But the colonies will go further.—­Alas! alas! when will this speculating against fact and reason end?  What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct?  Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects?  Is there anything peculiar in this case, to make a rule for itself?  Is all authority of course lost, when it is not pushed to the extreme?  Is it a certain maxim, that, the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left by government, the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?

All these objections being in fact no more than suspicions, conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance of fact and experience, they did not, Sir, discourage me from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory concession, founded on the principles which I have just stated.

In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored to put myself in that frame of mind which was the most natural and the most reasonable, and which was certainly the most probable means of securing me from all error.  I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.

During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the Austrian family, whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish councils, it was common for their statesmen to say that they ought to consult the genius of Philip the Second.  The genius of Philip the Second might mislead them; and the issue of their affairs showed that they had not chosen the most perfect standard.  But, Sir, I am sure that I shall not be misled, when, in a case of constitutional difficulty, I consult the genius of the English Constitution.  Consulting at that oracle, (it was with all due humility and piety,) I found four capital examples in a similar case before me:  those of Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham.

Ireland, before the English conquest, though never governed by a despotic power, had no Parliament.  How far the English Parliament itself was at that time modelled according to the present form is disputed among antiquarians.  But we have all the reason in the world to be assured, that a form of Parliament, such as England then enjoyed, she instantly communicated to Ireland; and we are equally sure that almost every successive improvement in constitutional liberty, as fast as it was made here, was transmitted thither.  The feudal baronage, and the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive Constitution, were early transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there.  Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us at least an House of Commons