April 29, 1776

An election was scheduled for May 1 in Pennsylvania, and “An ELECTOR” had plenty to say to other people preparing to cast their votes. This letter, addressed “To the free and independent ELECTORS of the City of PHILADELPHIA” and printed in Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, the author wrote that the idea of “a reconciliation and re-union with Great-Britain on constitutional principles” was “a mere phantom, a lure.” A vote for representatives who supported reconciliation was a vote for “advocates for absolute tyranny.” Anyone who was a “stickler for dependency on the power that is now in actual depredation of our Rights, Liberties, and all that is dear to us, should be kept far from our Councils.” Ultimately, the May 1 election returned an assembly which still favored reconciliation with Great Britain. 

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet or the General Advertiser
Printed by John Dunlap

To the free and independent ELECTORS of the City of PHILADELPHIA.
Gentlemen,

WERE any words capable of expressing the importance of exerting yourselves to maintain the character I have addressed you by, I could wish from the bottom of my heart to find them and set them in due order before you. I tremble to reflect what a party there is in this city, who either in plain words or tantamount insinuations espouse the cause of tyranny. You have read their insidious publications: You have remarked their zeal for a reconciliation and re-union with Great-Britain on constitutional principles. This proposal, Gentlemen, is a mere phantom, a lure, a pitfal to catch you in. In the first place, no man ever did or can shew what this constitutional dependence on Great-Britain is, or can be, which will secure our liberties: And in the second place no terms have been, nor at all probably will be offered us, besides those of unconditional submission to the supremacy of the Parliament in all cases whatsoever. Certainly no better have appeared from the other side the water, and when pressed on the subject, the sticklers for reconciliation acknowledge they know of no other, and yet urge you to maintain our connexion with Great-Britain upon the best terms we can obtain. If such men are not advocates for absolute tyranny, I have no conception of the meaning of the words. To be commercially connected with our friends in Great-Britain would doubtless be very pleasing to us all; but to be subject to the destroyers of British as well as American Liberty, is what none but an ignorant slave, or an insidious tool, would propose and strive to persuade you.

The Constitution of this province is the Shiboleth of this very loyal party. Every sensible man must know that the King of Great-Britain had so material a share in the government of this province, that the legislative nor executive powers in it can proceed one ace without him; and well did a worthy Grandjuror object to enquiring any thing respecting the Crown and Dignity of a man who has rendered the idea of a Crown detestable to the whole Western World. The Constitution is therefore (by the breach of royal faith in refusing to govern according to solemn compact with all his people) broken to pieces, and the Committee of Inspection were greatly right in proposing to call a Convention to take the state of the province into consideration. It is easy to judge from what quarter the proposal for a more equal representation at last came. It was concluded this manœuvre would have a tendency to quiet the people by taking one of the most unanswerable objections to the present administration out of their mouths. You cannot, however, forget that this partial redress was a very late one, and only conceded to prevent a radical reformation.

The Patriots, notwithstanding, persuaded themselves that in the then critical situation of affairs, it was best to acquiesce in a measure which they hoped would keep us united, rather than risque a dissension in the too violent opposition to rooted prejudices, which was necessary to clear the way for the re-establishment of a real free Constitution, on the only firm basis of our Anglo Saxon ancestors. But remember, fellow citizens, that in the transaction of May first, you are to consider yourselves as rather acting upon a renewed system, than with too scrupulous attention to any unreasonable custom that may have crept into your old one. On this head you will suffer me to be something particular. The custom has been to deny the right of voting to all persons who have come from Germany, &c. until they have been naturalized, and taken such oaths as men now-a-days much object to; and what seems peculiar to this city alone, all men below the estate of fifty pounds are precluded. Now I must profess myself of the Forester’s opinion, that every man in the country who manifests a disposition to venture his all for the defence of its Liberty, should have a voice in its Councils. Persons so abject as to have neither will nor sentiment of their own, are readily distinguished, and cannot give much trouble. Burgesses, according to the excellent author of an Historical Essay on the English Constitution, “were elected by every resident inhabitant that paid his shot, and bore his lot.” p. 28. This I will affirm is the ancient, free Constitution, which every honest man will venture his blood to restore. “There were three things,” says the same author in the next page, “essentially necessary to form a Saxon Government, which they applied to every case where a combined interest was concerned; and these were, a Court of Council, a Court of Law, and a Chief Magistrate. A Court of Council, to consider what was for the benefit of the whole society.” Now such a Court of Council can hardly be expected from a Qualification Law like that of Queen Ann, vesting the elective power only in the hands of the opulent. To such a pernicious partiality it is owing that the poor in England are loaded with Excises on the indispensible necessaries of life. Every man who pays his shot and bears his lot is naturally and constitutionally an Elector in a city: And more especially I will affirm, that every citizen who has armed and associated to defend the Commonwealth is, and should be an Elector; and every non-associator and stickler for dependency on the power that is now in actual depredation of our Rights, Liberties, and all that is dear to us, should be kept far from our Councils; and unless they very speedily mend their destructive manners, sent to the haunts of despotism, where they may mix with their congenial spirit:, and with all the gratification of his Infernal Majesty’s august Courtiers, solace themselves in constant contemplation of human misery.

An ELECTOR.