is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you an No contrivance can prevent the effect of this dist weakening government. Seas roll, and month between the order and the execution; and the wa speedy explanation of a single point is enough to a whole system. You have, indeed, winged minis vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces remotest verge of the sea. But there a power s that limits the arrogance of raging passions and elements, and says, So far shalt thou go, and no Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and chains of nature? Nothing worse happens to yo does to all nations who have extensive empire; happens in all the forms into which empire thrown. In large bodies the circulation of pow be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has The Turk cannot govern Egypt and Arabia and tan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same ion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Br Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and ster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he ca governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at a the whole of the force and vigor of his authority centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in borders. Spain, in her provinces, is, perhaps, not obeyed as you are in yours. She complies, to

submits; she watches times. This is the immutable con dition, the eternal law of extensive and detached empire.

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources of descent, of form of government, of religion in the Northern Prov5 inces, of manners in the Southern, of education, of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of government - from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your Colonies, and increased with the increase of 10 their wealth; a spirit that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us.

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this 15 excess, or the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired more reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might wish 20 the Colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is more secure when held in trust for them by us, as their guardians during a perpetual minority, than with any part of it in their own hands. The question is, not whether their spirit deserves praise or blame, but what, in the 25 name of God, shall we do with it? You have before you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, with all its imperfections on its head. You see the magnitude, the importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. By all these considerations we are strongly urged to deter30 mine something concerning it. We are called upon to fix some rule and line for our future conduct which may give a little stability to our politics, and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as the present. Every such return will bring the matter before us in a 35 still more untractable form. For, what astonishing and

incredible things have we not seen already! What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural contention! Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in 5 reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. Untii very lately all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation from yours. Even the popular part of the Colony Constitution derived all its activity and its first vital movement from the pleasure of the Crown. 10 We thought, Sir, that the utmost which the discontented Colonists could do was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it-knowing in general what an operose business it is to establish a government absolutely new. But having, for our purposes 15 in this contention, resolved that none but an obedient Assembly should sit, the humors of the people there, finding all passage through the legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way. Some provinces have tried their experiment, as we have tried ours; 20 and theirs has succeeded. They have formed a government sufficient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution or the troublesome formality of an election. Evident necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an instant. So well they have done it, that Lord 25 Dunmore the account is among the fragments on your table - tells you that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government ever was in its most fortunate periods. Obedience is what makes government, and not the names by which it is called; 30 not the name of Governor, as formerly, or Committee, as at present. This new government has originated directly from the people, and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a positive constitution. It was not a manufacture ready formed, and transmitted 35

to them in that condition from England. The evil arising from hence is this; that the Colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will 5 not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the trial.

Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial of the exercise of government to still greater lengths, we 10 wholly abrogated the ancient government of Massachusetts. We were confident that the first feeling, if not the very prospect, of anarchy would instantly enforce a complete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anar15 chy is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor for near a twelvemonth, without Governor, without public Council, without judges, without executive magistrates. How long it will continue in this state, 20 or what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, how can the wisest of us conjecture? Our late experience has taught us that many of those fundamental principles, formerly believed infallible, are either not of the importance they were imagined to be, or that we have not at 25 all adverted to some other far more important and far more powerful principles, which entirely overrule those we had considered as omnipotent. I am much against any further experiments which tend to put to the proof any more of these allowed opinions which contribute so 30 much to the public tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at home by this loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all established opinions, as we do abroad; for in order to prove that the Americans have no right to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert 35 the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own.

To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in debate without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors 5 have shed their blood.

But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I do not mean to preclude the fullest inquiry. Far from it. Far from deciding on a sudden or partial view, I would patiently go round and round the subject, 10 and survey it minutely in every possible aspect. Sir, if I were capable of engaging you to an equal attention, I would state that, as far as I am capable of discerning, there are but three ways of proceeding relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your Colonies, and dis- 15 turbs your government. These are - to change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes; to prosecute it as criminal; or to comply with it as necessary. I would not be guilty of an imperfect enumeration; I can think of but these three. Another has indeed been 20 started, that of giving up the Colonies; but it met so slight a reception that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a great while upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like the frowardness of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they would have, are 25 resolved to take nothing.

The first of these plans to change the spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes -I think is the most like a systematic proceeding. It is radical in its principle; but it is attended with great difficulties, some of 30 them little short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. This will appear by examining into the plans which have been proposed.

As the growing population in the Colonies is evidently. one cause of their resistance, it was last session