Here is my third example.  It was attended with the success of the two former.  Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that freedom, and not servitude, is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.  Sir, this pattern of Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second with regard to the County Palatine of Durham, which is my fourth example.  This county had long lain out of the pale of free legislation.  So scrupulously was the example of Chester followed, that the style of the preamble is nearly the came with that of the Chester act; and, without affecting the abstract extent of the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity of not suffering any considerable district, in which the British subjects may act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice in the grant.

Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these preambles, and the force of these examples in the acts of Parliament, avail anything, what can be said against applying them with regard to America?  Are not the people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh?  The preamble of the act of Henry the Eighth says, the Welsh speak a language no way resembling that of his Majesty’s English subjects.  Are the Americana not as numerous?  If we may trust the learned and accurate Judge Barrington’s account of North Wales, and take that as a standard to measure the rest, there is no comparison.  The people cannot amount to above 200,000:  not a tenth part of the number in the colonies.  Is America in rebellion?  Wales was hardly ever free from it.  Have you attempted to govern America by penal statutes?  You made fifteen for Wales.  But your legislative authority is perfect with regard to America:  was it less perfect in Wales, Chester, and Durham?  But America is virtually represented.  What! does the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood? or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance of representation that is actual and palpable?  But, Sir, your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representation, however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom of the inhabitants of territories that are so near, and comparatively so inconsiderable.  How, then, can I think it sufficient for those which are infinitely greater, and infinitely more remote?

You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the point of proposing to you a scheme for a representation of the colonies in Parliament.  Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great flood stops me in my course. Opposuit Natura. I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation.  The thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible.  As I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert the impracticability of such a representation; but I do not see my way to it; and those who have been more confident have not been more successful.  However, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened; and there are often several means to the same end.  What Nature has disjoined in one way wisdom may unite in another.  When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, let us not refuse it altogether.  If we cannot give the principal, let us find a substitute.  But how? where? what substitute?