JAMES WILSON

ported by any principle of common law; unauthorized by any commission from the crown," and then he said "if all this is true, — and I flatter myself it appears to be true, — can anyone hesitate to say that to resist such force is lawful, and that both the letter and spirit of the British Constitu tion justify such resistance?" At this point with great forensic power he showed that George III, "forgetting his character and his dignity has stepped forth and openly avowed and taken part" in the "iniquitous conduct" of his ministers. Then, asking "What has been the consequence?" he thundered, " The distinction between him and his ministers has been lost; but they have not been raised to his situation, — he has sunk to theirs." Compared with the boldness and courage of this utterance in the metropolis of America, Patrick Henry's famous" — and George III may profit by their example " sinks to insignificance. In this same convention Wilson proposed reso lutions as follows: "That the acts of the British Parliament for altering the charter and constitution of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, . . . for shutting the port of Boston, and for quar tering soldiers on the inhabitants of the colonies are unconstitutional and void. . . . That all force employed to carry such un just and illegal attempts into execution is force without authority; and that it is the right of British subjects to resist such force; that this right is founded both upon the letter and the spirit of the British constitution." Wilson's pamphlet of August, 1774, must have been carried by the delegates to the first continental Congress into every Amer ican colony, and the arguments contained in it, thus disseminated from one end of the developing nation to the other, could not but have had an all-potent influence in crystal lizing that spirit of resistance which later culminated in the Revolution. It demon strated with irrefragable argument that under the circumstances rebellion by the colonists was legally lawful, and therefore

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would not constitute the participants rebels. The authentic and indisputable Mecklen burg resolutions of May 31, 1775, — to say nothing of the disputed and so far unproved resolves of May 20, 1775, — are clearly based on the arguments advanced by Wilson, as is the great Declaration of Independence. So rapidly had James Wilson advanced in popular fame that in May, 1775, although in America less than a decade and but thirty-two years of age, he was selected with Benjamin Franklin, a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, to which he was successively re-elected in November, 1775, July, 1776, and March, 1777, although he was superseded at the election of September, 1777, partly as a result of gross misrepresentation as to his course in the matter of the Declaration of Independence. Indeed many historians, im properly absorbing the popular notion of that time, incorrectly assert that Wilson was opposed to Independence, being un aware of his arguments during the two preceding years and failing to recognize that in the Continental Congress until a few days before the Declaration, he was bound by stringent instructions from the Pennsylvania Assembly, the constituted authority electing him to Congress. Wil son's subsequent demand in the United States Constitutional Convention, for the popular election of United States senators, and his unalterable opposition to their election by legislative bodies, may readily be traced to his forcible realization in 1776 of the fact that a legislative assembly does not always represent the popular will. Until June 14, 1776, he was bound by the instructions of the Pennsylvania Assembly of November 4, 1775, which closed with this imperative mandate: "Though the oppressive measure of the British Parliament and administration, have compelled us to resist their violence by force of arms, yet we strictly enjoin rou that you, in behalf of this colony, dissent from, and utterly reject any propositions, should