Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress

Audience

The final paragraph of the Declaration and Resolves indicates that Congress was addressing at least three audiences. At a time when sentiment in America was still split between Loyalists, who wanted to remain loyal to England, and Patriots, who were beginning to think that the colonies might in time have to declare their independence, Congress was seeking to assure the former that it was proceeding cautiously according to established forms and the latter that it was adequately defending their liberties.

By evoking their rights as English citizens, the colonists also sought to appeal to public opinion within Britain. The colonists hoped that British citizens who cherished the protections of common law and the principle of no taxation without representation would recognize that a threat to liberty in the colonies was also a threat to their own. Significantly, some members of Parliament were sympathetic to colonial arguments that it had no right to tax them.

Congress continued to adhere to the idea, increasingly becoming something of a legal fiction, that the colonies could maintain their allegiance to the English king without recognizing the sovereignty of Parliament. The members of Congress still hoped that the king would reward their loyalty by protecting the liberties they thought they were advancing. In the concluding paragraph of the Declaration and Resolves, Congress does not specifically address Parliament, presumably because it did not recognize Parliament's authority over the colonies. Instead, Congress appeals to the king against Parliament—whereas in the Declaration of Independence, Congress, disappointed with the king's response, would direct most of its grievances against his actions.

Although it mixed appeals for natural rights with appeals from the rights of English citizens and the authority of royal charters, the Declaration and Resolves, unlike the Declaration of Independence, does not otherwise appeal to the sentiments of all humankind or to the citizens or sovereigns of other nations. Members of Congress had little reason to believe that appeals to their rights as English citizens would resonate in nations that did not recognize similar rights. Congress was not calling for war, but had it been doing so its emphasis on common-law rights and on the rights of Protestants was hardly likely to secure foreign allies.