are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.1 Let the Colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government, -they will cling and grapple to you,2 and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation, - the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution.

As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience.1

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed 5 that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have

the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation,1 which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world.

Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances,2 your cockets and ycur clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies,5 every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.

Is it not the same virtue which does every thing for us here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is

1 Act of Navigation. Recall what | duly entered, and that the duties you have learnt of this law, in on them have been paid. your study of United States history. 2 registers...sufferances. Alluding to the official routine of the custom-house.

4 A clearance is an official paper certifying that a ship has cleared at the custom-house, that is, done all that is required of it, and so is authorized to sail.

8 A cocket is a custom-house certificate, granted to merchants, showing that goods have been of speech?

5 pervades... vivifies. Figure

the Land-tax Act1 which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! surely, no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth every thing, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds3 go ill together.

If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with

1 Land-tax. merly a much more important item in the British revenue than now: it used to contribute more than a third of the whole, now only about one sixty-fourth.

This tax was for- 2 chimerical. See Webster.

3 a great empire and little minds. What is the figure of speech?

4 If we are, etc. What kind of sentence?

zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate1 all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the Church, Sursum corda!2 We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is: English privileges alone will make it all it can be.

2.-TREATMENT OF THE KING AND QUEEN OF FRANCE.

[The following is an extract from Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (published in 1790), to which reference has been made in the Introduction. Its purpose is to contrast the license of the revolutionary spirit, as shown in the treatment of the king and royal family of France, with the spirit of old European manners and opinions.]

3

HISTORY will record that, on the morning of the 6th of October, 1789, the king and queen of France,

1 auspicate. See Webster.

ian mob to Versailles, and the compulsory Joyous Entry" of the

2 Sursum corda! These words are from the old Latin Communion-king and royal family, see SwinOffice of the Church. The English of them is, "Lift up your hearts."

3 History will record, etc. For a summary of revolutionary events preceding the march of the Paris

ton's Outlines of History, pp. 409–418. Carlyle's marvelous account of the journey from Versailles to Paris. See the History of the French Revolu tion, Book VII., Chap. XI.

after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was

first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door,1 who cried out to her to save herself by flight; that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give; that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed,2 from whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband not secure of his own life for a moment.

This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people), were then forced to abandon the sanctuary3 of the most

1 sentinel at her door, etc. M. de Miomandre. "Lo, another voice shouts far through the outermost door, 'Save the queen!' and the door is shut. It is brave Miomandre's voice that shouts this second warning. He has stormed across imminent death to do it; fronts imminent death, having done it. . . . But did brave Miomandre perish then, at the queen's outer door? No, he was fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead: he

has nevertheless crawled hither; and shall live, honored of loyal France." — CARLYLE.

2

pierced... the bed. This has been denied; it is impossible to say whether it is true. Once for all it should be observed, that Burke's narrative must be taken with many qualifications. He was too near the events (he wrote within a few months of their occurrence) to know the exact truth.

3 sanctuary. See Glossary.