Already, under a policy of negation and suppression, the people were
driving towards the most terrible kind of war--a war between the members
of the same community. Already the cry of "no concession so long as
disorders continue" went up from the central Government, and, with
passionate wisdom, Burke replied:

"The question is not whether their spirit deserves blame or
praise, but what, in the name of God, shall we do with it?"

Then come two brief passages which ought to be bound as watchwords and
phylacteries about the foreheads of every legislator who presumes to
direct our country's destiny, and which stand as a perpetual indictment
against all who endeavour to exclude the men or women of this country
from constitutional liberties:

"In order to prove that the Americans have no right to
their liberties, we are every day endeavouring to subvert the
maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. To prove
that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to
depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never seem to
gain a paltry advantage over them in debate without attacking
some of those principles or deriding some of those feelings for
which our ancestors have shed their blood."

The second passage is finer still, and particularly apt to the present
civil contest over Englishwomen's enfranchisement:

"The temper and character which prevail in our Colonies
are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot,
I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade