It is impossible for any one who can say with Terence —“I am a man—interested in whatever concerns my fellow men”—to take a calm and dispassionate view of the existing state of affairs, in this heaven-favoured land, without feeling deep distress, and a melancholy conviction, that we have made a most lamentable waste of the immense advantages, moral, physical, and political, we enjoy—advantages rarely equalled, scarcely ever exceeded; and that our erroneous policy has, in five years, produced more havoc of national wealth, power, and resources, and more individual distress, than, in a period of profound peace, has taken place in the same space of time, within two hundred years, in any nation of Europe, except Portugal.

That governments are instituted for the protection, support, and benefit of the governed, is a maxim as old as the dawn of liberty in the world. The administrators are the mere agents of their constituents, hired to perform certain duties, for which they are here paid liberal salaries.

The grand objects of their care are—the security of person—security of property acquired, and in the acquisition of property—with the right of worshipping God as each man's conscience dictates. And government, by whatever name it may be called, is only estimable in proportion as it guards those sacred deposits.