Old World, and I should not confide much to thei efficacy in the New. The education of the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottoalin with their re ligion. You cannot persuade them to burn their books 5 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 de calmy t best read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of wholly annihilating the popular 10 Assemblies in which these lawyers sit. The army, by 15 which we must more 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 obedi ence. 56. With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the Southern Colonies, it has freedom 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 20 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 25 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 defense of freedom ?—a measure to which other people 30 have had recourse more than once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of their affairs. 57. 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 85 has sold them to their present masters? from that na tion, 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 5 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. 58. But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got 10 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 15 prayer; but just as reasonable as many of the serious wishes of very grave and solemn politicians. 59. 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 20 prejudices irreconcilable to 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, 25 60. 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 30 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 con 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 a whole 5 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 hope I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, intrusted with magistracies of 10 great authority and dignity, and charged with the safety of their fellow-citizens upon the very same title that I assembleeth am. I really think that for wise men this is not 15 61. Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an em- dent 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 5 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 depen- 10 dent communities with such an idea. 62. 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 15 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 20 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 favour would not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could 25 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 30 once a civil litigant against me in a point of right and a culprit before me; while I sit as a 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 35 strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in what situation he will. 63. There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this mode of criminal proceeding is not-at least 5 in the present stage of our contest-altogether expedient; which is nothing less than the conduct of those very persons who have seemed to adopt that mode, by lately declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay, as they had formerly addressed to have traitors brought hither, under 10 an act of Henry the Eighth, for trial. For though rebellion is declared, it is not proceeded against as such, nor have any steps been taken towards the apprehension or conviction of any individual offender, either on our late or our former address; but modes of public coercion 15 have been adopted, and such as have much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility towards an independent power than the punishment of rebellious subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent; but it shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical ideas to 20 our present case. theoretie 64. In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious? What advantage have we derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, 25 for the time, have been severe and numerous? What advances have we made towards our object, by the sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing less. When I see things in this situation, after such confident 80 hopes, bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot, for my life, avoid a suspicion that the plan itself is not cor-rectly right. 65. If then the removal of the causes of this spirit of American liberty be, for the greater part, or rather en |