Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England?
Do you imagine, then, that it is the land-tax which raises your revenue?
that it is the annual vote in the committee of supply, which gives you
your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill, which inspires it with bravery
and discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their
attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they
have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your
navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your
army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the
profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no
place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what
is gross and material; and who therefore, far from being qualified to be
directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel
in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these
ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I
have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything,
and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom;
and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious
of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our
station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings
on America, with the old warning of the Church, Sursum corda! We ought
to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order
of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high
calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious
empire; and have made the most extensive, and the only honourable
conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number,
the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we
have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it
is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.