free from, and therefore above, the ordinary English tribunals of the country where they serve,—­these men cannot so transform themselves, merely by crossing the sea, as to behold with love and reverence, and submit with profound obedience to, the very same things in Great Britain which in America they had been taught to despise, and had been accustomed to awe and humble.  All your Majesty’s troops, in the rotation of service, will pass through this discipline and contract these habits.  If we could flatter ourselves that this would not happen, we must be the weakest of men; we must be the worst, if we were indifferent whether it happened or not.  What, gracious sovereign, is the empire of America to us, or the empire of the world, if we lose our own liberties?  We deprecate this last of evils.  We deprecate the effect of the doctrines which must support and countenance the government over conquered Englishmen.

As it will be impossible long to resist the powerful and equitable arguments in favor of the freedom of these unhappy people that are to be drawn from the principle of our own liberty, attempts will be made, attempts have been made, to ridicule and to argue away this principle, and to inculcate into the minds of your people other maxims of government and other grounds of obedience than those which have prevailed at and since the glorious Revolution.  By degrees, these doctrines, by being convenient, may grow prevalent.  The consequence is not certain; but a general change of principles rarely happens among a people without leading to a change of government.

Sir, your throne cannot stand secure upon the principles of unconditional submission and passive obedience,—­on powers exercised without the concurrence of the people to be governed,—­on acts made in defiance of their prejudices and habits,—­on acquiescence procured by foreign mercenary troops, and secured by standing armies.  These may possibly be the foundation of other thrones:  they must be the subversion of yours.  It was not to passive principles in our ancestors that we owe the honor of appearing before a sovereign who cannot feel that he is a prince without knowing that we ought to be free.  The Revolution is a departure from the ancient course of the descent of this monarchy.  The people at that time reentered into their original rights; and it was not because a positive law authorized what was then done, but because the freedom and safety of the subject, the origin and cause of all laws, required a proceeding paramount and superior to them.  At that ever memorable and instructive period, the letter of the law was superseded in favor of the substance of liberty.  To the free choice, therefore, of the people, without either King or Parliament, we owe that happy establishment out of which both King and Parliament were regenerated.  From that great principle of liberty have originated the statutes confirming and ratifying the establishment from which your Majesty derives your right to rule over us.  Those statutes have not given us our liberties:  our liberties have produced them.  Every hour of your Majesty’s reign, your title stands upon the very same foundation on which it was at first laid; and we do not know a better on which it can possibly be placed.