solicitation on their part, have been called to mount our throne by the united voice of the whole legislative body. They have, since their accession, displayed in all their actions the utmost mildness, equity, and regard to the laws and constitution. Our own ministers, our own parliaments, ourselves have governed us, and if aught ill has befallen us we can only blame fortune or ourselves. What a reproach must we become among nations if, disgusted with a settlement so deliberately made, and whose conditions have been so religiously observed, we should throw everything again into confusion, and by our levity and rebellious disposition prove ourselves totally unfit for any state but that of absolute slavery and subjection?
The greatest inconvenience attending a disputed title is that it brings us in danger of civil wars and rebellions. What wise man, to avoid this inconvenience, would run directly upon a civil war and rebellion? Not to mention that so long possession, secured by so many laws, must ere {p214} this time, in the apprehension of a great part of the nation, have begot a title in the house of Hanover independent of their present possession, so that now we should not, even by a revolution, obtain the end of avoiding a disputed title.
No revolution made by national forces will ever be able, without some other great necessity, to abolish our debts and encumbrances, in which the interest of so many persons is concerned. And a revolution made by foreign forces is a conquest—a calamity with which the precarious balance of power threatens us, and which our civil dissensions are likely, above all other circumstances, to bring upon us.