ce, and the
penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and
learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for
animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that
when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to
the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If
the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn
and litigious. _Abeunt studia in mores_. This study renders men
acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of
resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less
mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual
grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the
grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a
distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the Colonies is hardly less
powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the
natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between
you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in
weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and
the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is
enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers of
vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of
the sea. But there a power steps in that limits the arrogance of raging
passions and furious elements, and says, _So far shalt thou go, and no
farther_. Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and bite the
chains of nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations
who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which
empire can be thrown. In large bodies the circulation of power must be
less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot
govern Egypt and Arabia and Kurdistan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the
same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna.
Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such
obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at
all; and the whole of the force and vigor of his authority in his center
is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her
provinces,