at least, on these grounds, will never fail you.

Respecting your wisdom, and valuing your safety, we do not call upon you
to trust your existence to your enemies. We do not advise you to an
unconditional submission. With satisfaction we assure you that almost
all in both Houses (however unhappily they have been deluded, so as not
to give any immediate effect to their opinion) disclaim that idea. You
can have no friends in whom you cannot rationally confide. But
Parliament is your friend from the moment in which, removing its
confidence from those who have constantly deceived its good intentions,
it adopts the sentiments of those who have made sacrifices, (inferior,
indeed, to yours,) but have, however, sacrificed enough to demonstrate
the sincerity of their regard and value for your liberty and prosperity.

Arguments may be used to weaken your confidence in that public security;
because, from some unpleasant appearances, there is a suspicion that
Parliament itself is somewhat fallen from its independent spirit. How
far this supposition may be founded in fact we are unwilling to
determine. But we are well assured from experience, that, even if all
were true that is contended for, and in the extent, too, in which it is
argued, yet, as long as the solid and well-disposed forms of this
Constitution remain, there ever is within Parliament itself a power of
renovating its principles, and effecting a self-reformation, which no
other plan of government has ever contained. This Constitution has
therefore admitted innumerable improvements, either for the correction
of the original scheme, or for removing corruptions, or for bringing its
principles better to suit those changes which have successively happened
in the circumstances of the nation or in the manners of the people.

We feel that the growth of the colonies is such a change of
circumstances, and that our present dispute is an exigency as pressing
as any which ever demanded a revision of our government. Public troubles
have often called upon this country to look into its Constitution. It
has ever been bettered by such a revision. If our happy and luxuriant
increase of dominion, and our diffused population, have outgrown the
limits of a Constitution made for a contracted object, we ought to bless
God, who has furnished us with this noble occasion for displaying our
skill and beneficence in enlarging the scale of rational happiness, and
of making the politic generosity o