To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as ours is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding.  Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm.  I derived, at length, some confidence from what in other circumstances usually produces timidity.  I grew less anxious, even from the idea of my own insignificance.  For, judging of what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its reason to recommend it.  On the other hand, being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure, that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous, if it were weakly conceived or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or delude you.  You will see it just as it is, and you will treat it just as it deserves.

The proposition is peace.  Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government.  It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts.  It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.  I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satisfaction to your people,—­and (far from a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same act and by the bond of the very same interest which reconciles them to British government.

My idea is nothing more.  Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion,—­and ever will be so, as long as the world endures.  Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind.  Genuine simplicity of heart is an healing and cementing principle.  My plan, therefore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some people, when they hear it.  It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears.  There is nothing at all new and captivating in it.  It has nothing of the splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by the noble lord in the blue riband.[20] It does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the peace amongst them.  It does not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers of algebra to equalize and settle.