 Applying the principle that rights, if they exist at all, are universal, it is not surprising that Macaulay attempted to get her fellow country-men to see that injustice of taxing the colonies, while they were not given any representation in the British Parliament. In her Address to the people of England, Scotland and Ireland on the present important crisis of affairs, she called on the British people to support the rights of the Americans, and to join with them in order to protect themselves from the encroachment of their own liberties. She held out to Britons what a loss it would be if, as a result of a war of Independence they were to be deprived of all the commercial advantages that flowed from the Empire, and were left possessing only their own “foggy islands” (Macaulay 1775, 27). But her fundamental appeal is not to the self-interest of her country-men, who she suspects may think that their own burden of taxation is lightened by that placed on the Americans, but to the principle that it is only by supporting the rights of others that one can in the long run support one’s own rights. For her pains she was represented in the Westminster Magazine as a dagger-wielding hybrid of Roman matron and Indian chief, about to plunge her weapon into Britannia’s breast (Davies 2005, 152).