the parliament, but that if it be thought prudent to enforce their Authority, the people dare not oppose a vigorous resolution of the parliament of Great-Britain."

PROTEST II. Page 8.

"Thirdly, Because the Argument which has been used in Favor of this Bill of Repeal, that the Experiment of the Stamp-Act has been tried, and has failed, is extremely ill founded: as it manifestly appears from the whole Tenor of the Papers laid before us, that if this Experiment had been properly tried with the same Zeal for its Success, with which it was first proposed, it would not have failed in any of the Colonies: And that this was the Opinion of the greater part of the Governors in North-America, and of many of the most intelligent and respectable Persons in those Provinces, for some Time after the Act was passed, is evident beyond a doubt from the Letters of the former now upon our Table and from the latter having applied for, and accepted the Office of Distributor of the Stamps under that Act, which they certainly would not have done, and thereby have exposed their Lives and Fortunes to the Violence and Outrages which they have since undergone, if they had then thought the Success of this Measure in any Degree precarious: Nor have we heard of any Impracticability attending this law in Jamaica and Barbados, and some other of the West-India Islands, or in those of our Colonies in North-America, where it has been executed."