On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, the Virginia Gazette published the “Address and Instructions of the Freeholders of” Buckingham County to their delegates to the Virginia Convention. The Address included:
Actuated by a warm and sincere regard for the interests and rights of mankind, and a deep sense of our present situation, we wish to think and proceed aright in the affairs of such great consequence; and are willing, therefore, to submit our opinions to the candid judgment of the publick.
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When the British Parliament assumed an absolute power over us, and attempted to exercise that power, an opposition was formed in the United Colonies . . . . This opposition became a great offence in their eyes: our petitions were treated with contempt, our actions termed rebellious, and arms used to subdue us. As the Colonies seemed determined, from the first, to maintain their rights, and the rights of a free people, they were obliged to repel force by force; and, for the effectual purpose thereof, as occasions required, to take into their own hands the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial powers of Government. This was a necessary consequence, and no settled and permanent opposition could be made without it. They violated the faith of Charters, the principles of the Constitution, and attempted to destroy our legal as well as natural rights. We could do nothing without forming at least a temporary Government of our own, by laying aside that part, and dispensing with those forms, of the old Constitution, which were incompatible with our safety or success. They have broken through positive laws, and express acts of Assembly, as well as the ties which unite man to man in general affection; by which means they have become felons and enemies under those laws. In the struggle, the lives of hundreds have been destroyed; flourishing towns burnt down and demolished; property seized and taken, secretly and openly; thousands reduced from easy and affluent circumstances to poverty and distress; and all the horrors of an expensive and dreadful war experienced. We have opposed with arms, and persevered in our measures, with a resolution to maintain our rights, and regarded no law heretofore made but as it was found consistent with such a laudable design. . . .
As virtue or publick spirit cannot be thoroughly lost in any country, but must survive in the breasts of many individuals, so it would be too sanguine to imagine that any country is without some men of ambitious and selfish views, who, taking the advantage of favourable opportunities and an unsettled state, turn the scale too much to their own side, and destroy the liberty or fix the chains of their country. This evil we find generally arises in or after civil broils, when the people have no established Government, or are led, from a sense of danger or unlimited confidence, to give themselves up blindly to their leaders. . . . we, therefore, your constituents, recommend and instruct you, as far as your voices will contribute, to cause a total and final separation from Great Britain to take place as soon as possible; . . . that, as far as you conceive are admitted, you cause a free and happy Constitution to be established, with a renunciation of the old, or so much thereof as has been found inconvenient and oppressive; and that you endeavour to fix a publick jealousy in this Constitution, as an essential principle of its support.
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We ask for a full representation; free and frequent elections; and that no standing armies whatever should be kept up in time of peace. . . . we conceive the Supreme Being hath left it in our power to choose what Government we please for our civil and religious happiness; and when that becomes defective, or deviates from the end of its institution, and cannot be corrected, that the people may form themselves into another, avoiding the defects of the former. . . .
Good Government alone, and the prosperity of mankind, can be in the Divine intention; we pray, therefore, that under the superintending providence of the Ruler of the Universe, a Government may be established in America, the most free, happy, and permanent, that human wisdom can contrive, and the perfection of man maintain.
On This Day In The Revolution 