d with me for a
title. It does so in all human affairs. No man examines into the defects
of his title to his paternal estate or to his established government.
Indeed, common sense taught me that a legislative authority not actually
limited by the express terms of its foundation, or by its own subsequent
acts, cannot have its powers parcelled out by argumentative
distinctions, so as to enable us to say that here they can and there
they cannot bind. Nobody was so obliging as to produce to me any record
of such distinctions, by compact or otherwise, either at the successive
formation of the several colonies or during the existence of any of
them. If any gentlemen were able to see how one power could be given up
(merely on abstract reasoning) without giving up the rest, I can only
say that they saw further than I could. Nor did I ever presume to
condemn any one for being clear-sighted when I was blind. I praise their
penetration and learning, and hope that their practice has been
correspondent to their theory.

I had, indeed, very earnest wishes to keep the whole body of this
authority perfect and entire as I found it,--and to keep it so, not for
our advantage solely, but principally for the sake of those on whose
account all just authority exists: I mean the people to be governed.
For I thought I saw that many cases might well happen in which the
exercise of every power comprehended in the broadest idea of legislature
might become, in its time and circumstances, not a little expedient for
the peace and union of the colonies amongst themselves, as well as for
their perfect harmony with Great Britain. Thinking so, (perhaps
erroneously, but being honestly of that opinion,) I was at the same time
very sure that the authority of which I was so jealous could not, under
the actual circumstances of our plantations, be at all preserved in any
of its members, but by the greatest reserve in its application,
particularly in those delicate points in which the feelings of mankind
are the most irritable. They who thought otherwise have found a few more
difficulties in their work than (I hope) they were thoroughly aware of,
when they undertook the present business. I must beg leave to observe,
that it is not only the invidious branch of taxation that will be
resisted, but that no other given part of legislative rights can be
exercised, without regard to the general opinion of those who are to be
governed. That general opinion is the vehic