Alas! alas! when will this speculation against
fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the
hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in
which it is proper for the sovereign to accede to the desires of his
discontented subjects? Is there anything peculiar in this case to make a rule
for itself? Is all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the
extreme? Is it a certain maxim that the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left
by government, the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?
All these objections being in fact no more than suspicions, conjectures,
divinations, formed in defiance of fact and experience, they did not, Sir,
discourage me from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory concession founded on
the principles which I have just stated.
In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored to put myself in that frame of
mind which was the most natural and the most reasonable, and which was certainly
the most probable means of securing me from all error. I set out with a perfect
distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my
own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors who have left
us the inheritance of so happy a constitution and so flourishing an empire, and,
what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and
principles which formed the one and obtained the other.
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