dignity, freedom they can have from
none but you.

This is the commodity of price of which you have the monopoly. This is
the true Act of Navigation which binds to you the commerce of the
colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny
them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which
originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do
not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your
bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, are what form the great
securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office,
and your instructions, are the things that hold together the great
contexture of the mysterious whole. These things do not make your
government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the
spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy
to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution which, infused
through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies
every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member. Is it not
the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? It is the
love of the people; it is the attachment to their government, from the
sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which
gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal
obedience without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy
nothing but rotten timber.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the
profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no
place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what
is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to
be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a
wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught,
these ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as
I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth
everything, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is the truest
wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. We ought to
elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of
providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high
calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious
empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable
conquests--not by destr