It is not what a lawyer tells me I MAY do, but what humanity, reason, and
justice tell me I OUGHT to do. Is a politic act the worse for being a generous
one? Is no concession proper but that which is made from your want of right to
keep what you grant? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the
exercise of an odious claim because you have your evidence-room full of titles,
and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them? What signify all those
titles, and all those arms? Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing
tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could
do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons?
Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up the
concord of this Empire by an unity of spirit, though in a diversity of
operations, that, if I were sure the Colonists had, at their leaving this
country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured
all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of
liberty for them and their posterity to all generations; yet I should hold
myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own
day, and to govern two million of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles
of freedom.
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