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were so many books as thofe on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own ufe. I hear that they have fold 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 ftates, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or fmatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by fuccessful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal conftitutions. The fmartnefs of debate will fay, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legiflature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I fay for animadverfion, will difdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the fpirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is ftubborn and litigious. Abeunt ftudia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquifitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of refources. In other countries, the people, more simple and of a less mercurial caft, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the preffure of the grievance by the badnefs of the principle. They augur mifgovernment at a distance; and fnuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly lefs powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural conftitution of things. Three * The Attorney General.

thousand miles of ocean lie betwen you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance, in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pafs, between the order and the execution: and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point, is enough to defeat an whole fyftem. You have, indeed, winged minifters of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remoteft verge of the fea. But there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of raging paffions and furious elements, and says, "So far fhalt 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 faid it. The Turk cannot govern Ægypt, and Arabia, and Curdistan, as he governs Thrace; nor has he the fame dominion in Crimea and Algiers, which he has at Brufa and Smyrna. Defpotifm itself is obliged to truck and huck fter. The Sultan gets fuch obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigour 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; the watches times. This is the immutable condition; the eternal law, of extenfive and detached empire.

Then, Sir, from these fix capital fources; of defcent; of form of government; of religion in the northern provinces; of manners in the fouthern; of education; of the remotenefs of fituation from the first mover of government; from all these causes a fierce fpirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your colonies,

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and encreased with the encrease of their wealth; a fpirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercife of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcileable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame, that is ready to confume us.

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or the moral caufes which produce it. Perhaps a more fmooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired, more reconcileable with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might wish the colonists to be perfuaded, that their liberty is more fecure when held in truft 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, fhall we do with it? You have before you the object; fuch 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 diforders. By all thefe confiderations, we are ftrongly urged to determine fomething concerning it. We are called upon to fix fome rule and line for our future conduct, which may give a little stability to our politics, and prevent the return of fuch unhappy deliberations as the prefent. Every fuch return will bring the matter before us in a still more untractable form. For, what astonishing and incredible things have we not feen already? What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural contention? Whilst every principle of authority and refiftance has been pushed, upon both fides, as far as it would go, there is nothing fo folid and certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. Until very lately, all authority in America feemed 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 aifcontented colonifts could do, was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of themselves fupply it; knowing in general what an operofe business it is, to establish a government abfolutely new. But having, for our purposes in this contention, refolved, that none but an obedient affembly fhould fit, the humours of the people there, finding all paffage 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 fucceeded. They have formed a government fufficient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution, or the troublefome formality of an election. Evident neceffity, and tacit confent, 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 inftitution is infinitely better obeyed than the antient 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 prefent. This new government has originated directly from the people; and was not tranfmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a pofitive 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 poffibility of enjoying the advantages of order, in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not henceforward feem fo terrible to the settled and fober part of mankind, as they had appeared before the trial,

Pursuing the fame plan of punishing by the denial of the

We

exercise of government to ftill greater lengths, we wholly abrogated the antient government of Maffachufet. were confident, that the first feeling, if not the very prospect of anarchy, would inftantly enforce a compleat fubmiffion. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vaft province has now fubfifted, and subsisted in a confiderable degree of health and vigour, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council, without judges, without executive magiftrates. How long it will continue in this state, or what may arife out of this unheard-of fituation, how can the wifeft 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 fome other far more important, and far more powerful principles, which entirely over-rule those we had confidered as omnipotent. I am much against any further experiments, which tend to put to the proof any more of these allowed opinions, which contribute fo much to the public tranquillity. In effect, we fuffer as much at home, by this loofening of all ties, and this concuffion 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 endeavouring to fubvert the maxims. which preferve 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 fome of those feelings, for which our ancestors have fhed their blood.

But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I do not mean to preclude the fulleft enquiry. Far

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