I do confess I could not help looking on this event as a
fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of providential favor, by which we are
put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity upon a business so very
questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of
this bill, which seemed to have taken its flight forever, we are at this very
instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American Government as we were
on the first day of the session. If, Sir, we incline to the side of
conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves
so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore
called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America;
to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual
degree of care and calmness.
Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so on this side of the grave.
When I first had the honor [Footnote: 2] of a seat in this House, the affairs of
that continent pressed themselves upon us as the most important and most
delicate object of Parliamentary attention.
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