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Show 4oz ACTS RELATING Part IIL are neither more nor lefs than robbers; the exat‘ftion of the tax is an act of robbery: and no aft done in defence of the officers, or in the exac‘iion of the tax can be legal. If it be laid down as law, that the coun- cil is an illegal body, then an order of council to enforce the laws, or requiring the fupport ofthe military, is an illegal aé't, and every man who {hould come to his death in confequence of that order, would indeed be murthered: every man who obeyed that order would be a mur- therer. It follows, that the famejudge andjury, who affuming one principle, acquitted captain Pref'ton, being now obliged to alfume a contrary principle, mull conviét every man who, in fimilar circunifiances, is brought before them. I fee not therefore how it is pollible to help concluding, that parliament was under an abfolute neceflity, either of re- pealing all its other laws, and of recall- 111g See‘t. VI. TO THE Coromes. 403 ing the bodies, whether civil or military, it had commillioned to enforce them: or elfe of fupporting thofe bodies, and enforcing the provifions of thofe former laws by the further provilions of the prefent. |