Historic Camden by Thomas J. Kirkland, The State Company, 1905 A transcription of part of Chapter 5, pages 106-108, Part One, No Revolt-Revolution.

On November 5th of the same year (1774) that lofty patriot, William Henry DRAYTON, presided at the sitting of the Circuit Court in Camden, and here delivered the first of those stirring charges to grand juries that were so effective in arousing the people of upper Carolina to a sense and assertion of their rights. DRAYTON was one of the King's Council, and was serving only temporarily on the bench until the arrival of the successor to Mr. Justice MURRAY, lately deceased. In response, the Grand Jury of Camden District returned a veritable little Declaration of Independence, antedating and not unfavorably comparing with those of Mecklenburg and Philadelphia. The third clause of this remarkable document reads as follows:

We present, as a grievance of the most dangerous and alarming nature, the power exercised by the Parliament to tax, and to make laws to bind the American Colonies in all cases whatsoever. We conceive such a power destructive of our birthright as freemen, descended from English ancestors, seeing such freemen cannot be constitutionally taxed or bound by any law without their consent, expressed by themselves or implied by the representatives of their own election - a consent which the good people of this colony never have signified, to be taxed or bound by laws of the British Parliament in which they never have had any constitutional representation. And whereas we rather choose to die freemen than to live slaves, bound by laws in the formation of which we have no participation, so now that the body of this district are legally assembled, as one step towards the defense of our constitutional rights, which are dearer to us than our lives and fortune, we think it is our indispensable duty, to the people of this district, to ourselves the grand jurors for the body of the people, and to our posterity, thus clearly to express the sense of this large and populous district, touching our Constitutional rights and the very imminent danger to which they are exposed from the usurped power of the British Parliament, taxing and by law binding the Americans in all cases whatsoever, being resolved to maintain our Constitutional rights at the hazard of our lives and fortunes, we do most earnestly recommend that this presentment, in particular, be laid before our Constitutional representatives in General Assembly, who, we doubt not, will do all in their power to support us in our rights. We also recommend the publication of these our presentments Mathew Singleton, Foreman Joshua English Sylvester Dunn Jasper Sutton John Payn Isham Moore John Cantey John Witherspoon John Gamble Robert Carter Henry Hunter David Neilson Thomas Casity John Perkins, Sen. Henry Cassels Samuel Bradley James Conyers David Wilson Aaron Frierson Moses Gordon Samuel Cantey Edward Dickey.