ests of our
warlike ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous, vulgar
distinctions, in which many nations, whom we look upon with little
respect or value, have equalled, if not far exceeded us. Those who
have and who hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on
this or on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true and the
only true Englishmen. Those who depart from it, whether there or here,
are attainted, corrupted in blood, and wholly fallen from their
original rank and value. They are the real rebels to the fair
constitution and just supremacy of England. A long course of war with
the administration of this country may be but a prelude to a series of
wars and contentions among yourselves, to end at length (as such
scenes have too often ended) in a species of humiliating repose, which
nothing but the preceding calamities would reconcile to the dispirited
few who survived them. We allow that even this evil is worth the risk
to men of honour when rational liberty is at stake, as in the present
case we confess and lament that it is."

At other times he spoke as follows:--"Nothing less than a convulsion
that will shake the globe to its centre can ever restore the European
nations to that liberty by which they were once so much distinguished.
The Western world was the seat of freedom until another, more Western,
was discovered; and that other will probably be its asylum when it is
hunted down in every other part. Happy it is that the worst of times
may have one refuge still left for humanity. If the Irish resisted
King William, they resisted him on the very same principle that the
English and Scotch resisted King James. The Irish Catholics must have
been the very worst and the most truly unnatural of rebels, if they
had not supported a prince whom they had seen attacked, not for any
designs against their religion or their liberties, but for an extreme
partiality for their sect. Princes otherwise meritorious have violated
the liberties of the people, and have been lawfully deposed for such
violation. I know no human being exempt from the law. I consider
Parliament as the proper judge of kings, and it is necessary that they
should be amenable to it. There is no such thing as governing the
whole body of the people contrary to their inclination. Whenever they
have a feeling they commonly are in the right. Christ appeared in
sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and
ruling principl