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Joseph Hewes

JOSEPH HEWES was born near Kingston, in New Jersey, in the year 1730. His parents were quakers, who removed from Connecticut, on account of the existing prejudices against them among the puritans, and of the hostilities of the Indians.

At a suitable age, Joseph Hewes became a member of Princeton College; and after having graduated in due course, he was placed in the counting-house of a gentleman at Philadelphia, to be educated as a merchant. On leaving this situation, he entered into business for himself, and was highly successful in his commercial transactions. At the age of thirty he removed to North Carolina, and settled in the village of Edenton. Prosperity continued to attend him here, and he soon acquired a handsome fortune. By his probity and liberal dealings, he also gained the esteem of the people among whom he lived, and was called to represent them in the Colonial Legislature of the province. This distinction was conferred upon him for several successive years, during which he increased in popularity with his constituents. In 1774, Mr. Hewes was chosen one of the three delegates from North Carolina to the Continental Congress. No members of that body brought with them credentials of a bolder stamp than the delegates from North Carolina. They were invested with such powers as might "make any acts done by them, or consent given in behalf of this province, obligatory in honor upon any inhabitant thereof, who is not an alien to his country's good, and an apostate to the liberties of America." On the meeting of this Congress, Mr. Hewes was nominated one of the committee appointed to "state the rights of the colonies in general, the several instances in which those rights had been violated or infringed, and the means most proper to be pursued for obtaining a restoration of them." He also assisted in preparing their celebrated report, which was drawn up as follows: "1. That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property; and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either, without their consent. "2. That our ancestors, who first settled these colonies, were, at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural born subjects, within the realm of England. "3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost, any of those rights: but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy. "4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council; and as the English colonists are not represented, and, from their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented, in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial Legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be pursued in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed; but if, from the necessity of the case and a regard to the mutual interests of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British Parliament as are bona fule restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefit of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America, without their consent. "5. That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and, more especially, to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law. "6. That they are entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization, and which they have, by experience, respectively found applicable to their several local and other circumstances. "7. That these his majesty's colonies are likewise entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or secured by their several codes of provincial laws. "8. That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal. "9. That the keeping a standing army in these colonies in times of peace, without consent of the Legislature of that colony in which such army is kept, is against the law. "10. It is indispensably necessary to good government, and rendered essential by the English Constitution, that the constituent branches of the Legislature be independent of each other; and therefore the exercise of legislative power in several colonies by a council appointed during pleasure by the crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American legislation. "All and each of which the aforesaid deputies, in behalf of themselves and their constituents, do claim, demand, and insist on, as their indisputable rights and liberties, which cannot be legally taken from them, altered or abridged, by any power whatever, without their consent, by their representatives in their severa Provincial Legislatures." To the above declaration of rights was added an enumeration of the wrongs already sustained by the colonies; after stating which, the report concluded as follows: "To these grievous acts and measures, Americans cannot submit; but in hopes their fellow-subjects in Great Britain will, on a revision of them, restore us to that state in which both countries found happiness and prosperity, we have, for the present, only resolved to pursue the following peaceable measures: 1. To enter into a non importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement, or association. 2. To prepare an address to the people of Great Britain, and a memorial to the inhabitants of British America. And, 3. To prepare a loyal address to his majesty, agreeably to resolutions already entered into."