The answer of the Selectmen of Cambridge to the petition exhibited against them by their Brethren and Neighbors of the Village on the South Side of Charles River.To omit what they express by way of narration, declaring ‘the loss of lives and estates to them sustained by the late war, the death of their former minister and their having now got another for whom a house is building,’ &c.—the impertinency and absurdity of their argument therein being obvious to all intelligent minds,—we shall only concern ourselves with what they make the main of their petition, which may be divided into these two parts:
I. The cause on our part, viz. the hard usage by the Townsmen of Cambridge, i. e. imposing upon them a tax of their own will and power, and what they please, and to what end they please.
For answer hereunto, the Cambridge Townsmen have imposed a tax (as they call it) if they intend no more than the making of a rate for the paying of the charges of the whole town, and putting upon them their just proportion of the charge of those things, properly belonging to them to bear their part of, according to the order of the General Court with reference to them, made May 7th, 1673, and then declared to be the issue of the controversy between the town and the petitioners, thus far we own to be a truth. But whereas they charge us that we have thus done, 1, of our own will, 2, of our own power, 3, what we please, 4, to what end we please,—these are high and sad accusations which we cannot own to be true: for 1st it was not by our will that any taxes have been imposed on them or any other of the inhabitants, but their own will, so declared in orderly town-meetings, legally warned, whereat themselves either were or might have been present and had their votes. 2. Nor was it of our own power, but by the authority of the General Court, committing to us by the law, as we are Selectmen of the town, power for the ordering of the prudentials of the town and levying what is necessary for the payment of the annual disbursements regularly made for the town's occasions. 3. Nor have we imposed upon the town in general, or the petitioners, what we please. The rule that we have observed in raising our rates being to make them no greater than is of absolute necessity for the payment of the town's debts, and most an end falling considerably short by reason of the town's poverty, and upon each inhabitant in particular according to a list of their persons and
