It may not be improper to add, my lords, that no degree of human wisdom
is exempt from errour; that he who claims the privilege of acting at
discretion, subjects himself likewise to the necessity of answering for
the consequences of his conduct, and that ill success will at least
subject him to reproach and suspicion, from which, he whose conduct is
regulated by established rules, may always have an opportunity of
setting himself free.
Fixed and certain regulations are, therefore, my lords, useful to the
wisest and best men; and to those whose abilities are less conspicuous,
and whose integrity is at best doubtful, I suppose it will not be
doubted that they are indispensably necessary.
Some of the expedients mentioned in this bill, I shall readily concur
with the noble lord in censuring and rejecting; I am very far from
thinking it expedient to invest the governours of our colonies with any
new degree of power, or to subject the captains of our ships of war to
their command. I have lived, my lords, to see many successions of those
petty monarchs, and have known few whom I would willingly trust with the
exercise of great authority. It is not uncommon, my lords, for those to
be made cruel and capricious by power, who were moderate and prudent in
lower stations; and if the effects of exaltation are to be feared even
in good men, what may not be expected from it in those, whom nothing but
a distant employment could secure from the laws, and who, if they had
not been sent to America to govern, must probably have gone thither on a
different occasion?
The noble duke, who has vindicated the bill with arguments to which very
little can be added, and to which I believe nothing can be replied, has
expressed his unwillingness to concur in any measures for the execution
of which new officers must be appointed.
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