“I think it necessary,” he insisted, “to consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object we have before us: because, after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America according to that nature and those circumstances, and not according to our own imaginations, not according to abstract ideas of right, by no means according to mere general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant trifling.” To attempt to force such a people would be a course of idle folly. Force, he declared, would not only be an odious “but a feeble instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with” England. “First, Sir,” he cried, “permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but _temporary_. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered. “My next objection is its _uncertainty_. Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource: for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. “A further objection to force is, that you _impair the object_ by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing you recover, but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me than _whole America_. I do not choose to consume its strength along with our own; for in all parts it is the British strength I consume.... Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that has made the country. “Lastly, we have no sort of _experience_ in favor of force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so; but we know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend it, and our sin far more salutary than our penitence.”