ning of the century constituted the whole mass of our export
commerce the colony trade was but one twelfth part; it is now (as a part
of sixteen millions) considerably more than a third of the whole. This
is the relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these
two periods: and all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must
have this proportion as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten,
and sophistical.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great
consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an
immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds indeed, and darkness,
rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble
eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has
happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened
within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch
the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all
the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made
to comprehend such things. He was then old enough _acta parentum jam
legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere virtus_. Suppose, Sir, that the
angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made
him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of
his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when, in the fourth
generation, the third prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve
years on the throne of that nation which (by the happy issue of moderate
and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his
son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary
dignity to its fountain, and raise him to an higher rank of peerage,
whilst he enriched the family with a new one,--if, amidst these bright
and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should
have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his
country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial
grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck,
scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal
principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him,--"Young man,
there is America,--which at this day serves for little more than to
amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall,
before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that
com