Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Declaration and Resolves begins with six introductory paragraphs. These are followed by ten numbered resolutions, two more paragraphs of explanation, another multiparagraph resolution specifically targeting British laws that Congress considered unconstitutional, and a summary conclusion.

Six Introductory Paragraphs

The first paragraph conveys the colonists' perception that the end of the Seven Years' War had changed the way the British Parliament treated the colonies. At that time, Congress believed Parliament ceased enacting measures simply designed to regulate the trade of its empire and began imposing taxes to collect revenue. Although Britain did not have a single written document designated as a constitution, it had established regularized understandings and procedures that the colonists thought Parliament was now violating and that Americans therefore labeled unconstitutional. Congress registered special concern over the expansion of jurisdiction of admiralty courts, which they thought undermined traditional freedoms that England's system of common, or judge-made, law had provided.

Congress continues to express concern about admiralty courts in the second paragraph. It points out that judges of such courts depended on the king for their offices and salaries. Moreover, such courts could try Americans for their offenses outside their own colony and, indeed, in England itself, where they were far less likely to receive a sympathetic hearing.

The third paragraph focuses on the immediate catalyst of Congress, namely, the Parliament's adoption of three of the statutes commonly referred to (although not here) as the Intolerable Acts. These laws, which Parliament largely adopted in reaction to the Boston Tea Party, respectively halted commerce in Boston, rearranged its government, and provided for the suppression of riotous assemblies. The third paragraph also focuses on the Quebec Act, a separate law that had allowed for the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada at a time when all North American colonies to the south were predominately Protestant. This law also left Canada without effective representative government.

Paragraph 4 denounces Britain's dissolution of colonial assemblies and what Congress regarded as its contempt for colonial petitions. At a time when English law operated according to the legal fiction that “the king can do no wrong” and when Congress was holding out hope that the king would respond positively to its grievances against Parliament, Congress specifically blamed “his Majesty's ministers of state” for this reception rather than the king himself.

Although Congress was designated as “continental,” most delegates probably continued to think of themselves as Englishmen or as citizens of their individual colonies (or both) rather than as Americans. Paragraph 5 accordingly lists the twelve colonies in attendance by name, much as the preamble to the Articles of Confederation (proposed in 1777 and ratified in 1781) would do; by contrast, the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, which created a stronger national government, refers to “We the People of the United States” rather than listing states individually. In paragraph 5 of the Declaration and Resolves, Congress expresses its purpose as that of preventing the subversion of colonial “religion, laws, and liberties.”

Paragraph 6 further focuses on colonial rights, which it describes as having three sources. These are “the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts.” The colonists' first claim, which appears to have been its most radical and controversial, rests on natural rights; these subsequently became the primary foundation for the Declaration of Independence, which the Second Continental Congress adopted in July 1776. The second claim indicates that those who adopted the resolution very much continued to view themselves as British subjects, entitled to all rights—including the principle of “no taxation without representation”—of those citizens who lived within Great Britain itself. Congress rests its third claim, which arguably most closely approximates North Americans' later reliance on state and national constitutions, on rights that the colonists traced to the charters the king had issued when the New World was first colonized.

The Numbered Resolutions

Congress indicates that its resolutions had been adopted N.C.D. This abbreviation of the Latin nemine contradicente means “no one contradicting” and thus indicates that the states had adopted the resolutions unanimously.

The Declaration of Independence would refer in its opening paragraph to the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In a similar but not identical fashion, the first numbered resolution of the Declaration and Resolves refers to the rights, often associated with the English social-contract philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), of “life, liberty and property.” Locke had argued that such rights were inalienable. Similarly, Congress observes that it had never “ceded,” or granted, authority over these rights to “any foreign power” to “dispose” of them without their consent.

Lest Britain argue that the colonists had forfeited their rights when they moved to the New World, the second resolution indicates the congressional belief that the colonists brought their rights with them when they immigrated to America. This was consistent with arguments that Thomas Jefferson had made in the summer of 1774 in A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Whereas the second resolution focuses on the rights that colonists possessed when they immigrated, the third resolution argues that they and their descendants continued to possess such rights consistent with “their local and other circumstances.” The sixth resolution reiterates that colonial rights included the “benefit of such of the English statutes, as existed at the time of their colonization; and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances.”

Consistent with both English and American views of the importance of republican, or representative, government, the fourth and longest resolution (apparently designed chiefly by John Adams of Massachusetts and James Duane of New York) identifies the “right in the people to participate in their legislative council” as fundamental to “English liberty, and … all free government.” Without using the term, this resolution further outlines the American view of actual representation, which stressed that citizens had to elect representatives to representative assemblies before such bodies could tax them. As the dispute with Britain progressed, most Americans acknowledged, as Congress does in this paragraph, that the king presided over the entire empire and that royal vetoes of colonial legislation and parliamentary attempts to regulate “external commerce” were thus justified. Congress just as heartily rejects the imposition of “every idea of taxation internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects, in America, without their consent.” Although this resolution does not specifically say so, most Americans traced the principle of “no taxation without representation” to the Magna Carta, an agreement with his barons that King John had signed in 1215 and that subsequently became one of the landmarks of English and American liberties. Congress argues that only its own colonial assemblies had the power to legislate for or to enact direct taxes upon them.

The fifth resolution ties American grievances over the content of parliamentary legislation to the means that Britain used to enforce it. English citizens were justly proud of their system of common law, which developed from precedents accumulated over time by independent judges who were largely free of royal domination. Trial by jurymen from a person's own vicinity, or vicinage, was an especially valuable right that Americans feared was being taken from them by the transference of trials to admiralty courts, in which such a right was not recognized as it would later be in state constitutions and in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

Resolutions 6 and 7 attempt to reinforce common-law protections by appeals to English laws that had been in effect at the time of North American colonization and to royal charters and colonial codes. Colonists continued to insist that they were bound to England not by allegiance to Parliament, in which they were not represented, but by allegiance to the king, who held the empire together and who had signed the colonial charters. In a phrase that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would later echo, Congress affirms in Resolution 8 its “right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king.” It dismisses all attempts to deny such rights as illegal.

Contemporary theorists known as republicans, who constituted an important strand of colonial thinking, stressed the obligations of citizens to maintain free government. Republicans promoted militia service but feared professional armies, especially those composed of mercenaries, who might have interests separate from and hearts less sympathetic toward those they were commissioned to defend. Resolution 9 accordingly argues that such standing armies, like taxes, were illegal, short of consent as expressed through colonial assemblies.

Resolution 10 stresses the need for “the constituent branches of the legislature” to be “independent of each other.” It accordingly protests the role of royal councils in exercising legislative powers, arguably presaging later arguments for separating the powers of government into separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

In a subsequent paragraph, Congress reiterates both the “indubitable [undeniable] rights and liberties” of itself and its “constituents,” albeit focusing chiefly on “representatives in their several provincial legislature[s].” Perhaps anticipating the much broader list of colonial grievances that the Declaration of Independence later articulated, Congress further observes that it was passing over other grievances from “an ardent desire, that harmony and mutual intercourse of affection and interest may be restored.” Although this language sounds conciliatory, Congress charges that British actions, taken as a whole, demonstrate “a system formed to enslave America.” Observing the manner in which British laws since the Seven Years' War had asserted new powers over the colonies, members of the First Continental Congress, like those of the Second Continental Congress that followed, perceived a broader design inimical to colonial liberties. Significantly, in objecting to the operation of admiralty courts in its next resolution, Congress refers at one point to the violation of “ancient limits.”

Final Resolution

In a summary resolution, Congress identifies the acts that the British Parliament had adopted and needed to repeal in order to restore “harmony.” These include a variety of revenue acts as well as laws that permitted the deprivation of jury trials, exempted prosecutors from liability for baseless prosecutions, permitted trials outside the colonies, closed down Boston Harbor, and otherwise altered colonial governments.

One result of the Seven Years' War had been British acquisition of Canada, which had been largely settled by French-speaking people, who were predominately Roman Catholic. In attempting to reconcile Canadians to British rule, Britain had recognized the Catholic religion in the Quebec Act of 1774. The thirteen colonies to the south feared and objected to such recognition. At a time when much of Europe had been torn apart by wars between Catholics and Protestants, Congress observes the danger of “so total a dissimilarity of religion, law and government … of the neighboring British colonies” and reminds the British that their own assistance in the form of “blood and treasure” had helped conquer North America from the French. Despite such complaints, on October 26, 1774, Congress adopted a letter to the inhabitants of Quebec soliciting their support in the controversy with England. Moreover, when the Second Continental Congress later drafted the Articles of Confederation, it included a clause that would have allowed Canada to join the new association without further action on the part of the former British colonies. Congress followed with condemnations of the laws requiring colonies to quarter British troops and to host a standing army without colonial consent.

The Final Paragraph

In time, the accumulation of colonial grievances against the British led to war, but in October 1774 Congress continued to hope for a restoration of “that state, in which both countries found happiness and prosperity.” Its Declaration and Resolves thus ends with three forceful but peaceful measures. The first is “to enter into a non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement or association.” The second is “to prepare an address to the people of Great-Britain, and a memorial to the inhabitants of British America.” And the third is to “to prepare a loyal address to his majesty, agreeable to resolutions already entered into.” Congress had already agreed to a nonimportation agreement. Congress approved an address to the English people on October 21, 1774, and a petition to the king later that month.