Sales catalogue 625: Maggs Bros

Date:
1936
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/162
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 625: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/68 page 35
    Macartney (George, Earl Macartney)—continued. us that we have no right to lay internal taxes on them. Well we deliver them from internal and then we are told we must give up any idea of external ones. And others have gone so far as to call our Acts of Parliament relative to America, Acts of Robbery, that we are in the wrong, that we must submit to all the insults of America and settle our difference with them by a Treaty. Such dangerous language and such dangerous doctrine is daily held by them. If we ever are driven to such a disgraceful expedient, I will venture to say it will be as much owing to the holding of such language and propagating such doctrine at home, as to any argument or force from an Antagonist abroad. “What are their Rights? Have their Assemblies the plenitude of Parliamentary Power, can Grant, Charter, or Usage give them such a power—can any circumstances place them as that would do, under the Crown and not under the Constitution of Great Britain. | What Rights they have are merely derivative under this Legislature. What were the Rights they carried with them to America? As Emigrants they withdrew themselves from their Native Country, and all the Rights they claim to the Country they withdrew to is given them by the Country they withdrew from. Let them take their stand on what ground they may, the point is clearly against them. Are they Subjects. If they are, they must be under the control of the sovereignty of this legislature. . .. “But they talk of their Grants and their Charters and the Deputies of Massachussetts Bay are directed to stand upon their Charter. There was a time when they had no grants, no Charters. Then surely they were subject to English Laws, and how is the matter essentially altered by the Grants or Charters. Was it in the power of one part of the British Legislature to put any part of the British Dominions beyond the control of the whole British Legislature. Does the Charter of the Colony of the Massachusets Bay authorise their disobedience to British Acts of Parliament. Their Charter was given them by King William, the great source of our present liberties and happiness. What sir, did the glorious King William, whose memory I have cherished with adoration from my childhood, did he enter into a conspiracy with his subjects on the other side of the Atlantic to free them from the legislation on this? Did he betray the People of this Kingdom, who set their Crown upon: bis head: ....2., and did. he rob their crown of its brightest and most precious jewels. Did the new King grant dispen- sations in America the minute after we had dethroned the old one for granting them in Great Britain. No sir, we know that the King did not do it.” Etc., etc. [152] M’CLUNG (John A.). Sketches of Western Adventure. Containing an Account of the most Interesting Incidents connected with the Settlement of the West, from 1755 to 1794. With 3 woodcut illustrations. 8vo. New mottled calf, Gur G.e. Dayton, Ohio, 1847. &8 8s [153] McCLURE (A. K.). Three Thousand Miles through the Rocky Mountains. 8vo. Half morocco. Philadelphia, 1869. £1 1s [154] MeCULLOH (Henry). MS. Memorial Signed, to the King, forwarded through Lord Townshende, on behalf of himself, George Augustus Selwyn, Henry Eustace McCulloh, and John Campbell, concerning grants of land on the North-East Cape Fear River and other parts of North Carolina, amounting to 468,650 acres. 4 pp., folio. With two accompanying documents. 1 Sept., 1767. &4 4s McCulloh and his associates were under contract to settle these lands with a period of ten years, in part with one person to every 440 acres and in part with one person to every 200 acres. If these conditions were not met the unsettled lands were to revert to the Crown and a quit rent to be paid in regard to them. Various unforseen events had stopped his settling parts of these lands. The Cherokee War had intervened, the settlements had been invaded and the inhabitants scalped, and to crown this the Canadian War had broken out. The ten year period expired in 1754 and the time limit was extended. The final investigations were not completed until 1766, when it was found that only 129,335 acres were settled and that 339,325 acres were forfeit to the crown. The Memorialists petition the King not to claim the quit rents on these forfeited lands, etc. [ 35 ]
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