jects in the remotest corners of the earth, if you will but treat them with kindness and equity.”.—

66

By your old, rational, and generous administration, by treating the Americans as your friends and fellow-citizens, you made them the happiest of the human kind; and at the same time drew from them by commerce, more clear profit than Spain has drawn from all her mines; and their growing numbers were a daily increasing addition to your strength"-" let them continue to enjoy the liberty our fathers gave them. Gave them, did I say? They are co-heirs of liberty with ourselves; and their portion of the inheritance has been much better looked after than ours. Suffer them a little longer to enjoy that short period of public integrity and domestic happiness, which seems to be the portion allotted by Providence to young rising states. Instead of hoping, that their constitution may receive improvement from our skill in government, the most useful wish I can form in their favour is, that HEAVEN may long preserve them from our vices and our politics. --We ought to cherish them as the heirs of our better days, of our old arts and manners, and of our expiring national virtues. With your permission, my lords, I will waste one short argument more on the same cause, one that I own I am fond of, and which contains in it, what I think, must affect every generous mind. My lords, I look upon North-America as the only

great nursery of freemen now left upon the face of

the earth.

"LET us be content with the spoils and the destruction of the East. If your lordships see no impropriety in it, let the plunderer and the oppressor still go free. But, let not the love of liberty be the only crime you think worthy of punishment. I fear, we shall soon make it a part of our national character, to ruin every thing that has the misfortune to depend upon us.——If the tendency of this bill is, as I own it appears to me, to acquire a power of governing them by influence and corruption; in the first place, my lords, this is not true government, but a sophisticated kind which counterfeits the appearance, but without the spirit or virtue of the true: and then, as it tends to debase their spirits and corrupt their manners, to destroy all that is great and respectable in so considerable a part of the human species, and by degrees to gather them together with the rest of the world under the yoke of universal slavery-I think, for these reasons, it is the duty of every wise man, of every honest man, and of every Englishman, by all lawful means to oppose it." Bishop of St. Asaph,

(k) A LANDED interest widely diffused among the mass of a people, by the personal virtues of honest industry, fair dealing, and laudable frugality, is the firmest foundation that can be laid, for the secure establishment of civil liberty and national independence. Requisite arts, useful manufactures, and advantageous commerce, naturally grow up from such an establishment.

THE enlightened genius of Virgil, in describing the felicities of ancient Italy, rests the whole on these circumstances

Terra-potens armis atque ubere gleba"Powerful in armed sons and fertile soil."

By the policy of Henry the seventh of England, in order to strengthen himself against the nobility, the acquisition of property in lands by the commons was facilitated.

His selfish motives produced public benefits.By this distribution a new vigor was communicated, and soon manifested itself by an amelioration

in the condition of the nation. Marriage was encouraged; population increased; a spirit of personal independence cherished; trade and navigation advanced; and in a very short time English discoveries were extended to this side of the Atlantic.

IN consequence of the vast fortunes accumulated by the excessive profits of offices, inordinate commerce, corrupt contracts, and "the blood of Africa and the tears of Hindostan transmuted into gold,” the lands of England are now and have been for several years past reverting into a few hands, as they were held in the times of feudality, but without the attachments of that system; and without such attachments by tenantry, as the prudence and benevolence of land-lords might form.—At the same time, the laws and prevailing practices * have a tendency to diminish the number of her YEOMANRY, that truly respectable and by far the most important class of the people.

OF this unwise and repulsive behaviour they will feel the consequences.

To such conduct Aristotle ascribes the ruin of Sparta. He lived only about sixty years after Ly

↑ "Voragines fœnoris, monopoliorum, et lati fundiorum in pascua conversorum, et similium."-The whirlpools of loans, monopolies-and the change of farms into pasture grounds, and the like.

Francisci Baconi sermones fideles-71

sander, who by the conquest of Athens had introduced prodigious wealth into his country.

THE rich men became the engrossers of the lands, and the militia were thereby so reduced in number, that the same territory which formerly supplied fifteen hundred horse and thirty thousand foot well-armed, could not in Aristotle's time furnish one thousand.

SUCH is frequently the REACTION of short-sighted and hard-hearted selfishness, in national as well as in private affairs.

It is not meant by what has been said, to commend the feudal system.

THAT system armed the vassals as much to gratify the passions of their superiors, as to protect the country. It was replete with discord, oppression and rapine. The principle of the Anglo-saxon government was much preferable, as this armed the people for national defence, and not for the purposes of pride, ambition, or any intemperate desires.

THE importance of such a landed interest as has been described, is not to be estimated merely on account of its immediate relation to general safety.