Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and simple; the other
full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is mild; that harsh. This
is found by experience effectual for its purposes; the other is a new
project. This is universal; the other calculated for certain colonies
only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operation; the other remote,
contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling
people--gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as a matter of
bargain and sale. I have done my duty in proposing it to you. I have
indeed tired you by a long discourse; but this is the misfortune of
those to whose influence nothing will be conceded, and who must win
every inch of their ground by argument. You have heard me with goodness.
May you decide with wisdom! For my part, I feel my mind greatly
disburdened by what I have done to-day. I have been the less fearful of
trying your patience, because, on this subject, I mean to spare it
altogether in future. I have this comfort, that in every stage of the
American affairs I have steadily opposed the measures that have produced
the confusion, and may bring on the destruction, of this empire. I now
go so far as to risk a proposal of my own. If I cannot give peace to my
country, I give it to my conscience.

My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from
common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal
protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as
links of iron. Let the colonists always keep the idea of their civil
rights associated with your government,--they will cling and grapple to
you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their
allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be
one thing, and their privileges another, that these two things may exist
without any mutual relation, the cement is gone--the cohesion is
loosened--and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as
you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as
the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common
faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom,
they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more
friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more
perfect will be their obedience. Until you become lost to all feeling of
your true interest and your natural