r freedom mentioned by Burke, was their
distance from the seat of government. He remarked:--"Three thousand
miles of ocean lie between you and your subjects! This is a powerful
principle in the natural constitution of things for weakening
government, which no contrivance can prevent. Seas roll, and months
pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy
explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You
have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts to
the remotest verges of the sea. But there a power stops, that limits the
arrogance of raging passions, and says, 'Hitherto shalt thou go, and no
further.' Who are you, that should fret, and rage, and bite the chains
of nature? Nothing worse happens to you than to all nations possessing
extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which empire
can be thrown. In large bodies the circulation of power must be less
vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern
Egypt, as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and
Algiers, which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged
to truck and huckster. The sultan gets such obedience as he can. He
governs with a loose reign, that he may govern at all; and the whole of
the force and vigour of his authority in his centre is derived from a
prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain in her provinces submits
to this immutable condition, the eternal law of extensive and detached
empire." Still Burke did not conceive the idea of proclaiming the
independence of America. On the contrary, like Chatham, he contended
for the general supremacy of parliament, and the rights of the crown,
expressing at the same time his conviction that we had arrived at the
decisive moment of preserving or of losing both our trade and empire.
How to preserve it was the question, and he proposed that it should
be done by concession and conciliation,--and not by force. The plan he
proposed, therefore, to obtain this consummation was, to allow all the
claims the Americans had set forth in their petitions and declarations,
and by undoing all that the parliament had done respecting America,
since the year 1765. His resolutions were briefly these:--That the
colonies not being represented in parliament, could in no way be taxed
by parliament; that the said colonies had been made liable to several
subsidies, payments, rates and taxes, given and granted by