that I
was wrong from the first. Every creature has a right to live according
to its own disposition. I was a tyrant, and you did well to resist; I
ask you to forgive and forget. I set you free; I hand you over my own
representatives as a pledge of my goodwill, that you may devour them at
your leisure. They have been the instruments of my oppression; consume
them, destroy them, do what you will with them; and henceforward I hope
that we shall live together as friends, and that you will show yourself
worthy of my generosity and of the freedom which you have so gloriously
won.'

A sun-god who thus addressed a disobedient satellite might have the
eloquence of a Demosthenes and the finest of the fine intentions which
pave the road to the wrong place, but he would not be a divinity who
would command the willing confidence of a high-spirited kindred. Great
Britain will make the tie which holds the colonies to her a real one
when she shows them and shows the world that she is still equal to her
great place, that her arm is not shortened and her heart has not grown
faint.

Men speak of the sacredness of liberty. They talk as if the will of
everyone ought to be his only guide, that allegiance is due only to
majorities, that allegiance of any other kind is base and a relic of
servitude. The Americans are the freest people in the world; but in
their freedom they have to obey the fundamental laws of the Union. Again
and again in the West Indies Mr. Motley's words came back to me. To be
taken into the American Union is to be adopted into a partnership. To
belong as a Crown colony to the British Empire, as things stand, is no
partnership at all. It is to belong to a power which sacrifices, as it
has always sacrificed, the interest of its dependencies to its own. The
blood runs freely through every vein and artery of the American body
corporate. Every single citizen feels his share in the life of his
nation. Great Britain leaves her Crown colonies to take care of
themselves, refuses what they ask, and forces on them what they had
rather be without. If I were a West Indian I should feel that under the
stars and stripes I should be safer than I was at present from political
experimenting. I should have a market in which to sell my produce where
I should be treated as a friend; I should have a power behind me and
protecting me, and I should have a future to which I could look forward
with confidence. America would restore me to home an