What A Little-Known Colonial Pamphlet Tells Us About the Constitution

Between 1764 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 Americans produced a rich series of pamphlets and resolutions listing their grievances against the central government of the British Empire. As I have pointed out before, reading those pamphlets is very helpful in understanding what the Constitution really means. And ignorance of them contributes to common constitutional mistakes.

These pamphlets are particularly useful in comprehending the Founders’ version of federalism. This is because the constitutional balance between states and federal government partly reflected what the Founders had wanted the balance to be between colonies and imperial government.

One of the most extraordinary of these pamphlets is little-known today, but it deserves much more attention. It is “The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston in Town Meeting assembled According to Law.” Historians refer to it as “The Boston Pamphlet.”

* All men have a “right to life, liberty, property.”
* It is absurd to argue that men “renounce their essential natural Rights, or the Means of preserving those Rights; when the grand End of civil Government from the very Nature of its Institution, is for the Support, Protection and Defence of those very Rights.”
* “The Legislative has no Right to absolute arbitrary Power over the Lives and Fortunes of the People”
* “The Supreme Power cannot justly take from any Man, any Part of his Property without his Consent, in Person or by his Representative”

Damned be those who are pushing the arbitrary rules of the United Nations property grabbers under the guise of environmentalism. TO HELL WITH ALL OF YOU!

Going all the way back to the Treaty of London (1604) it was pretty clear that the Eastern Seaboard from Nova Scotia to the Northern border of Florida would be given over to PROTESTANT INTERESTS (except for the Dutch) but that Catholics would be tolerated provided they stayed within the law and didn't bother Protestants (with a 6 month lead time to get out of town if need be).

The same rights of reciprocity were extended by the King of Spain to Protestants provided they did not do or say anything offensive to Catholics in territories ruled by Catholics.

Whatever the many and varied reasons why the Boston Pamphlet would exclude Catholics from the pale of full religious tolerance, it's more likely that as part of the British Empire at the time this was a rhetorical tip of the hat to the moral authority, if nothing else, of the Treaty of London that opened up the New World for development and settlement by all Europeans.

I'm sure more than a few Colonials had read that Treaty.

I did a few months back ~ the whole thing, plus all the codices ~ and I'm impressed with the wisdom of King Philippe II/III and his counselors in coming up with this path to peace.

Lasted 20 years which was really something back in those days.

I'm sure the rest of the Americas still held by Spain, or which had formerly been held by France, really weren't all that upset by the continuation of the exclusionary clauses.

* It is absurd to argue that men “renounce their essential natural Rights, or the Means of preserving those Rights; when the grand End of civil Government from the very Nature of its Institution, is for the Support, Protection and Defence of those very Rights.”

Reserve your rights:
UCC 1-207/308

THE UCC CONNECTION / Howard freeman
http://freedom-school.com/the-ucc-connection.html

This is slightly condensed, casually paraphrased transcript of tapes of a seminar given in 1990 by Howard Freeman. It was prepared to make available the knowledge and experience of Mr. Freeman in his search for an accessible and understandable explanation of the confusing state of the government and the courts. It should be helpful to those who may have difficulty learning from such lectures, or those who want to develop a deeper understanding of this information without having to listen to three or four hours of recorded material.

The frustration many Americans feel about our judicial system can be overwhelming and often frightening; and like most fear, eventually, with the seemingly tyrannical power of some governmental agency and the mystifying and awesome power of the courts. We have been taught that we must “get a good lawyer,” but that is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible. If we are defending ourselves from the government, we find that the lawyers quickly take our money, and then tell us as the ship is sinking, “I can’t help you with that - I’m an officer of the court.”

I'm not familiar with the details but I don't think there were any agreements that lasted all the way through the colonial period. Pennsylvania had toleration from the beginning. Maryland was set up to have toleration but later the Puritans took it over and ended toleration. There was toleration in Rhode Island. I don't know if there was more than a handful of Catholics in that period outside Pennsylvania and Maryland--it may be that you wouldn't be killed just for being a Catholic but could you openly practice your faith? Was that being "offensive"? Anyway there would have been very few priests.

I read an article about the Stono rebellion in South Carolina in 1739 which argued that the slaves were Catholics (captured in the Angola region) and were trying to get to Spanish Florida.

I think the notion of toleration for Protestants of different types, but not for Catholics, may be drawn from John Locke's essay on toleration, written about the time William and Mary extended toleration to Protestants in Britain (although there continued to be disadvantages for non-Anglicans).

One of the reasons for the intensely negative reaction to the Quebec Act of 1774, I think, was that it gave rights to the French Catholics in Canada. Of course they also didn't like the enlargement of Quebec to include the land north of the Ohio River.

France had owned the land North of the Ohio since 1604 ~ same Treaty of London 1604.

The King of Spain crammed down the treaty. Before that NO Europeans other than the Spanish and Portuguese had privileges of settling in the Americas.

People tend to forget that Spain won the war, had all the money, owned all the land, and an enlightened king (Philippe II/III) had a large number of Protestants to rule throughout his Hapsburg realms ~ and his solution was to give them somewhere else to go ~ imagining that this would lead to peace in Europe.

He got 20 years of peace. Then the item called "The Thirty Years War" happened.

My own French ancestors who lived in that land North of the Ohio were Protestants ~ they also had relatives along the Green River in Kentucky. Those settlements go way back into the early 1700s. Prior to that, the Spanish control of that part of the world was more nominal than real.

When the American Revolution started those folks adhered to the American cause. The proposed "new nation" had not signed any treaties with Spain although very quickly Spain became an American ally in the war. France took a bit longer. Nederland, Denmark AND Turkey (Ottoman Empire) extended recognition almost instantly. I think that was the beginning of the entity we now call NATO.

The Treaty of Paris that concluded the Revolution left Spain in charge of everything West of the Mississippi, and along the Gulf Coast (including Florida). England kept Canada. The former French territories North of the Ohio were yielded to the United States but with British forts to protect the fur trade (ha, ha, ha!).

The two biggest items were that France was squeezed out of America ~ even their oldest claims were exterminated, but the United States, their ally, was put in charge of Philippe II/III's Protestant ghetto. That opened up that vast territory with its resources to French business interests ~ which was all they ever really wanted.

We are all familiar with history since that time. Toleration for Catholics was extended into the United States and Canada, and after Mexican Revolution, toleration for Protestants was extended gradually into Latin America.

Sometimes folks forget that neither the Spanish territories nor those they granted to France, and to other Europeans for settlement, started out in a state of religious or political toleration.

However, if you read that old Treaty of London 1604, toleration is in there ~ provided you did not publicly "offend" the ruling party.

That was a major advance in the history of Europe ~ just short of the Edict of Nantes, but it was something. In fact, the question of whether or not Spain (aka Hapsburg Empire) itself could allow its citizens to practice their own religions in private was not settled until the conclusion of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia.

Whatever English political philosophers thought about it, the practices on the ground in America were far more liberal than imagined in Europe. The Puritans didn't really take over Maryland ~ Marylanders took over Maryland. By the 1680s everybody here had cousins who were Catholic and cousins who were Protestant, and not all Anglican. They were a very intermarried bunch (although marriage was pretty much a private matter controlled by families and not the government). The Catholic Carroll family might well not have a good title to their farms but their Protestant Carroll cousins took care of that. Later on as the Ohio Country and Kentucky were opened up the families clustered around St. Mary's Maryland set up their own "colonies" made up of both Protestants and Catholics from throughout Southern Maryland. The girls still get sent back to St. Mary's for college, and marriage and intermarriage continues apace.

My Great Great Grandmother Mary Ann Elizabeth Smallwood Murphy could certainly attest to what happened.

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