he 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 burden; and that
an Englishman travelling in that country could not go six yards from the
highroad 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 an whole nation were not
the most effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in
the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth the course was entirely
altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the
crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of
English subjects. A political order was established; the military power
gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into counties. But that a
nation should have a right to English liberties, and yet no share at all
in the fundamental security of these liberties,--the grant of their own
property,--seemed a thing so incongruous, that eight years after, that
is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not
ill-proportioned representation by counties and boroughs was bestowed
upon Wales by act of Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the
tumults subsided; obedience was restored; peace, order, and civilization
followed in the train of liberty. When the day-star of the English
Constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and
without:--

Simul alba nautis
Stella refulsit,
Defluit saxis agitatus humor,
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes,
Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit.

The very same year the County Palatine of Chester received the same
relief from its oppressions, and the same remedy to its disorders.
Before this time Chester was little less distempered than Wales. The
inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to destroy the
rights of others; and from thence Richard the Second drew the standing
army of archers with which for a time he oppressed England. The people
of Chester applied to Parliamen