For it is a maxim, that he who is allowed more Power by Law than is fit, (or equitable,) the same will still desire more Power than is already lawful:* so that no Power on earth is tolerable without a just limitation; and Law, which ought to be supreme, cannot subsist where Will and Pleasure are absolute, whether it be the Will of one, of a few, or of many.*
A King, therefore, who presumes to act without the constitutional limitation destroys the foundation of his own authority; for the most respectable and most ancient writer on the English Constitution assures us, that ‘there is no King where Will rules’ (or is absolute) ‘and not Law’. The same doctrine is expressed still more clearly in the old Year Books, that, ‘if there was no Law, there would be no King, and no inheritance.’
For these plain reasons, whenever the English Government ceases to be limited, in any part of the British Dominions,* it ceases to be lawful!
From A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1775) by Granville Sharp (1735-1813).
* See Sharp’s contemporary, the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, on Fit and Proper Persons.
* Anticipating that critics would say that it is not the King alone, but an elected Parliament, that is making laws for the American colonies, Sharp reminds us that dictatorship does not have to be invested in a single individual to be odious.
* This implied that not only the people of the thirteen North American colonies but the inhabitants of British possessions in the West Indies and even the people of India, who since 1757 had been effectually governed from London through the agency of the East India Company, should be given some kind of adequate Parliamentary representation.