verned which is perpetually to be
conquered.

My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of
force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are
without resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force
failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority
are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms
by an impoverished and defeated violence. Nothing less will content me
than whole America. I do not choose to consume its strength along with
our own, because in all parts it is the British strength that I consume.
I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this
exhausting conflict; and still less in the midst of it. I may escape;
but I can make no insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do
not choose to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that
has made the country.

In the character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the
predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as
an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become
suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt
to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicanery, what
they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of
liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other
people of the earth.

Sir, from these six sources--of descent, of form of government, of
religion in the northern provinces, of manners in the southern, of
education, of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of
government--from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown
up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your colonies, and
increased with the increase of their wealth; a spirit that unhappily
meeting with an exercise of power in England which, however lawful, is
not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, has kindled this flame that is
ready to consume us.

I am much against any further experiments which tend to put to the proof
any more of these allowed opinions which contribute so much to the
public tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at home by this
loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all established opinions,
as we do abroad; for in order to prove that the Americans have no right
to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims
which preserve the whole spirit of our ow