This guy has come up in recent reading – John Allen was English, not Ulster-Scots - and arrived in Boston in 1772. His writing about constitutional liberties is superb; John Adams acknowledged that "large circles of the common people" had read Allen's words. They are:
• The American Alarm, Or The Bostonian Plea, For the Rights, and Liberties, of the People. Humbly Addressed to the King and Council; and to the Constitutional Sons of Liberty, in America. Text is online here.
"...For the right of the King to reign upon the throne of Great Britain, lies in his being (by the happy [Glorious] revolution principles) settled by the choice of the people as their elect King, or guardian of their rights. BUT when these walls (which are the walls of salvation to the people) are broken down, either Kingly, or Parliamentary power, then the King right to reign, and the obligations of the people to the King, or ministry, may justly cease. For when the rights of the people are violated, their affections not only become alienated, but their oath of allegiance to the King himself becomes void...
Let your own laws, your rights, your children's rights, and birthrights, inspire you with life, soul, and sentiment to let the King of England the British Parliament, or ministry know, nay, your own governor, and judges know your power, and importance as a people; that you will not lose your rights; that you will not be oppressed or imposed upon by Lord BUTE's despotic dictation in the Cabinet, or by any of the spirit or blood of the Stuart's family, which flows through the veins of the British ministry, that you will sooner lose your lives than your liberties...
Is it any breach of charity to think that Lord Bute intends hereby the overthrow both of King and State; to bring on a revolution, and to place another whom he more rearly allied to upon the Throne, (for GOD knows his last errand abroad); but however this may be at present a secret, yet if he does not aim at the dethroning the King, yet such proceedings will end in the destruction of the liberties of the people; and the one will certainly bring on the other. He thinks they have too much liberty, and therefore has long aimed to infringe their liberty, persuading the King, that he has a divine right to be despotic; and that the people ought to submit to his will and pleasure as his subjects..."
(image above from this website)
In The American Alarm Allen quoted from Dr Joseph Warren's Boston Massacre Oration of March 1772 (full text online here). In it Warren had said:
"... After various struggles, which, during the tyrannic reigns of the House of Stuart, were constantly kept up between right and wrong, between liberty and slavery, the connection between Great Britain and this colony, was settled in the reign of King William and Queen Mary, by a compact, the conditions of which were expressed in a charter; by which all the liberties and immunities of British subjects, were confined to this province, as fully and as absolutely as they possibly could be by any human instrument which can be devised. And it is undeniably true, that the greatest and most important right of a British subject is, that he shall be governed by no laws but those to which he either in person or by his representative hath given his consent: and this I will venture to assert is the grand basis of British freedom; it is interwoven with the constitution; and whenever this is lost, the constitution must be destroyed..."
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• An Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty, or the Essential Rights of the Americans, Delivered a the Second Baptist Church in Boston. Upon the last annual Thanksgiving, December 1772. Text is online here.
"... But God forbid that I should be thought to aim at rousing the Americans to arms, without their rights, liberties and oppression call for it. For they are unwilling to beat to Arms, they are loyal subjects; they love their King; they love their Mother-Country; they call it their HOME; and wish nothing more than the prosperity of Britain, and the glory of their King: But they will not give up their rights; they will not be slaves to any power upon Earth."
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• Before he emigrated to America, in 1770 Allen had already published a pamphlet entitled The Spirit of Liberty; or, Junius's loyal address: being a key to the English cabinet; or, An humble dissertation upon the rights and liberties of the ancient Britons, in London, under the pseudonym Junius Jun. a Briton born. It is online here.
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• Article about Allen is on the New England Historical Society website here
• Short biography of John Allen is on Jstor.org here - 'New England's Tom Paine: John Allen and the Spirit of Liberty', in The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol 21, No 4 (October 1964).
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