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usurpers --they ruled their fellow citizens without authority--they were TYRANTS. Let Judd and Bishop approach the sepulchures of these venerable men--let them lift the covering from these venerable ashes and in the face of heaven pronounce them TYRANTS!! Could you see them approach their dust with such language on their tongues, you would see them retreat with horrible confusion from these relicks of departed worth.
2. The present rulers are acting also without authority, and their laws are void--then you are already in the midst of anarchy and wild misrule --then has no man a title to an inch of land, and you are ready for an equal of division of property--all protection of life and liberty is at an end, and the will of a mob is now to prevail.
3. If indeed there is no Constitution, then the oath which has been administered in your freemen's meetings for twenty years, by which each man has sworn "to be true and faithful to the Constitution" of the state, is worse than impious profanation of the name of God--then your judges, magistrates and jurors have stripped men of their property, condemned some to Newgate and others to the Post, the Pillory and the Gallows without a warrant, and are therefore murderers.--O thou God of order in this our condition!!! But,
4. We have a Constitution--a free and happy Constitution. It was to our fathers like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land--it has enabled them to transmit to us a fair and glorious inheritance--if we suffer revolutionists to rob us of this birth right "then we are bastards and not sons."
It is a fact as well authenticated as the settlement of the state, that a Constitution was formed by the people of the then colony of Connecticut, before the Charter of King Charles. This Charter was a guarantee of that Constitution. Trumbull's history of Connecticut gives us this Constitution and its origin. On our separation from Great- Britain, the people, thro' their representatives, made the following declaration on this subject:
"An Act containing an Abstract and Declaration of the Rights and Privileges of the People of this State, and securing the same. THE People of this State, being by the Providence of God, free and independent, have the sole and exclusive Right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State; and having from their Ancestors derived a free and excellent Constitution of Government whereby the Legislature depends on the free and annual Election of the People, they have the best Security for the Preservation of their civil and religious Rights and Liberties. And forasmuch as the free Fruition of such Liberties and Privileges as Humanity, Civility and Christianity call for, as is due to every Man in his Place and Proportion, without Impeachment and Infringement, hath ever been, and wilt be the Tranquility and Stability of Churches and Commonwealths; and the Denial thereof, the Disturbance, if not the Ruin of both.
PAR. I. BE it enacted and declared by the Governor, and Council and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled: That the ancient Form of Civil Government, contained in the Charter from Charles the Second, King of England, and adopted by the People of this State, shall be and remain the Civil Constitution of this State under the sole authority of the People thereof, independent of any King or Prince whatever. And that this Republic is, and shall forever be and remain, a free, sovereign and independent Sate, by the Name of the STATE of CONNECTICUT.
2. And be it further enacted and declared, That no Man's Land shall be taken away: No Man's Honor or good Name shall be stained: No Man's Person shall be arrested, restrained, banished, dismembered, nor any Ways punished: No Man shall be deprived of his Wife or Children; No Man's Goods or Estate shall be taken away from him nor any Ways indamaged under the Color of Law, or Countenance of Authority; unless clearly warranted by the Laws of this State.
3. That all the Free Inhabitants of this or any other of the United States of America, and Foreigners in Amity with this State, shall enjoy the same justice and Law within this State, which is general for the State in all Cases proper for the Cognizance of the Civil Authority and Court of Judicature within the same, and that without Partiality or Delay.
4. And that no Man's Person shall be restrained, or imprisoned, by any Authority whatsoever, before the Law hat sentenced him thereunto, if he can and will give sufficient Security, Bail, or Mainprize for his Appearance and good Behaviour in the mean Time, unless it be for Capital Crimes, Contempt in open Court, or in such Cases wherein some express Law doth allow of, or order the same."
These proceedings have been