n. To prove that the Americans
ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom
itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in debate
without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those
feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood.

The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I am afraid,
unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of
this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a
nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in
which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the
imposition; your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest
person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.

But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The ocean
remains. You cannot pump this dry; and as long as it continues in its
present bed, so long all the causes which weaken authority by distance
will continue. If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of
American liberty be for the greater part, or rather entirely,
impracticable; if the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable--or, if
applicable, are in the highest degree inexpedient--what way yet remains?
No way is open but to comply with the American spirit as necessary; or,
if you please, to submit to it as a necessary evil.

FOOTNOTE:

[30] Delivered in the House of Commons, March 22, 1775.

III. ENGLISH PRIVILEGES IN AMERICA

Reflect, sirs, that when you have fixed a quota of taxation for every
colony, you have not provided for prompt and punctual payment. You must
make new Boston Port Bills, new restraining laws, new acts for dragging
men to England for trial. You must send out new fleets, new armies. All
is to begin again. From this day forward the empire is never to know an
hour's tranquillity. An intestine fire will be kept alive in the bowels
of the colonies, which one time or other must consume this whole empire.

Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a perpetual
quarrel. Indeed, the noble lord who proposed this project seems himself
to be of that opinion. His project was rather designed for breaking the
union of the colonies than for establishing a revenue. But whatever his
views may be, as I propose the peace and union of the colonies as the
very foundation of my plan, it cannot accord with one whose foundation
is perpetual discord.