In the Colonies
the Presbyterian ministers claimed equal rights, religious freedom,
and civil liberty. Their teaching had great influence, particularly in
the South, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, David Caldwell, Dr. Ephraim
Brevard, Rev. Alexander Craighead (d. 1766), and James Hall of North
Carolina, the two Rutledges and Tennant of South Carolina, William
Murdoch of Maryland, James Wilson and Thomas Craighead of
Pennsylvania, Witherspoon of New Jersey, Read and McKean of Delaware,
Livingston of New York, and Thornton of New Hampshire, with their
associates had prepared the people for the coming conflict. In
Maryland the lower house of the General Assembly was a fortress of
popular rights and of civil liberty. Its resolutions and messages,
beginning in 1733, and in an uninterrupted chain until 1755
continually declared "that it is the peculiar right of his Majesty's
subjects not to be liable to any tax or other imposition but what is
laid on them by laws to which they themselves are a party." These
principles were reiterated and recorded upon the journals of every
Assembly until 1771. The resolutions, addresses, and messages of the
lower house during this period discuss with remarkable fullness and
accuracy the fundamental principles of free government, and most of
them emanated from William Murdoch, born in Scotland (c. 1720), who
was one of the leading spirits and the directing force of the
discussion. He led in the resistance to the Stamp Act and in other
ways he united his colony in solid resistance to the attempt to levy
taxes and imposts without their consent.
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