ion,--the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything
hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep
the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the
sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race
and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards
you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more
ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience.
Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.
They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until
you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural
dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity
of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of
Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through
them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this
participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally
made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain
so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your
affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are
what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your
letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses
are the things that hold together the great contexture of this
mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead
instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English
communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the
spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused through the mighty
mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the
empire, even down to the minutest member.

Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England?
Do you imagine, then, that it is the Land-Tax Act which raises your
revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which
gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it
with bravery and discipline? No! surely, no! It is the love of the
people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of
the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you
your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience
without which your army would be a base rabble an