n healing and
cementing principle. My plan, therefore, being formed upon the most
simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some people when they hear it.
It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There
is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the
splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by
the noble lord in the blue ribbon. It does not propose to fill your
lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition
of your mace at every instant to keep the peace amongst them. It does
not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated
provinces come to general ransom by bidding against each other, until
you knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of payments beyond
all the powers of algebra to equalize and settle.

The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, however, one
great advantage from the proposition and registry of that noble
lord's project. The idea of conciliation is admissible. First, the
House, in accepting the resolution moved by the noble lord, has
admitted--notwithstanding the menacing front of our address,
notwithstanding our heavy bills of pains and penalties--that we do not
think ourselves precluded from all ideas of free grace and bounty.

The House has gone further: it has declared conciliation admissible,
_previous_ to any submission on the part of America. It has even shot a
good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted that the complaints of our
former mode of exerting the right of taxation were not wholly unfounded.
That right, thus exerted, is allowed to have something reprehensible in
it--something unwise, or something grievous: since in the midst of our
heat and resentment we of ourselves have proposed a capital alteration,
and in order to get rid of what seemed so very exceptionable have
instituted a mode that is altogether new; one that is indeed wholly
alien from all the ancient methods and forms of Parliament.

The _principle_ of this proceeding is large enough for my purpose. The
means proposed by the noble lord for carrying his ideas into execution,
I think indeed are very indifferently suited to the end; and this I
shall endeavor to show you before I sit down. But for the present I take
my ground on the admitted principle. I mean to give peace. Peace implies
reconciliation; and where there has been a material dispute,
reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession