y nation which has sold them to their present masters,--from
that nation, 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, 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.

But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got 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 prayer,--but just as reasonable as many of
the serious wishes of very grave and solemn politicians.

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 prejudices irreconcilable 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_.

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 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 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 an whole 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 am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies,
intrusted with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged
with the safety of their fellow-citizens, up