cted and suffered. In order to give
the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was
not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of
the English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as
a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in
ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a
House of Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and
they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular
nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people,
whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took
infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all
monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately,
possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty can
subsist. The Colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas
and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on
this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe, or might be
endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased
or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they
thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or
wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not
easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is,
that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of
governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or
mistake, confirmed them in the imagination that they, as well as you, had
an interest in these common principles.

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their
provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an
high degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative
is the most weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary
government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a
strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief
importance.

If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of
government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion,
always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or
impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this
free