The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, however, one great advantage from the proposition and registry of that noble lord’s project.  The idea of conciliation is admissible.  First, the House, in accepting the resolution moved by the noble lord, has admitted, notwithstanding the menacing front of our address, notwithstanding our heavy bill of pains and penalties, that we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas of free grace and bounty.

The House has gone farther:  it has declared conciliation admissible previous to any submission on the part of America.  It has even shot a good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted that the complaints of our former mode of exerting the right of taxation were not wholly unfounded.  That right thus exerted is allowed to have had something reprehensible in it,—­something unwise, or something grievous; since, in the midst of our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, have proposed a capital alteration, and, in order to get rid of what seemed so very exceptionable, have instituted a mode that is altogether new,—­one that is, indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of Parliament.

The principle of this proceeding is large enough for my purpose.  The means proposed by the noble lord for carrying his ideas into execution, I think, indeed, are very indifferently suited to the end; and this I shall endeavor to show you before I sit down.  But, for the present, I take my ground on the admitted principle.  I mean to give peace.  Peace implies reconciliation; and where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession on the one part or on the other.  In this state of things I make no difficulty in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us.  Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself.  The superior power may offer peace with honor and with safety.  Such an offer from such a power will be attributed to magnanimity.  But the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.  When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior; and he loses forever that time and those chances which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources of all inferior power.

The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide are these two:  First, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought to be.  On the first of these questions we have gained (as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) some ground.  But I am sensible that a good deal more is still to be done.  Indeed, Sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other of these great questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us:  because, after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we