Our ancestors never thought it their policy to avert the resentment of foreign tyrants by enjoining English writers to contain and repress their just abhorrence of the criminal enterprises of ambition. This great and gallant nation, which has fought in the front of every battle against the oppressors of Europe, has sometimes inspired fear, but, thank God, she has never felt it. We know that they are our real, and must soon become our declared foes.[31] We know that there can be no cordial amity between the natural enemies and the independence of nations. We have never adopted the cowardly and short-sighted policy of silencing our press, of breaking the spirit and palsying the hearts of our people for the sake of a hollow and precarious truce. We have never been base enough to purchase a short respite from hostilities by sacrificing the first means of defence; the means of rousing the public spirit of the people, and directing it against the enemies of their country and of Europe. Gentlemen, the public spirit of a people, by which I mean the whole body of those affections which unites men’s hearts to the commonwealth, is in various countries composed of various elements, and depends on a great variety of causes. In this country, I may venture to say that it mainly depends on the vigor of the popular parts and principles of our government, and that the spirit of liberty is one of its most important elements. Perhaps it may depend less on those advantages of a free government which are most highly estimated by calm reason, than upon those parts of it which delight the imagination and flatter the just and natural pride of mankind. Among these we are certainly not to forget the political rights which are not uniformly withheld from the lowest classes, and the continual appeal made to them in public discussion, upon the greatest interests of the state. These are undoubtedly among the circumstances which endear to Englishmen their government and their country, and animate their zeal for that glorious institution which confers on the meanest of them a sort of distinction and nobility unknown to the most illustrious slaves who tremble at the frown of a tyrant. Whoever were unwarily and rashly to abolish or narrow these privileges, which it must be owned are liable to great abuse, and to very specious objections, might perhaps discover too late that he had been dismantling his country. Of whatever elements public spirit is composed, it is always and everywhere the chief defensive principle of a state. It is perfectly distinct from courage. Perhaps no nation, certainly no European nation, ever perished from an inferiority of courage. And undoubtedly no considerable nation was ever subdued in which the public affections were sound and vigorous. It is public spirit which binds together the dispersed courage of individuals and fastens it to the commonwealth. It is, therefore, as I have said, the chief defensive principle of every country.