A Brief Review of the Rise and Progress, Services and Sufferings, of New England, Especially the Province of Massachuset's-Bay. Humbly Submitted to the Consideration of Both Houses of Parliament
- Anonymous Pamphleteer 1774 (author)
- Jack P. Greene (collection editor)
Published in 1774 and addressed to both Houses of Parliament, this anonymous pamphlet argues that New England — and Massachusetts Bay in particular — had earned the right to fair treatment from Britain through more than a century of self-funded military service, frontier hardship, and loyal devotion to the Crown. The author catalogs a long list of colonial contributions, from the 1645 settlement struggles and the 1745 conquest of Louisbourg to repeated campaigns against French Canada, all undertaken largely without British support and at enormous cost in lives and debt.
He then turns to the injustice of parliamentary taxation, arguing that imposing duties without the colonies' consent, quartering troops in Boston, and seizing Castle William violated both the spirit of the colonial charters and basic principles of British liberty. Despite these grievances, the pamphlet closes on a conciliatory note, expressing hope that Parliament, if it would honestly weigh the colonies' record of service, would restore their civil and religious rights rather than drive loyal subjects into disaffection.
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The text of these 18th century pamphlets has been converted by machine from scanned PDFs of the original microfilm copies. While the text has been machine-proofed, transcription errors may still remain. For example, the 18th-century long S, ſ , may be rendered as “f,” some words may be incorrectly transcribed, and there may be repeated words or phrases.