in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing con- quests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life! " If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not re- quire all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate in- deed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the pros- pect^ and cloud the setting of his day!
26] Excuse me, Sir, if, turning from such thoughts, .1 resume this comparative view once more. You have 68 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION seen it on a large scale: look at it on a small one. I wifi point out to your attention a particular instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704, ( that province called for £11,459 in value of your com- modities, native and foreign. This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772? ^Vhy, nearly fifty times f as much *\ for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was £507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the colo- nies together in the first period.
27] I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particular details because generalities, which in all other cases are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, in- vention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. [28] So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object in the view of its commerce, as concerned in the exports from England. If I were to detail the imports, I could show how many enjoyments they procure, which deceive the burden of life; how many materials which invigorate the springs of national industry, and extend and animate every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This would be a curious subject indeed, but I must prescribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various. f — x[29] I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point of view — their agriculture. This they have prose- cuted with such a spirit, that, besides feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their annual export of grain, comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded a million in value. Of their last harvest, I am persuaded they will export much more. At the beginning of the century some of these colonies imported corn from the mother country: for some time past the Old World has been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if this child BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 6£ of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Eoman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful ex- uberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. — ^[30] As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to ex- cite your envy; and yet the spirit by which that enter- prising employment has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. While we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the an- tipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the south. 'Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that while some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigan- tic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed 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 sa- gacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most peril- ous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people — a people who are I fO BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION J^still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened L into the bone of manhood.
& j~31j When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any § ca/e of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy ^ form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious gov- ernment, but that, through a wise and salutary neglent» a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way 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. ^—-[32] I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have as- serted 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 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 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.
--[331] 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 sub- duing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.
BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 7} 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 ibft. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness, but they can never be begged as alms by an impover^ ished and defeated violence.
$3&$ A further objection to force is, that you t'w- pair 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 Brit- ish 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.
f3£^ Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility has been owing to meth- ods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so. But we know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend it; and our sin far more salutary than our penitence.
[37] These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertain- ing that high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is still behind a third consideration ronrrrn- 72 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION ing this object, which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the management of America, even more than its population and its commerce: I mean its temper and character.
j ^38] In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a- Healous affection, your colonies become suspicious, rest- N* ive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt > 3 tixwrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by '\chicaneNwhat they think the only advantage worth liv- " ' ing for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people or the earth; and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their minds and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.
[39] Eirst, the people of the colonies are descend- ants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation, which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and • on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among- the BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 73 several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised; the great- _ est spirits have acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the English Con- stitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Com- mons. They went much further: they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental prin- ciple, that in all monarchies the people must in effect, -f themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their lifeblood, these ideas and principles. Their love of lib- ^ erty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe, or might be en- dangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought them- selves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy indeed to make a monop- oly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the im- 74 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION agination, that they, as well as you, had an interest In these common principles.
[40] They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their provincial legislative assem- blies. Their governments are popular in a high degree; some are merely popular; in all the popular representa- tive is the most weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief impor- tance.
[41] If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government, religion would have given it a complete effect. ( Religion, always a prin- ciple of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit, o The people are Protes- tants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a~per- suasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like absolute government is so much to be sought in their religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows that the ) Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand with them, and received great favor and every kind of support from authority. ^ The Church of England, too, was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government. But the dissent- ing interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, BURKE'S SPEECH OX CONCILIATION 75 the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the commun- ion of the spirit of libert}r, is predominant in most of the northern provinces, where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality *io more than a sort of private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of the people. The ci k-ft England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was the highest of ail; and even that stream of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greatest part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries, and have brought with them a temper and character far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.
jfSR] Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object to the latitude of this description, because in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. "Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Free- dom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, 76 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION liberty looks, among them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I can not alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and' with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves. In such a peo- ple, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.
JA£k Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies which contributes no mean part toward „ the growth and effect of this untractable spirit: I mean yj their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is nu- merous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to * the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most Jj do read) endeavor to obtain some smattering in that X science. I have been told by an Eminent bookseller that j in no branch of his business, after tracts of (p_pjralar d^ \£ Vgtionjwere so many books as those on the law exported Ajfto the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into l^ the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that K they have sold nearly as many of ^lackstone's Comtof mentaries) in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter ly on your table. He states that all the people in his gov- ernment are lawyers or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled by successful chican wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital pen constitutions. The smartness of debate will say that BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 77 this knowledge ought to teach ^tliem more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who con- descends to mark what I say for animadversion, will dis- dain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders- men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense, full of resources. \ In other countries the people, more simple and of a-' less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an ac- tual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgoverninent at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze, vr^ipi] The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power steps in that limits the arrogance of rag- ing passions and furious elements, and says, " So far shalt thou go, and no farther." Who are you, that should fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations 78 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION who have extensive empire; and it happens in all tu.e forms into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the ex- tremities. Nature has said it. The Turk can not 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 center 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., [45] 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, unhap- pily 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.
CJfe] I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or the moral causes which produce it. Per- haps 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 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 79 more secure when held in trust for them by us (as then- guardians during a perpetual minority) than with any part of it in their own hands. The.question Js^not whether their spirit deserves praise or blame, but — what, in the name of God, shall we do with it? You have be- fore you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, "with all its imperfections on its head. You see the magnitude; the importance; the temper; the habits; the disorders. By all these considerations we are strong- ly 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 mat- ter 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! While 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 Ameri- ca 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 ut- most which the discontented colonists could do was to disturb authority: we never dreamt they could of them- selves supply it, knowing in general what an operose busi- ness it is to establish a government absolutely new. But having for our purposes in this contention resolved that none bat an obedient assembly should sit, the hu- mors of the people there, finding all passage through the legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way. Some provinces have tried their experigO BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION ment, as we have tried ours; and theirs has succeeded. They have formed a government sufficient for its pur- poses, without the bustle of a revolution, or the trouble- some 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 ac- count 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. 7 *J