n, we might become the victims. Knowing the
inestimable value of peace, and the contemptible value of what was
sought by war, we wished to compose the distractions of our country, not
by the use of foreign arms, but by prudent regulations in our own
domestic policy. We deplored, as your Majesty has done in your speech
from the throne, the disorders which prevail in your empire; but we are
convinced that the disorders of the people, in the present time and in
the present place, are owing to the usual and natural cause of such
disorders at all times and in all places, where such have
prevailed,--the misconduct of government;--that they are owing to plans
laid in error, pursued with obstinacy, and conducted without wisdom.

We cannot attribute so much to the power of faction, at the expense of
human nature, as to suppose, that, in any part of the world, a
combination of men, few in number, not considerable in rank, of no
natural hereditary dependencies, should be able, by the efforts of their
policy alone, or the mere exertion of any talents, to bring the people
of your American dominions into the disposition which has produced the
present troubles. We cannot conceive, that, without some powerful
concurring cause, any management should prevail on some millions of
people, dispersed over an whole continent, in thirteen provinces, not
only unconnected, but, in many particulars of religion, manners,
government, and local interest, totally different and adverse,
voluntarily to submit themselves to a suspension of all the profits of
industry and all the comforts of civil life, added to all the evils of
an unequal war, carried on with circumstances of the greatest asperity
and rigor. This, Sir, we conceive, could never have happened, but from a
general sense of some grievance so radical in its nature and so
spreading in its effects as to poison all the ordinary satisfactions of
life, to discompose the frame of society, and to convert into fear and
hatred that habitual reverence ever paid by mankind to an ancient and
venerable government.

That grievance is as simple in its nature, and as level to the most
ordinary understanding, as it is powerful in affecting the most languid
passions: it is--

"AN ATTEMPT MADE TO DISPOSE OF THE PROPERTY OF A WHOLE PEOPLE WITHOUT
THEIR CONSENT."

Your Majesty's English subjects in the colonies, possessing the ordinary
faculties of mankind, know that to live under such a plan of government
is