England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly
adored, her freedom. The Colonists emigrated from you when this part
of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and
direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not
only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and
on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions,
is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and
every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way
of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you
know, Sir, that the great contests [Footnote: 24] for freedom in this
country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of
taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned
primarily on the right of election of magistrates; or on the balance
among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not
with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this
point of taxes the ablest pens, and most eloquent tongues, have been
exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to
give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point,
it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the
excellence of the English Constitution to insist on this privilege of
granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had
been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in
a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther; they
attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be
so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate
representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this
oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental
principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves,
mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money,
or no shadow of liberty can subsist. The Colonies draw from you, as with
their life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as
with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty
might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars,
without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse;
and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I
do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general
arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly
of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those
general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through
lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the
imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common
principles.
They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their
provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an
high degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative
is the most weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary
government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with
a strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief
importance.
If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of
government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion,
always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or
impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this
free spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the
most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a
persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do
not think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting
churches from all that looks like absolute government is so much to be
sought in their religious tenets, as in their history. Every one knows
that the Roman Catholic religion is at least co-eval with most of the
governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand
with them, and received great favor and every kind of support from
authority. The Church of England too was formed from her cradle under
the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests
have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the
world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to
natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and
unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most
cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent
in our Northern Colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance;
it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant
religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in
nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant
in most of the Northern Provinces, where the Church of England,
notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of
private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of the people. The
Colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants
was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which has
been constantly flowing into these Colonies has, for the greatest part,
been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several
countries, who have brought with them a temper and character far from
alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.
Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object to the
latitude of this description, because in the Southern Colonies the
Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment.
It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these
Colonies which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference,
and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in
those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they
have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of
the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of
their freedom. Freedom is to them [Footnote: 25] not only an enjoyment,
but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in
countries where it is a common blessing and as broad and general as the
air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all
the exterior of servitude; liberty looks, amongst them, like something
that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to commend the
superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as
virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and
these people of the Southern Colonies are much more strongly, and with
an higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to
the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our
Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all
masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the
haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies
it, and renders it invincible.
Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies which
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
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. [Footnote: 26] This study readers 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 a whole system. You have, indeed,
winged ministers of vengeance, [Footnote: 27] 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 SHALL THOU GO, AND NO FARTHER. Who are you, that you
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 [Footnote: 28] 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. The question is, not whether their spirit deserves
praise or blame, but--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 [Footnote: 29] 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 Colonies
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 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 [Footnote: 30] 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, [Footnote: 31] 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
[Footnote: 32] 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
forwardness 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 in 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 cheek 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 the
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. [Footnote: 34]
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. [Footnote: 35] 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 laws; 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 object 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 [Footnote: 36] 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.