various mutations of time, hinders our government, or any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely?  When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?

If this be the case, ask yourselves this question:  Will they be content in such a state of slavery?  If not, look to the consequences.  Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not.  Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience:  and such is the state of America, that, after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun,—­that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to ——­ My voice fails me:  my inclination, indeed, carries me no further; all is confusion beyond it.

Well, Sir, I have recovered a little, and before I sit down I must say something to another point with which gentlemen urge us.  What is to become of the Declaratory Act, asserting the entireness of British legislative authority, if we abandon the practice of taxation?

For my part, I look upon the rights stated in that act exactly in the manner in which I viewed them on its very first proposition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with great humility, to lay before you.  I look, I say, on the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonists ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world.  The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two capacities.  One as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at home, immediately, and by no other instrument than the executive power.  The other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her imperial character; in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several inferior legislatures, and guides and controls them all without annihilating any.  As all these provincial legislatures are only cooerdinate to each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her; else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance.  It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling plenitude of her power.  She is never to intrude into the place of the others, whilst they are equal to the common ends of their institution.  But in order to enable Parliament to answer all these ends of provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be boundless.  The gentlemen who think