Resolved, That the parliament of Great-Britain, usurping and exercising a legislative authority over, and extorting an unrighteous revenue from these colonies, is against all divine and human laws. The late appointment of salaries to be paid to our superior court judges, whose creation, pay, and commission depend on mere will and pleasure, completes a system of bondage equal to any ever fabricated by the combined efforts of the ingenuity, malice, fraud, and wickedness of man: * Resolved, That it is the opinion of this town, that a despotic, arbitrary government, is the kingdom of this world, as set forth in the New-Testament, and is diametrically opposite to the establishment of christianity in a society, and has a direct tendency to sink a people into a profound state of ignorance and irreligion; and that, if we have an eye to our own and posterity’s happiness (not only in this world, but the world to come) it is our duty to oppose such a government: * And further resolved, That the depriving the colonies of their constitutional rights, may be fitly compared to the dismembering the natural body, which will soon affect the heart; and it would be nothing unexpected for us to hear, that those very persons who have been so active in robbing the colonies of their constitutional rights, have also delivered up the constitution of our mother country into the hands of our king: Therefore resolved, That it is the first and highest social duty of this people, to consider of, and seek ways and means, for a speedy redress of these mighty grievances and intolerable wrongs; and that for the obtaining of this end, this people are warranted, by the laws of God and nature, in the use of every rightful art and energy of policy, stratagem and force.