When I first came into a public trust, I found your Parliament in possession of an unlimited legislative power over the colonies.  I could not open the statute-book without seeing the actual exercise of it, more or less, in all cases whatsoever.  This possession passed with me for a title.  It does so in all human affairs.  No man examines into the defects of his title to his paternal estate or to his established government.  Indeed, common sense taught me that a legislative authority not actually limited by the express terms of its foundation, or by its own subsequent acts, cannot have its powers parcelled out by argumentative distinctions, so as to enable us to say that here they can and there they cannot bind.  Nobody was so obliging as to produce to me any record of such distinctions, by compact or otherwise, either at the successive formation of the several colonies or during the existence of any of them.  If any gentlemen were able to see how one power could be given up (merely on abstract reasoning) without giving up the rest, I can only say that they saw further than I could.  Nor did I ever presume to condemn any one for being clear-sighted when I was blind.  I praise their penetration and learning, and hope that their practice has been correspondent to their theory.

I had, indeed, very earnest wishes to keep the whole body of this authority perfect and entire as I found it,—­and to keep it so, not for our advantage solely, but principally for the sake of those on whose account all just authority exists:  I mean the people to be governed.  For I thought I saw that many cases might well happen in which the exercise of every power comprehended in the broadest idea of legislature might become, in its time and circumstances, not a little expedient for the peace and union of the colonies amongst themselves, as well as for their perfect harmony with Great Britain.  Thinking so, (perhaps erroneously, but being honestly of that opinion,) I was at the same time very sure that the authority of which I was so jealous could not, under the actual circumstances of our plantations, be at all preserved in any of its members, but by the greatest reserve in its application, particularly in those delicate points in which the feelings of mankind are the most irritable.  They who thought otherwise have found a few more difficulties in their work than (I hope) they were thoroughly aware of, when they undertook the present business.  I must beg leave to observe, that it is not only the invidious branch of taxation that will be resisted, but that no other given part of legislative rights can be exercised, without regard to the general opinion of those who are to be governed.  That general opinion is the vehicle and organ of legislative omnipotence.  Without this, it may be a theory to entertain the mind, but it is nothing in the direction of affairs.  The completeness of the legislative authority of Parliament over this kingdom is not questioned; and yet many things indubitably included