Concept thread · Rights
petition for redress
The right to lay grievances before lawful authority by humble petition and remonstrance, and the expectation that such petitions will be answered rather than met with contempt. The constitutional remedy the loyalists urged, the patriots pronounced exhausted, and the First Amendment made a right.
Emerges 1689 → codified 1791 — a 102-year arc from first appearance to codification.
The thread
- 1774 · defendsupheldAgainst congresses and committees Seabury urges the old lawful channel: carry your grievances to the constitutional Assembly by petition, and trust it to win redress from Britain.⚖ Seabury is not proclaiming a right in the abstract — he argues against a named rival ("Renounce all dependence on Congresses, and Committees") that the old lawful channel still works: "Present a petition" to the Assembly, the "proper persons to obtain redress," and trust them to restore "peace and harmony" with Britain. His petitioning is strikingly meek — entreat the representatives "to take the matter into their own hands" and "beware of giving them any directions how to proceed" — but that deference is exactly the humble, loyalist version of the constitutional remedy this thread collects, and he urges it with reasons ("true, and legal, and... faithful defenders"), not as a bare announcement.
- 1774 · rebutsnuancedTo the counsel that a dutiful petition from the Assembly is the proper remedy, Hamilton answers that every representation has already been made and every petition already offered, so the peaceful channel is spent.⚖ Hamilton's two questions — "What can we represent which has not already been represented? what petitions can we offer, that have not already been offered?" — do not deny that the Assembly is the lawful body Seabury says it is; they argue that the petitioning road itself is worn out, whoever walks it. The evidence that answers Seabury's advice directly sits in the paragraphs just before, where Hamilton recalls that the colony's address made "in a legislative capacity" was "treated with contempt and neglect" and Massachusetts's "most humble, dutiful, and earnest petition" was branded "a seditious, vexatious, and scandalous libel" — the constitutional channel had already been tried and rebuffed. So the passage does answer Seabury, but by attacking the remedy's prospects rather than the Assembly's authority: even the "proper persons" could only offer a petition that has "already been offered."
- 1774 · grievesnuancedHamilton complains that America's loyal addresses and petitions have been met only with contempt and neglect, leaving nothing to be asked that has not already been asked in vain.⚖ Hamilton's questions do double duty: they answer the Farmer's call for one more dutiful petition, but they answer it by voicing the grievance itself — every petition "already been offered," with "various experiments" having proved "the inefficacy of such methods." One caution on the summary, though: "treated with contempt and neglect" is Hamilton's phrase from an earlier paragraph about the assembly's address to the throne, while the lines quoted here complain that the well is dry — "No new arguments can be framed to operate in our favour." He never disputes the right to petition, only declares its exercise spent, which is precisely the moment on this thread when the patriots pronounced the old constitutional remedy exhausted.
- 1774 · rebutsnuancedWhere Hamilton insisted that every representation and petition had already been offered and exhausted, Seabury retorts that the colonies are rushing toward civil war without offering the least concession or even proposing an accommodation.⚖ Notice that Seabury never denies Hamilton's count of petitions; his quoted charge is that the colonies rush to war "without offering the least concession; without even deigning to propose an accommodation" — that is, without ever coming to the table with terms of their own. This still answers Hamilton, because the question "what petitions can we offer, that have not already been offered?" was meant to prove every peaceable course exhausted, and Seabury names one left untried. The flat contradiction — "Without ever asking a redress of our complaints" — comes a few sentences earlier in the same paragraph, so the quoted clause answers by shifting the ground, and the full paragraph supplies the head-on denial.
- 1776 · grievesupheldThe indictment closes on the lawful remedy tried and spent: at every stage the colonists petitioned for redress in the most humble terms, and each petition was answered only by fresh injury.⚖ This sentence pulls double duty: it closes the list of charges while setting up the conclusion that follows, but the words themselves still state a complaint — petitions offered "in the most humble terms" were "answered only by repeated injury," which is exactly the contempt of petition the thread is about. The argument that separation is therefore justified is made by the next sentence, the one declaring the Prince "unfit to be the ruler of a free people," not by this one. So the passage complains that the lawful remedy was tried and scorned; it leaves the drawing of consequences to its neighbor.
- 1791 · codifies · codified into lawThe remedy the empire met with contempt becomes a right the new government may not abridge: petition for redress, fixed beside speech and press.
Related threads
Threads argued alongside this one, or that answer it.
A thread read top to bottom is the spine of a paper: trigger → grievance → rebuttal → remedy → interpretation. See it in time on the timeline, or browse all concepts.