“Rising up in oppugnation to the powers of government”

In the interest of equal time, I’m going to quote from former governor Thomas Hutchinson’s public response to the Declaration of Independence.

He called his booklet Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia.

Samuel Johnson gave this as one definition of “stricture”: “A slight touch upon a subject; not a set discourse.” Soon, however, the word came to have the meaning of “an adverse criticism.”

In sending around copies of the booklet, Hutchinson called it a “bagatelle,” so he probably had the first meaning of the word “strictures” in mind. Nonetheless, he definitely offered adverse criticism of the American document.

The exiled governor’s essay took the form of a letter to an unnamed earl (in fact the Earl of Hardwicke, a Rockinghamite) explaining what the Americans were on about. That meant analyzing, and dismissing, all the grievances in the Declaration, some of which Hutchinson knew were about him.

As for the opening paragraph that we focus more on today, Hutchinson said only this:

They begin my Lord, with a false hypothesis, that the colonies are one distinct people, and the kingdom another, connected by political bands. The Colonies, politically considered, never were a distinct people from the kingdom. There never has been but one political band, and that was just the same before the first Colonists emigrated as it has been ever since, the Supreme Legislative Authority, which hath essential right, and is indispensably bound to keep all parts of the Empire entire, until there may be a separation consistent with the general good of the Empire, of which good, from the nature of government, this authority must be the sole judge.

I should therefore be impertinent, if I attempted to shew in what case a whole people may be justified in rising up in oppugnation to the powers of government, altering or abolishing them, and substituting, in whole or in part, new powers in their stead; or in what sense all men are created equal; or how far life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may be said to be unalienable; only I could wish to ask the Delegates of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, how their Constituents justify the depriving more than an hundred thousand Africans of their rights to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and in some degree to their lives, if these rights are so absolutely unalienable; nor shall I attempt to confute the absurd notions of government, or to expose the equivocal or inconclusive expressions contained in this Declaration…

It’s interesting that Hutchinson was able to envision a time when Britain’s “Supreme Legislative Authority,” the Parliament, might make the North American colonies independent. But only for “the general good of the Empire.”