The First American Bill of Rights

On 27 Oct 1774 the Philadelphia printers William and Thomas Bradford issued a book on behalf of the Continental Congress, which had broken up the previous day.

It was titled:

Extracts from the Votes and Proceedings of the American Continental Congress, held at Philadelphia, on the Fifth of September, 1774. Containing, the Bill of Rights, a List of Grievances, Occasional Resolves, the Association, an Address to the People of Great-Britain, and a Memorial to the Inhabitants of the British American colonies.

The September date was when that congress convened.

The “Bill of Rights” in that booklet has become known as just one part of the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress. Americans of 1774 used the “Bill of Rights” term, however. On 2 December the Massachusetts Provincial Congress voted that “the American bill of rights therein contained, appears to be formed with the greatest ability and judgment.”

Here then is the first Bill of Rights adopted by representatives of almost all the colonies that would become independent:

That the inhabitants of the English Colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English Constitution, and the several Charters or Compacts, have the following Rights:

Resolved, N. C. D. [Nemine Contradicente, or with no dissenting votes] 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent.

Resolved, N. C. D. 2. That our ancestors, who first settled these Colonies, were at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural born subjects, within the Realm of England.

Resolved, N. C. D. 3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.

Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English Liberty, and of all free Government, is a right in the people to participate in their Legislative Council: and as the English Colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances cannot be properly represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial Legislatures, where their right of Representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their Sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed: But from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both Countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such Acts of the British Parliament, as are, bona fide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole Empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members, excluding every idea of Taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America, without their consent.

Resolved, N. C. D. 5. That the respective Colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law.

Resolved, 6. That they are entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their Colonization; and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances.

Resolved, N. C. D. 7. That these, his Majesty’s Colonies, are likewise entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to them by Royal Charters, or secured by their several codes of Provincial Laws.

Resolved, N. C. D. 8. That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and Petition the King; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory Proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.

Resolved, N. C. D. 9. That the keeping a Standing Army in these Colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the Legislature of that Colony, in which such Army is kept, is against law.

Resolved, N. C. D. 10. It is indispensably necessary to good Government, and rendered essential by the English Constitution, that the constituent branches of the Legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of Legislative power in several Colonies, by a Council appointed, during pleasure, by the Crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American Legislation.

All and each of which the aforesaid Deputies, in behalf of themselves and their constituents, do claim, demand, and insist on, as their indubitable rights and liberties; which cannot be legally taken from them, altered or abridged by any power whatever, without their own consent, by their Representatives in their several Provincial Legislatures.

Joseph Galloway later told Parliament that because voting was done by colony, those unanimous “N.C.D.” votes didn’t mean every delegate at the Congress agreed—only that the majority of every delegation agreed.

The Extracts book was widely reprinted in North America and Britain. But when the Second Continental Congress voted for independence, these resolves based on a colonial relationship to Great Britain were no longer operative and the states started from scratch.

Nonetheless, they are an interesting snapshot of what American Patriots of late 1774 saw as fundamental rights: elected legislatures controlling taxation, rule of law, trial by jury, right of assembly, and no standing armies sent into their communities without their consent.