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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 jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and 5 untractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth, and this 10 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.

First, the people of the colonies are descendants of 15 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 20 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 to itself some favorite point, which by way of 25 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 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 greatest spirits have acted and 5 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 Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been 10 acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther; 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 15 representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or 20 no shadow of liberty can subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas and principles.

For that service for all service, whether of revenue, trade, or empire - my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution. My hold of the colonies is in the close affec- 25 tion which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonists always keep the idea of their civil rights

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associated with your government, they will cling and grapple to you, 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 5 privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation, the cement is gone the cohesion is loosened - and everything 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 10 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. 15 Slavery they can have anywhere it is a weed 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 20 commodity of price of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation 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 25 made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. These things do not make your government. 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 every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.

From EDMUND BURKE'S Speech on Conciliation.

HELPS TO STUDY

The foregoing selection is made up of extracts from Burke's famous speech on Conciliation with America, a speech which you will probably read entire in your high school course. It was delivered in the English Parliament in 1775. It expressed the attitude on liberty and political rights then held by the majority of Englishmen, who were in favor of fair dealing with the Colonies. But King George III, his ministers, and the majority in the Parliament refused to accept Burke's views, and the Revolutionary War was the result. Our quarrel was not with the English people, but with a king who was hostile to ideas of liberty that were dear to the English people; and the Americans were demanding rights which they felt were theirs, because they too were English people.

1. What is the important idea in the first paragraph? 2. How many objections does Burke offer against the use of force? 3. Explain the phrase whole America. See the sentences before and after this phrase. 4. What qualities in the American people make the use of force seem unwise? 5. What would he use instead of force? 6. Where does he say that English and American ideas of liberty are the same? 7. On what point are both Englishmen and Americans particularly sensitive? 8. What spirit did he wish kept between the Colonies and the mother country? 9. Where has this spirit been shown in our own time? 10. What countries does he instance as examples of tyranny?

Phrases: In the gross, total, altogether; ancient parchments, old laws on parchment, a skin made smooth for writing upon.

For Study with the Glossary. Complexions, predilection, depreciated, ardent, untractable, chicane, criterion, oracle, inculcate, cohesion.

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ENGLAND AND AMERICA IN 1782

O thou, that sendest out the man
To rule by land and sea,

Strong mother of a Lion-line,

Be proud of those strong sons of thine
Who wrench'd their rights from thee!

What wonder, if in noble heat

Those men thine arms withstood,
Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught,
And in thy spirit with thee fought

Who sprang from English blood!

But thou rejoice with liberal joy,

Lift up thy rocky face,

And shatter, when the storms are black,
In many a streaming torrent back,

The seas that shock thy base!

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From that deep chord which Hampden smote

Will vibrate to the doom.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

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