o rule, not to wrangle; and it
would have been a poor compensation that we had triumphed in a dispute,
whilst we lost an empire.

If there be one fact in the world perfectly clear, it is this,--"that
the disposition of the people of America is wholly averse to any other
than a free government"; and this is indication enough to any honest
statesman how he ought to adapt whatever power he finds in his hands to
their case. If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for
any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,--and that they,
and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
If they practically allow me a greater degree of authority over them
than is consistent with any correct ideas of perfect freedom, I ought to
thank them for so great a trust, and not to endeavor to prove from
thence that they have reasoned amiss, and that, having gone so far, by
analogy they must hereafter have no enjoyment but by my pleasure.

If we had seen this done by any others, we should have concluded them
far gone in madness. It is melancholy, as well as ridiculous, to observe
the kind of reasoning with which the public has been amused, in order to
divert our minds from the common sense of our American policy. There are
people who have split and anatomized the doctrine of free government, as
if it were an abstract question concerning metaphysical liberty and
necessity, and not a matter of moral prudence and natural feeling. They
have disputed whether liberty be a positive or a negative idea; whether
it does not consist in being governed by laws, without considering what
are the laws, or who are the makers; whether man has any rights by
Nature; and whether all the property he enjoys be not the alms of his
government, and his life itself their favor and indulgence. Others,
corrupting religion as these have perverted philosophy, contend that
Christians are redeemed into captivity, and the blood of the Saviour of
mankind has been shed to make them the slaves of a few proud and
insolent sinners. These shocking extremes provoking to extremes of
another kind, speculations are let loose as destructive to all authority
as the former are to all freedom; and every government is called tyranny
and usurpation which is not formed on their fancies. In this manner the
stirrers-up of this contention, not satisfied with distracting our
dependencies and filling them with blood and slaughter, are corrupting
our un