“Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness, as you confess those invaded by the Stamp Act to be. We claim them from a higher source—from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.”

— John Dickinson

From An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados (1766), ‘Of the Right to Freedom: and of Traitors’, as contained in A Library of American Literature: Literature of the revolutionary period, 1765-1787, ed. Edmund Clarence Stedman, C. L. Webster (1888), p. 176

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John Dickinson 10

American politician 1732–1808

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Source: [http://www.unrv.com/government/julianmarri

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