marks out this disposition very
particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people
in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law,--and that in Boston
they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many
parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of
debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly
the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the
penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and
learned friend[22] on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for
animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I,
that, when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this
knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to
government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy
methods, it is stubborn and litigious. _Abeunt studia in mores_. This
study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready
in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more
simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in
government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil,
and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the
principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the
approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less
powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the
natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie
between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this
distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between
the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a
single point is enough to defeat an whole system. You have, indeed,
winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to
the remotest verge of the sea: but there a power steps in, that limits
the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, "So far
shalt thou go, and no farther." Who are you, that should fret and rage,
and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to
all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms
into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of
power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The
Turk cannot gove