what it is avowed to be. And I would, Sir, re commend to your ferious confideration, whether it be prudent to form a rule for punishing people, not on their own acts, but on your conjectures? Surely it is prepofterous at the very beft. It is not justifying your anger, by their misconduct; but it is converting your ill-will into their delin quency.

But the colonies will go further.Alas! alas! when will this fpeculating against fact and reason end?What will quiet thefe panick fears which we entertain of the hoftile effect of a conciliatory conduct? Is it true, that no cafe can exist, in which it is proper for the fovereign to accede to the defires of his difcontented fubjects? Is there any thing peculiar in this cafe, to make a rule for itfelf? Is all authority of course loft, when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it a certain maxim, that, the fewer caufes of diffatisfaction are left by government, the more the fubject will be inclined to refift and rebel?

All these objections being in fact no more than fufpicions, conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance of fact and experience; they did not, Sir, difcourage me from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory conceffion, founded on the principles which I have just stated.

In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavoured to put myself in that frame of mind, which was

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the most natural, and the most reasonable; and which was certainly the most probable means of fecuring me from all error. I fet out with a perfect diftruft of my own abilities; a total renunciation of every speculation of my own; and with a profound reverence for the wifdom of our anceftors, who have left us the inheritance of fo happy a conftitution, and fo flourishing an empire, and what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one, and obtained the other.

During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the Auftrian family, whenever they were at a lofs in the Spanish councils, it was common for their statesmen to say, that they ought to confult the genius of Philip the Second. The genius of Philip the Second might mislead them; and the issue of their affairs fhewed, that they had not chosen the moft perfect standard. But, Sir, I am fure that I fhall not be misled, when, in a cafe of conftitutional difficulty, I confult the genius of the English conftitution. Confulting at that oracle (it was with all due humility and piety) I found four capital examples in a fimilar cafe before me : thofe of Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham.

Ireland, before the English conqueft, though never governed by a defpotick power, had no parliament. How far the English parliament itself was at that time modelled according to the present VOL. III. form,

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form, is difputed among antiquarians. But we have all the reafon in the world to be affured, that a form of parliament, fuch as England then enjoyed, fhe inftantly communicated to Ireland; and we are equally fure that almoft every fucceffive improvement in conftitutional liberty, as faft as it was made here, was tranfmitted thither. The feudal baronage, and the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive conftitution, were early tranfplanted into that foil; and grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the house of commons, gave us at least an houfe of commons of weight and confequence. But your ancestors did not churlifhly fit down alone to the feaft of Magna Charta. Ireland was made immediately a partaker. This benefit of English laws and liberties, I confefs, was not at firft extended to all Ireland. Mark the confequence. English authority and English liberty had exactly the fame boundaries. Your standard could never be advanced an inch before your privileges. Sir John Davis fhews beyond a doubt, that the refufal of a general communication of these rights, was the true cause why Ireland was five hundred years in fubduing; and after the vain projects of a military government, attempted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was foon discovered, that nothing could make that country English, in civility and allegiance, but your laws and your

forms

forms of legislature. It was not English arms, but the English conftitution, that conquered Ireland. From that time, Ireland has ever had a general parliament, as she had before a partial parliament. You changed the people; you altered the religion; but you never touched the form or the vital fubftance of free government in that kingdom. You depofed kings; you reftored them; you altered. the fucceffion to theirs, as well as to your own crown; but you never altered their conftitution; the principle of which was refpected by ufurpation; reftored with the restoration of monarchy, and established, I truft, for ever, by the glorious Revolution. This has made Ireland the great and flourishing kingdom that it is; and from a dif grace and a burthen intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a principal part of our strength and ornament. This country cannot be faid to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular things done in the confufion of mighty troubles, and on the hinge of great revolutions, even if all were done that is faid to have been done, form no example. If they have any effect in argument, they make an exception to prove the rule. None of your own liberties could ftand a moment if the cafual deviations from them, at fuch times, were fuffered to be used as proofs of their nullity. By the lucrative amount of fuch casual breaches in the conftitution,

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conftitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of fupply has been in that kingdom. Your Irish penfioners would ftarve, if they had no other fund to live on than taxes granted by English authority. Turn your eyes to those popular grants from whence all your great fupplies are come; and learn to refpect that only fource of publick wealthin the British empire.

My next example is Wales. This country was faid to be reduced by Henry the Third. It was faid more truly to be fo by Edward the First. But though then conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the realm of England. Its old.conftitution, whatever that might have been, was deftroyed; and no good one was fubftituted in its place. The care of that tract was put into the hands of lords marchers-a form of government of a very fingular kind; a ftrange heterogeneous monfter, fomething between hoftility and government; perhaps it has a fort of resemblance, according to the modes of thofe times, to that of commander in chief at prefent, to whom all civil power is granted as fecondary. The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius of the government; the people were ferocious, reftive, favage, and uncultivated, fometimes compofed, never pacified. Wales within itself, was in perpetual diforder; and it kept the frontier of Eng

land