by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils.  Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.  When I contemplate these things; when I know that the Colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me.  My rigor relents.  I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is admitted in the gross; but that quite a different conclusion is drawn from it.  America, gentlemen say, is a noble object.  It is an object well worth fighting for.  Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them.  Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions [Footnote:  20] and their habits.  Those who understand the military art will of course have some predilection for it.  Those who wield the thunder of the state [Footnote:  21] may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms.  But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management than of force; considering force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with us.

First, Sir, permit me to observe that the use of force alone is but temporary.  It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed [Footnote:  22] which is perpetually to be conquered.

My next objection is its uncertainty.  Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory.  If you do not succeed, you are without resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left.  Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence.

A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavors to preserve it.  The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest.  Nothing less will content me than whole America.  I do not choose to consume its strength along with our own, because in all parts it is the British strength that I consume.  I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict; and still less in the midst of it.  I may escape; but I can make no insurance against such an event.  Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that has made the country.