r all our struggle,
whether we will or not, we must govern America according to that nature
and to those circumstances, and not according to our own imaginations,
not according to abstract ideas of right, by no means according to mere
general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me, in
our present situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore
endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material
of these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am able to
state them.

The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the nature of
the object is the number of people in the colonies. I have taken for
some years a good deal of pains on that point. I can by no calculation
justify myself in placing the number below two millions of inhabitants
of our own European blood and color,--besides at least 500,000 others,
who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the
whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no
occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and
importance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low is
a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with which population
shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we
will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are
discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend
our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall
find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster
from infancy to manhood than they spread from families to communities,
and from villages to nations.

I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the
front of our deliberation, because, Sir, this consideration will make it
evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow,
contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable to such
an object. It will show you that it is not to be considered as one of
those _minima_ which are out of the eye and consideration of the
law,--not a paltry excrescence of the state,--not a mean dependant, who
may be neglected with little damage and provoked with little danger. It
will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the
handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to
trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the h