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CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE MIGRATION PURCHASE We are not quite done with the migration concept. It was important in one other respect, one also involving disputes of fact leading to a conclusion of constitutional law. The initial argument came from the imperial side of the debate, when defenders of parliamentary supremacy claimed that the American colonies were in Great Britain's debt, as the mother country had financed their settlement, furnished their populations, and protected them from foreign enemies. This debt provided Great Britain with constitutional justification both to tax the colonies and, for purposes of imperial supervision, to exercise some police power curtailing what would otherwise be autonomous American civil rights. The colonies answered the taxation part of this argument by pleading the settlement and commercial contracts, contending that the constitution provided methods of paying London other than by submission to parliamentary rule. To defend their claim to rights, they also cited the facts of migration, most particularly the theme that the migration was a purchase by which they had resecured title to the rights they possessed. The facts of the migration purchase were summarized by the second Continental Congress, in "the declaration of the causes for taking up arms." 124 THE MIGRATION PURCHASE Our forefathers, inhabitants of the island of Great-Britain, left their native land, to seek on these shores a residence for civil and religious freedom. At the expense of their blood, at the hazard of their fortunes , without the least charge to the country from which they removed , by unceasing labour, and an unconquerable spirit, they effected settlements in the distant and inhospitable wilds of America, then filled with numerous and warlike nations of barbarians.Societies or governments, vested with perfect legislatures, were formed under charters from the crown, and an harmonious intercourse was established between the colonies and the kingdom from which they derived their origin. The mutual benefits of this union became in a short time so extraordinary, as to excite astonishment. It is universally confessed, that the amazing increase of the wealth, strength, and navigation of the realm, arose from this source; and the minister [William Pitt], who ... directed the measures of Great-Britain in the late war, publicly declared, that these colonies enabled her to triumph over her enemies. 125 The doctrine of constitutional law following from these facts was that American civil and religious rights had been secured by purchase. In an extreme statement of the theory, the people of Gloucester, Massachusetts, thought the migration alone, without conferring benefits on Britain, was enough to complete the purchase. "[T]he first settlers of this country," they voted, "left their native land and came into this, when a wild uncultivated wilderness, inhabited by no human creatures except Savages, and suffered extreme hardships, risqued their lives and spent their fortunes to obtain and secure their civil and ecclesiastical liberties and privileges. . . ."1 THE COST OF MIGRATION The factual dispute needs little summary. Imperialists maintained that the settlement of North America had been costly to the mother country in population lost, protection offered, and various services rendered, most particularly financial. That settlement debt gave Great Britain a claim on the colonies, including constitutional authority to enforce repayment. The American answer was that no colonies except Georgia and Nova Scotia had received any aid, neither monetary nor military, at the time of settlement. New York had been obtained from the Dutch in exchange for Surinam and those three instances, whigs said, were the only financial claim Great Britain had on the colonies except for assistance in war and protection for their trade at sea, two items Americans paid for by 126 THE MIGRATION PURCHASE permitting Parliament to regulate trade under the commercial contract.2 "Nor have these colonies since [the conquest of New York], been anyexpence to the crown, either for support of their governments, or inhabitants ," Connecticut's Moses Mather contended in a frequently repeated argument. '~nd the Americans have had no enemies but what were equally the enemies of Great-Britain; nor been engaged in any war, but what the nation was equally engaged in, except the wars with the Indians ; which they carried on and maintained themselves."3 That twentieth-century historians have resolved the disputed facts on one side or the other4 is irrelevant. Once again it is important to realize that what looks like an argument about historical data and its interpretation did not concern history. The dispute was about law. It is quite probable that the question of fact might...

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