the benefit of the laws, wheresoever he cometh." So they are not to be deemed aliens, as your Excellency in your speech supposes, in any of the dominions, all which accords with the principles our ancestors held. "And he is to bear the burden of taxes of the place where he cometh, but living in one, or for his livelihood in one, he is not to be taxed in the other, because laws ordain taxes, impositions, and charges, as a discipline of subjection, particularized to every particular nation." Nothing, we think, can be more clear to our purpose than this decision of Judges, perhaps as learned, as ever adorned the English nation, or in favor of America, in her present controversy with the mother state. Your Excellency says, that, by "our not distinguishing between the Crown of England, and the Kings and Queens of England, in their personal or natural capacities, we have been led into a fundamental error." Upon this very distinction we have availed ourselves. We have said, that our ancestors considered the land, which they took possession of in America, as out of the bounds of the kingdom of England, and out of the reach and extent of the laws of England; and, that the King also, even in the act of granting the charter, considered the territory as not within the realm; that the King had an absolute right in himself to dispose of the lands, and that this was not disputed by the nation; nor could the lands, on any solid grounds, be claimed by the nation; and, therefore, our ancestors received the lands, by grant, from the King; and, at the same time, compacted with him, and promised him homage and allegiance, not in his public or politic, but natural capacity only. If it be difficult for us to show how the King acquired a title to this country in his natural capacity, or separate from his relation to his subjects, which we confess, yet we conceive, it will be equally difficult for your Excellency to show how the body politic and nation of England acquired it. Our ancestors supposed it was acquired by neither; and, therefore, they declared, as we have before quoted from your history, that saving their actual purchase from the natives, of the soil, the dominion, the lordship, and sovereignty, they had in the sight of God and man, no right and title to what they possessed. How much clearer then, in natural reason and equity, must our title be, who hold estates dearly purchased at the expense of our own, as well as our ancestors labor, and defended by them with treasure and blood.