go, and no farther.  Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature?  Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown.  In large bodies the circulation [Footnote:  28] of power must be less vigorous at the extremities.  Nature has said it.  The Turk cannot govern Egypt and Arabia and Kurdistan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna.  Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster.  The Sultan gets such obedience as he can.  He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigor of his authority in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders.  Spain, in her provinces, is, perhaps, not so well obeyed as you are in yours.  She complies, too; she submits; she watches times.  This is the immutable condition, the eternal law of extensive and detached empire.

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources—­of descent, of form of government, of religion in the Northern Provinces, of manners in the Southern, of education, of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of government—­from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up.  It has grown with the growth of the people in your Colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth; a spirit that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us.

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or the moral causes which produce it.  Perhaps a more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in them would be more acceptable to us.  Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired more reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless authority.  Perhaps we might wish the Colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is more secure when held in trust for them by us, as their guardians during a perpetual minority, than with any part of it in their own hands.  The question is, not whether their spirit deserves praise or blame, but—­what, in the name of God, shall we do with it?  You have before you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, with all its imperfections [Footnote:  29] on its head.  You see the magnitude, the importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders.  By all these considerations we are strongly urged to determine something concerning it.  We are called upon to fix some rule and line for our future conduct which may give a little stability to our politics, and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as the present.  Every such return will bring the matter before us in a still more untractable form.  For, what astonishing and incredible things have we not seen already!  What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural contention!