ary. But although there are some amongst us who
think our Constitution wants many improvements to make it a complete
system of liberty, perhaps none who are of that opinion would think it
right to aim at such improvement by disturbing his country and risking
everything that is dear to him. In every arduous enterprise, we consider
what we are to lose, as well as what we are to gain; and the more and
better stake of liberty every people possess, the less they will hazard
in a vain attempt to make it more. These are _the cords of man_. Man
acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on
metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master of reasoning,
cautions us, and with great weight and propriety, against this species
of delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, as the most
fallacious of all sophistry.

The Americans will have no interest contrary to the grandeur and glory
of England, when they are not oppressed by the weight of it; and they
will rather be inclined to respect the acts of a superintending
legislature, when they see them the acts of that power which is itself
the security, not the rival, of their secondary importance. In this
assurance my mind most perfectly acquiesces, and I confess I feel not
the least alarm from the discontents which are to arise from putting
people at their ease; nor do I apprehend the destruction of this empire
from giving, by an act of free grace and indulgence, to two millions of
my fellow-citizens some share of those rights upon which I have always
been taught to value myself.

It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, vested in American
assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the empire,--which was preserved
entire, although Wales, and Chester, and Durham were added to it. Truly,
Mr. Speaker, I do not know what this unity means; nor has it ever been
heard of, that I know, in the constitutional policy of this country. The
very idea of subordination of parts excludes this notion of simple and
undivided unity. England is the head; but she is not the head and the
members too. Ireland has ever had from the beginning a separate, but not
an independent legislature, which, far from distracting, promoted the
union of the whole. Everything was sweetly and harmoniously disposed
through both islands for the conservation of English dominion and the
communication of English liberties. I do not see that the same
principles might not be carried into twenty isla