wholly unfounded. That right thus exerted is allowed to have something reprehensible in it, something unwise or something grievous, since, in the midst of our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, have proposed 5 a capital alteration; and, in order to get rid of what` seemed so very exceptionable, have instituted a mode. that is altogether new; one that is, indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of Parliament. The principle of this proceeding is large enough for 10 my purpose. The means proposed by the Noble Lord for carrying his ideas into execution, I think, indeed, are very indifferently suited to the end, and this I shall endeavor to show you before I sit down. But for the present I take my ground on the admitted prin15 ciple. I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation; and, where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does, in a manner, always imply concession on the one part or on the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty in affirming that the pro20 posal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace with honor and with safety. Such an offer from such a power will be 25 attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior; and he loses forever that time and those chances which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and reSources of all inferior power. The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide are these two: First, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of these questions we have gained (as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) some 5 ground. But I am sensible that a good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other of these great questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the 10 peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us. Because after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America according to that nature and to those circumstances, and not according to our own imaginations, nor according to abstract ideas of 15 right; by no means according to mere general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me. in our present situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of these circumstances in as 20 full and as clear a manner as I am able to state them. The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the nature of the object is the number of people in the Colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal of pains on that point. I can by no calculation justify 25 myself in placing the number below two millions of inhabitants of our own European blood and color; besides at least five hundred thousand others, who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and importance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low, 5 is a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world that, state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst 10 we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood, than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations. 15 I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the front of our deliberation; because, Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable 20 to such an object. It will show you that it is not to be considered as one of those minima which are out of the eye and consideration of the law; not a paltry excrescence of the state; not a mean dependant, who may be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little 25 danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity. race. But the population of this country, the great and growing population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your Colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the 5 people. This ground of their commerce indeed has been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by a distinguished person, at your bar. This gentleman, after thirty-five years it is so long since he first appeared at the same place to plead for the commerce of 10 Great Britain has come again before you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time than that, to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition which even then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge 15 in the commercial interest of his country, formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating experience. Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with any detail, if a great part of the members 20 who now fill the House had not the misfortune to be absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of view, from whence, if you will look at the subject, 25 it is impossible that it should not make an impression upon you. I have in my hand two accounts: one a comparative state of the export trade of England to its Colonies, as it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 1772; the other a state of the export trade of this country to its Colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade of England to all parts of the world (the Colonies included) in the year 1704. 5 They are from good vouchers; the latter period from the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original manuscript of Davenant, who first established the Inspector-General's office, which has been ever since his time so abundant a source of Parliamentary information. 10 The export trade to the Colonies consists of three great branches:- the African, which, terminating almost wholly in the Colonies, must be put to the account of their commerce; the West Indian; and the North American. All these are so interwoven that the at15 tempt to separate them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole, and if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate the value of all the parts. I therefore consider these three denominations to be, what in effect they are, one trade. 20 The trade to the Colonies, taken on the export side, at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood thus : between the highest and lowest of those lately laid or your table, the account was as follows: : |