Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken.  Until very lately all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation from yours.  Even, the popular part of the Colony Constitution derived all its activity and its first vital movement from the pleasure of the Crown.  We thought, Sir, that the utmost which the discontented Colonies could do was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it—­knowing in general what an operose business it is to establish a government absolutely new.  But having, for our purposes in this contention, resolved that none but an obedient Assembly should sit, the humors of the people there, finding all passage through the legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way.  Some provinces have tried their experiment, as we have tried ours; and theirs has succeeded.  They have formed a government sufficient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution or the formality of an election.  Evident necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an instant.  So well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore—­the account is among the fragments on your table—­tells you that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government ever was in its most fortunate periods.  Obedience is what makes government, and not the names by which it is called; not the name of Governor, as formerly, or Committee, as at present.  This new government has originated directly from the people, and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a positive constitution.  It was not a manufacture ready formed, and transmitted to them in that condition from England.  The evil arising from hence is this; that the Colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the trial.  Pursuing the same plan [Footnote:  30] of punishing by the denial of the exercise of government to still greater lengths, we wholly abrogated the ancient government of Massachusetts.  We were confident that the first feeling if not the very prospect, of anarchy would instantly enforce a complete submission.  The experiment was tried.  A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared.  Anarchy is found tolerable.  A vast province has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor for near a twelvemonth, without Governor, without public Council, without judges, without executive magistrates.  How long it will continue in this state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, how can the wisest of us conjecture?  Our late experience has taught us that many of those fundamental principles, formerly believed infallible, are either not of the