ill success are equally admitted as reasons for persevering in the present methods.  Several very prudent and very well-intentioned persons were of opinion, that, during the prevalence of such dispositions, all struggle rather inflamed than lessened the distemper of the public counsels.  Finding such resistance to be considered as factious by most within doors and by very many without, I cannot conscientiously support what is against my opinion, nor prudently contend with what I know is irresistible.  Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavors; and I hope that my past conduct has given sufficient evidence, that, if I am a single day from my place, it is not owing to indolence or love of dissipation.  The slightest hope of doing good is sufficient to recall me to what I quitted with regret In declining for some time my usual strict attendance, I do not in the least condemn the spirit of those gentlemen who, with a just confidence in their abilities, (in which I claim a sort of share from my love and admiration of them,) were of opinion that their exertions in this desperate case might be of some service.  They thought that by contracting the sphere of its application they might lessen the malignity of an evil principle.  Perhaps they were in the right.  But when my opinion was so very clearly to the contrary, for the reasons I have just stated, I am sure my attendance would have been ridiculous.

I must add, in further explanation of my conduct, that, far from softening the features of such a principle, and thereby removing any part of the popular odium or natural terrors attending it, I should be sorry that anything framed in contradiction to the spirit of our Constitution did not instantly produce, in fact, the grossest of the evils with which it was pregnant in its nature.  It is by lying dormant a long time, or being at first very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people.  On the next unconstitutional act, all the fashionable world will be ready to say, “Your prophecies are ridiculous, your fears are vain, you see how little of the mischiefs which you formerly foreboded are come to pass.”  Thus, by degrees, that artful softening of all arbitrary power, the alleged infrequency or narrow extent of its operation, will be received as a sort of aphorism,—­and Mr. Hume will not be singular in telling us, that the felicity of mankind is no more disturbed by it than by earthquakes or thunder, or the other more unusual accidents of Nature.

The act of which I speak is among the fruits of the American war,—­a war in my humble opinion productive of many mischiefs, of a kind which distinguish it from all others.  Not only our policy is deranged, and our empire distracted, but our laws and our legislative spirit appear to have been totally perverted by it.  We have made war on our colonies, not by arms only, but by laws.  As hostility and law are not very concordant ideas, every step we have taken in this