the Americans themselves; and I think they will acquiesce in it, if they
are not pushed with too much logic and too little sense, in all the
consequences: that is, if external taxation be understood, as they and
you understand it, when you please, to be not a distinction of
geography, but of policy; that it is a power for regulating trade, and
not for supporting establishments. The distinction, which is as nothing
with regard to right, is of most weighty consideration in practice.
Recover your old ground, and your old tranquillity; try it; I am
persuaded the Americans will compromise with you. When confidence is
once restored, the odious and suspicious _summum jus_ will perish of
course. The spirit of practicability, of moderation, and mutual
convenience will never call in geometrical exactness as the arbitrator
of an amicable settlement. Consult and follow your experience. Let not
the long story with which I have exercised your patience prove fruitless
to your interests.

For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish) that the
proposition of the honorable gentleman[13] for the repeal could go to
America without the attendance of the penal bills. Alone I could almost
answer for its success. I cannot be certain of its reception in the bad
company it may keep. In such heterogeneous assortments, the most
innocent person will lose the effect of his innocency. Though you should
send out this angel of peace, yet you are sending out a destroying angel
too; and what would be the effect of the conflict of these two adverse
spirits, or which would predominate in the end, is what I dare not say:
whether the lenient measures would cause American passion to subside, or
the severe would increase its fury,--all this is in the hand of
Providence. Yet now, even now, I should confide in the prevailing virtue
and efficacious operation of lenity, though working in darkness and in
chaos, in the midst of all this unnatural and turbid combination: I