Will not this, Sir, very soon teach the provinces to make no distinctions on
their part? Will it not teach them that the government, against which a claim of
liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a government to which submission is
equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite convenient to impress
dependent communities with such an idea.
We are, indeed, in all disputes with the Colonies, by the necessity of things,
the judge. It is true, Sir. But I confess that the character of judge in my own
cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling me with pride, I am
exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot proceed with a stern, assured, judicial
confidence, until I find myself in something more like a judicial character. I
must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled to recollect that, in my
little reading upon such contests as these, the sense of mankind has at least as
often decided against the superior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add,
too, that the opinion of my having some abstract right [Footnote: 39] in my
favor would not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be
sure that there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain
circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and the most vexatious of
all injustice.
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