In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with
the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.
Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies which
contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable
spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the
law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful;
and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the
deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do
read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told
by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts
of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to
the Plantations. The Colonists have now fallen into the way of printing
them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of
Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out
this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states
that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law;
and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly
to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions.
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