contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this
untractable spirit: I mean their education. In no country, perhaps, in
the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is
numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes the lead. The
greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But
all who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in
that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no
branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many
books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists
have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear
that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's "Commentaries" in
America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very
particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people
in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law,--and that in Boston
they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many
parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of
debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly
the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the
penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and
learned friend[22] on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for
animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I,
that, when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this
knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to
government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy
methods, it is stubborn and litigious. _Abeunt studia in mores_. This
study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready
in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more
simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in
government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil,
and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the
principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the
approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.
The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less
powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the
natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie
between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this
distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between
the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a
single point is enough to defeat an whole system. You have, indeed,
winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to
the remotest verge of the sea: but there a power steps in, that limits
the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, "So far
shalt thou go, and no farther." Who are you, that should fret and rage,
and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to
all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms
into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of
power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The
Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he governs
Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has
at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster.
The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein,
that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigor of his
authority in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his
borders. Spain, in her provinces, is perhaps not so well obeyed as you
are in yours. She complies, too; she submits; she watches times. This is
the immutable condition, 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 provinces, 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 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 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 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. But the question is not, whether their spirit deserves
praise or blame,--what, in the 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 determine 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 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 reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. Until 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. 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
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; 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 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: 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 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 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 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. Anarchy 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, 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 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 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 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
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, 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 disturbs 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 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 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 them little short, as I conceive, of
impossibilities. This will appear by examining into the plans which have
been proposed.
As the growing population of the colonies is evidently one cause of
their resistance, it was last session mentioned in both Houses, by men
of weight, and received not without applause, that, in order to check
this evil, it would be proper for the crown to make no further grants of
land. But to this scheme there are two objections. The first, that there
is already so much unsettled land in private hands as to afford room for
an immense future population, although the crown not only withheld its
grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the case, then the only
effect of this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a royal
wilderness, would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands
of the great private monopolists, without any adequate check to the
growing and alarming mischief of population.
But if you stopped your grants, what would be the consequence? The
people would occupy without grants. They have already so occupied in
many places. You cannot station garrisons in every part of these
deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they will carry on
their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks and herds to another.
Many of the people in the back settlements are already little attached
to particular situations. Already they have topped the Appalachian
mountains. From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one
vast, rich, level meadow: a square of five hundred miles. Over this
they would wander without a possibility of restraint; they would change
their manners with the habits of their life; would soon forget a
government by which they were disowned; would become hordes of English
Tartars, and, pouring down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and
irresistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and your
counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and of all the slaves
that adhered to them. Such would, and, in no long time, must be, the
effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil,
the command and blessing of Providence, "Increase and multiply." Such
would be the happy result of an endeavor to keep as a lair of wild
beasts that earth which God by an express charter has given to the
children of men. Far different, and surely much wiser, has been our
policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every kind of
bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the husbandman to look
to authority for his title. We have taught him piously to believe in the
mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown each tract of
land, as it was peopled, into districts, that the ruling power should
never be wholly out of sight. We have settled all we could; and we have
carefully attended every settlement with government.
Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the reasons I
have just given, I think this new project of hedging in population to be
neither prudent nor practicable.
To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular to arrest the
noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a more easy task. I
freely confess it. We have shown a disposition to a system of this
kind,--a disposition even to continue the restraint after the
offence,--looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, and persuaded
that of course we must gain all that they shall lose. Much mischief we
may certainly do. The power inadequate to all other things is often more
than sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and immediate
power of the colonies to resist our violence as very formidable. In
this, however, I may be mistaken. But when I consider that we have
colonies for no purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor
understanding a little preposterous to make them unserviceable, in order
to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing more than the old, and,
as I thought, exploded problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its
subjects into submission. But remember, when you have completed your
system of impoverishment, that Nature still proceeds in her ordinary
course; that discontent will increase with misery; and that there are
critical moments in the fortune of all states, when they who are too
weak to contribute to your prosperity may be strong enough to complete
your ruin. _Spoliatis arma supersunt_.
The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I am afraid,
unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of
this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a
nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in
which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the
imposition; your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest
person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.
I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their republican
religion as their free descent, or to substitute the Roman Catholic as a
penalty, or the Church of England as an improvement. The mode of
inquisition and dragooning is going out of fashion in the Old World, and
I should not confide much to their efficacy in the New. The education of
the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottom with their
religion. You cannot persuade them to burn their books of curious
science, to banish their lawyers from their courts of law, or to quench
the lights of their assemblies by refusing to choose those persons who
are best read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to
think of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these
lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in their place, would be
far more chargeable to us, not quite so effectual, and perhaps, in the
end, full as difficult to be kept in obedience.
With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the southern
colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce it by declaring a
general enfranchisement of their slaves. This project has had its
advocates and panegyrists; yet I never could argue myself into any
opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to their masters. A
general wild offer of liberty would not always be accepted. History
furnishes few instances of it. It is sometimes as hard to persuade
slaves to be free as it is to compel freemen to be slaves; and in this
auspicious scheme we should have both these pleasing tasks on our hands
at once. But when we talk of enfranchisement, do we not perceive that
the American master may enfranchise, too, and arm servile hands in
defence of freedom?--a measure to which other people have had recourse
more than once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of
their affairs.
Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are
from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from
that very nation which has sold them to their present masters,--from
that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their
refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom
from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African
vessel, which is refused an entry into the ports of Virginia or
Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be
curious to see the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to
publish his proclamation of liberty and to advertise his sale of slaves.
But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The ocean
remains. You cannot pump this dry; and as long as it continues in its
present bed, so long all the causes which weaken authority by distance
will continue.
"Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy,"
was a pious and passionate prayer,--but just as reasonable as many of
the serious wishes of very grave and solemn politicians.
If, then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any alterative
course for changing the moral causes (and not quite easy to remove the
natural) which produce prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of
our authority, but that the spirit infallibly will continue, and,
continuing, will produce such effects as now embarrass us,--the second
mode under consideration is, to prosecute that spirit in its overt acts,
as _criminal_.
At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems a great deal
too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should seem, to my way of
conceiving such matters, that there is a very wide difference, in reason
and policy, between the mode of proceeding on the irregular conduct of
scattered individuals, or even of bands of men, who disturb order within
the state, and the civil dissensions which may, from time to time, on
great questions, agitate the several communities which compose a great
empire. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary
ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know
the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people. I cannot
insult and ridicule the feelings of millions of my fellow-creatures as
Sir Edward Coke insulted one excellent individual (Sir Walter Raleigh)
at the bar. I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies,
intrusted with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged
with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title that
I am. I really think that for wise men this is not judicious, for sober
men not decent, for minds tinctured with humanity not mild and merciful.
Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire, as distinguished
from a single state or kingdom. But my idea of it is this: that an
empire is the aggregate of many states under one common head, whether
this head be a monarch or a presiding republic. It does, in such
constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but the dismal, cold, dead
uniformity of servitude can prevent its happening) that the subordinate
parts have many local privileges and immunities. Between these
privileges and the supreme common authority the line may be extremely
nice. Of course disputes, often, too, very bitter disputes, and much ill
blood, will arise. But though every privilege is an exemption (in the
case) from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it is no
denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, _ex vi termini_, to
imply a superior power: for to talk of the privileges of a state or of a
person who has no superior is hardly any better than speaking nonsense.
Now in such unfortunate quarrels among the component parts of a great
political union of communities, I can scarcely conceive anything more
completely imprudent than for the head of the empire to insist, that if
any privilege is pleaded against his will or his acts, that his whole
authority is denied,--instantly to proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms,
and to put the offending provinces under the ban. Will not this, Sir,
very soon teach the provinces to make no distinctions on their part?
Will it not teach them that the government against which a claim of
liberty is tantamount to high treason is a government to which
submission is equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite
convenient to impress dependent communities with such an idea.
We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by the necessity of
things, the judge. It is true, Sir. But I confess that the character of
judge in my own cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling
me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot proceed with a
stern, assured judicial confidence, until I find myself in something
more like a judicial character. I must have these hesitations as long as
I am compelled to recollect, that, in my little reading upon such
contests as these, the sense of mankind has at least as often decided
against the superior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add, too,
that the opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would not
put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that
there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain
circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and the most
vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight
with me, when I find things so circumstanced that I see the same party
at once a civil litigant against me in a point of right and a culprit
before me, while I sit as criminal judge on acts of his whose moral
quality is to be decided upon the merits of that very litigation. Men
are every now and then put, by the complexity of human affairs, into
strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in what
situation he will.