Samuel Adams on the Rights of the Colonists

A Leading Patriot Presents a Declaration of Rights in Boston

Jul 12, 2009

Four years before the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams wrote a document that contained many of the same ideas. The march toward independence was well on its way.

Samuel Adams, at a town meeting in Boston on November 2, 1772, made a motion that “a committee of correspondence” be appointed to draft a statement about the rights that the colonists felt were due them. Based on the philosophies of John Locke, Adams and others believed natural rights were due them, under the protection of the unwritten British Constitution.

Rights of Man Summed up to Three Natural Rights

The town appointed several to this committee, including Samuel Adams, who was the primary author of a declaration of rights. Contemporary accounts said that Adam’s declaration “embodied the whole philosophy of human rights, condensed from the doctrines of all times, and applied to the immediate circumstances of America.” The declaration had three main parts:

Adams’ declaration opened, “Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” He went on to say that all men had a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they pleased. But, in the event of intolerable oppression, from either civil or religious authorities or a mix of the two, they had the right to leave that society and seek out and join another.

Man’s voluntary entering into society did not mean giving up any natural rights, except for those specifically agreed to. And all the “civil laws should conform, so far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity.” Later, he added, “The natural liberty of man, by entering into society, is abridged or restrained so far only as is necessary for the great end of society, the best good of the whole.”

Absurdity That Men Would Renounce Their Natural Rights

Still discussing the natural rights as men, Adams claimed it would be absurd for men to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights. In a state of nature, every man is, under God, judge and sole judge of his own rights, and of the infringement of those rights by society or by civil government. For the civil government exists for the purpose of supporting, protecting, and defending those very rights. Why then would anyone think, as the British crown and parliament apparently had, that the colonists should voluntarily give up those rights to preserve those rights? Absurd, Adams said.

Concerning man’s relationship with God, and the rights of a Christian, these could best be understood “by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the Christian Church….” The Toleration Act had granted all British subjects (except Roman Catholics and similar groups) the right to worship according to conscience. This right went back to the Magna Charta itself. It is unfortunate that, with the limited perspective of the times, Catholics were not accorded this tolerance as well.

Rights as Subjects

A state is a body politic—a civil society of men—joined together to promote mutual interests. This was an absolute right of Englishmen. Persons born anywhere in British America were, by the laws of nature and God, as well as various British laws, entitled to the same privileges as those born in the mother country. Adams mentioned three particular areas:

Samuel Adams’ Declaration of the Rights of the Colonists is well worth reading. Here, four years before the colonies united and declared their independence, are many of the ideas that made up that Declaration. It is possible that Thomas Jefferson was influenced by the writing of Samuel Adams, Boston patriot.

The copyright of the article Samuel Adams on the Rights of the Colonists in Colonial America is owned by David Todd. Permission to republish Samuel Adams on the Rights of the Colonists in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.