"THE PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO JUDGE OF THE CONDUCT OF GOVERNMENT… WHEN CONSTITUTIONAL BOUNDARIES ARE BROKEN OVER, AND SO THEIR RIGHTS ARE INVADED": FIRST EDITION OF CHARLES TURNER'S PROVOCATIVE MAY 26, 1773 SERMON DELIVERED IN MASSACHUSETTS-BAY SHORTLY AFTER PASSAGE OF BRITAIN’S INCENDIARY TEA ACT

(AMERICAN REVOLUTION) TURNER, A..M., Charles. A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq: Governor: The Honorable House of Representatives, of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England, May 26th, 1773. Being the Anniversary of the Election of His Majesty's Council for said Province. Boston: New-England: Richard Draper, 1773. Octavo, modern half calf-gilt, marbled boards; pp. (3-5), 6-45 (1). $2800.

First edition of the influential minister's bold 1773 election sermon, asserting "the traditional Protestant doctrine of resistance" and calling "passive obedience" a "criminal… high abusive scandal to the Christian religion."

In Turner's May 26, 1773 election sermon, delivered only weeks after passage of Britain's explosive Tea Act, he observes: "It is hard to say, whether this country ever has seen, or ever will see, a more important time than the present." Addressing Britain's Governor Hutchinson and the Massachusetts-Bay House of Representatives, he speaks to the particular urgency of recent events and declares: "it is incumbent upon the people… to fix on certain regulations, which… we may call a constitution, as the standing measure of the proceedings of government… the People have a right to judge of the conduct of government… it is also their duty, properly, to assert their freedom, and take all rational and necessary measures for the publick [sic] security and happiness, when constitutional boundaries are broken over, and so their rights are invaded" (original emphasis).

Turner, an influential Congregationalist minister in Duxbury, Massachusetts, "argued in this important sermon" that the right of the people to "'secure a righteous government… arises from the regard they owe to the great immutable law of self-preservation.'" He notably stated the principles of self-preservation and self-defense are "'perfectly consonant to the right reason and to the word of God'… [and] asserted the traditional Protestant doctrine of resistance… arguing from Romans 13 that when civil authorities go against God's design for their office, do disservice to the people, and adopt measures that tend toward their ruin, 'submission becomes a fault and resistance a virtue.' In light of this, Turner referred to the 'passive obedience and non-resistance' doctrine as 'criminal' and a 'high abusive scandal to the Christian religion'" (Steward, Justifying Revolution, 85-6). Turner's words affirm a "revolutionary ideology in Massachusetts… [that] emerges from a culture that had been steeped in libertarian political traditions for over 150 years," representing an "important indigenous source of the concepts of free consent, popular participation and constitutional limitations that became so important to the American political tradition" (Cooper, Higher Law, 222). First edition: bound without half-title; with woodcut-engraved head- and tailpiece. ESTC W29309. Sabin 697475. Evans 13053. Not in Adams.

Text fresh with faint foxing, minimal soiling, tiny gutter-edge pinholes from original stitching, last leaf with early repair to gutter's edge. A very good copy.