suffering that must follow resistance, and it was more uncertain and
remote. The utilitarian argument was loud in favour of obedience and
loyalty. But if interest was on one side, there was a manifest
principle on the other--a principle so sacred and so clear as
imperatively to demand the sacrifice of men's lives, of their families
and their fortune. They resolved to give up everything, not to escape
from actual oppression, but to honour a precept of unwritten law. That
was the transatlantic discovery in the theory of political duty, the
light that came over the ocean. It represented liberty not as a
comparative release from tyranny, but as a thing so divine that the
existence of society must be staked to prevent even the least
constructive infraction of its sovereign right. "A free people," said
Dickinson, "can never be too quick in observing nor too firm in
opposing the beginnings of alteration either in form or reality,
respecting institutions formed for their security. The first kind of
alteration leads to the last. As violations of the rights of the
governed are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning,
they spread over the multitude in such a manner as to touch
individuals but slightly. Every free state should incessantly watch,
and instantly take alarm at any addition being made to the power
exercised over them." Who are a free people? Not those over whom
government is reasonably and equitably exercised; but those who live
under a government so constitutionally checked and controlled that
proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised. The
contest was plainly a contest of principle, and was conducted entirely
on principle by both parties. "The amount of taxes proposed to be
raised," said Marshall, the greatest of constitutional lawyers, "was
too inconsiderable to interest the people of either country." I will
add the words of Daniel Webster, the great expounder of the
Constitution, who is the most eloquent of the Americans, and stands,
in politics, next to Burke: "The Parliament of Great Britain asserted
a right to tax the Colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was
precisely on this question that they made the Revolution turn. The
amount of taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent
with liberty, and that was in their eyes enough. It was against the
recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering
under its enactment, that they took up arms. They