They made Acts to restrain trade, as you do; and they prevented the
Welsh from the use of fairs and markets, as you do the Americans from fisheries
and foreign ports. In short, when the Statute Book was not quite so much swelled
as it is now, you find no less than fifteen acts of penal regulation on the
subject of Wales.
Here we rub our hands.--A fine body of precedents for the authority of
Parliament and the use of it!--I admit it fully; and pray add likewise to these
precedents that all the while Wales rid this Kingdom like an incubus, that it
was an unprofitable and oppressive burthen, and that an Englishman travelling in
that country could not go six yards from the high road without being murdered.
The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not until after two hundred
years discovered that, by an eternal law, providence had decreed vexation to
violence, and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did however at length open their
eyes to the ill-husbandry of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free
people could of all tyrannies the least be endured, and that laws made against a
whole nation were not the most effectual methods of securing its obedience.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115