As it is a subject in which every colony is deeply interested, they have no reason to doubt but your house is duly impressed with its importance: and that such constitutional measures will be come into as are proper. It seems to be necessary, that all possible care should be taken that the representations of the several assemblies, upon so delicate a point, should harmonise with each other: the house, therefore, hope that this letter will be candidly considered in no other light, than as expressing a disposition freely to communicate their mind to a sister colony, upon a common concern, in the same manner as they would be glad to receive the sentiments of your or any other house of assembly on the continent. The house have humbly represented to the ministry their own sentiments; that his majesty's high court of parliament is the supreme legislative power over the whole empire: that in all free states the constitution is fixed: and, as the supreme legislative derives its power and authority from the constitution, it cannot overleap the bounds of it, without destroying its foundation; that the constitution ascertains and limits both sovereignty and allegiance; and therefore, his majesty's American subjects who acknowledge themselves bound by the ties of allegiance, have an equitable claim to the full enjoyment of the fundamental rules of the British constitution; that it is an essential unalterable right in nature, ingrafted into the British constitution as a fundamental law, and ever held sacred and irrevocable by the subjects within the realm, that what a man hath honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent; that the American subjects may therefore, exclusive of any consideration of charter rights, with a decent firmness adapted to the character of freemen and subjects, assert this natural and constitutional right. It is moreover their humble opinion, which they express with the greatest deference to the wisdom of the parliament, that the acts made there, imposing duties on the people of this province, with the sole and express purpose of raising a revenue, are infringements of their natural and constitutional rights; because as they are not represented in the British parliament, his majesty's commons in Britain by those acts grant their property without their consent.