Respecting your wisdom, and valuing your safety, we do not call upon you to trust your existence to your enemies.  We do not advise you to an unconditional submission.  With satisfaction we assure you that almost all in both Houses (however unhappily they have been deluded, so as not to give any immediate effect to their opinion) disclaim that idea.  You can have no friends in whom you cannot rationally confide.  But Parliament is your friend from the moment in which, removing its confidence from those who have constantly deceived its good intentions, it adopts the sentiments of those who have made sacrifices, (inferior, indeed, to yours,) but have, however, sacrificed enough to demonstrate the sincerity of their regard and value for your liberty and prosperity.

Arguments may be used to weaken your confidence in that public security; because, from some unpleasant appearances, there is a suspicion that Parliament itself is somewhat fallen from its independent spirit.  How far this supposition may be founded in fact we are unwilling to determine.  But we are well assured from experience, that, even if all were true that is contended for, and in the extent, too, in which it is argued, yet, as long as the solid and well-disposed forms of this Constitution remain, there ever is within Parliament itself a power of renovating its principles, and effecting a self-reformation, which no other plan of government has ever contained.  This Constitution has therefore admitted innumerable improvements, either for the correction of the original scheme, or for removing corruptions, or for bringing its principles better to suit those changes which have successively happened in the circumstances of the nation or in the manners of the people.

We feel that the growth of the colonies is such a change of circumstances, and that our present dispute is an exigency as pressing as any which ever demanded a revision of our government.  Public troubles have often called upon this country to look into its Constitution.  It has ever been bettered by such a revision.  If our happy and luxuriant increase of dominion, and our diffused population, have outgrown the limits of a Constitution made for a contracted object, we ought to bless God, who has furnished us with this noble occasion for displaying our skill and beneficence in enlarging the scale of rational happiness, and of making the politic generosity of this kingdom as extensive as its fortune.  If we set about this great work, on both sides, with the same conciliatory turn of mind, we may now, as in former times, owe even to our mutual mistakes, contentions, and animosities, the lasting concord, freedom, happiness, and glory of this empire.

Gentlemen, the distance between us, with other obstructions, has caused much misrepresentation of our mutual sentiments.  We, therefore, to obviate them as well as we are able, take this method of assuring you of our thorough detestation of the whole war, and particularly the mercenary and savage war carried on or attempted against you,—­our thorough abhorrence of all addresses adverse to you, whether public or private,—­our assurances of an invariable affection towards you,—­our constant regard to your privileges and liberties,—­and our opinion of the solid security you ought to enjoy for them, under the paternal care and nurture of a protecting Parliament.