"
What did Parliament with this audacious address?--Reject it as a libel? Treat it
as an affront to Government? Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of
legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did they burn it by the hands of
the common hangman?--They took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was,
without softening or temperament, unpurged of the original bitterness and
indignation of complaint--they made it the very preamble to their Act of
redress, and consecrated its principle to all ages in the sanctuary of
legislation.
Here is my third example. It was attended with the success of the two former.
Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that freedom, and not
servitude, is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true
remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of Chester was followed in the reign
of Charles the Second with regard to the County Palatine of Durham, which is my
fourth example. This county had long lain out of the pale of free legislation.
So scrupulously was the example of Chester followed that the style of the
preamble is nearly the same with that of the Chester Act, and, without affecting
the abstract extent of the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity of
not suffering any considerable district in which the British subjects may act as
a body, to be taxed without their own voice in the grant.
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