In the justice and constitutionality of this position they were openly sustained by Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Burke, Fox, and others,--men who were in their day and have since been regarded as leading minds of England. With but little of public sentiment against them beyond what was influenced by the inveterate hatred and the insane obstinacy of the King, wielding at will the majority of a notoriously corrupt Parliament and the brute force of the kingdom, the colonists appealed to the God of Battles in defense of a sacred principle of freedom, and in resistance to tyrannical acts of the most odious and oppressive character, and they were victorious. It is now, and will be in all time, a source of satisfaction to the people of these States, that the decision of the sword is not their only nor their highest title to the liberty they enjoy. The colonists were right in the contest. Of this no serious doubt is now entertained in any honest and well-informed quarter. The idea of virtual representation, and the attempt to justify one wrong by the practice of another, namely, the taxing other British subjects without giving them an adequate representation in Parliament,--the only replies that were made to the claim of constitutional rights,--are now well understood, and, it gives me pleasure to say, generally disavowed in England. Lord Derby, the manly and highly gifted leader of what is left of the old Tory party, not long since, in a speech delivered in the presence of an American minister, unreservedly admitted that we were right in the Revolutionary contest; and, if that question were now submitted to the free judgment of the people of England, such would be found to be the public sense of that great nation. The only way in which the right in respect to taxation set up by the English Parliament could have been sustained consistently with the English Constitution, would have been by a joint government, securing to the colonies the representation in that body to which they were entitled as British subjects,--a plan to which both the mother country and the colonies were equally decided in their dislike, but for very different reasons. If a similar question were presented at this day it would, according to the present state of public opinion in both countries, be at once settled by an alliance of peace and friendship, substituting fraternal relations for those of parent and children. Well would it have been for the interests of both and of humanity if the matter had been thus adjusted.