My Lords, the Commons of Great Britain are not disposed to resort to the
ridiculous relations of travellers, or to the wild systems which
ingenious men have thought proper to build on their authority. We will
take another mode. We will undertake to prove the direct contrary of his
assertions in every point and particular. We undertake to do this,
because your Lordships know, and because the world knows, that, if you
go into a country where you suppose man to be in a servile
state,--where, the despot excepted, there is no one person who can lift
up his head above another,--where all are a set of vile, miserable
slaves, prostrate and confounded in a common servitude, having no
descendible lands, no inheritance, nothing that makes man feel proud of
himself, or that gives him honor and distinction with others,--this
abject degradation will take from you that kind of sympathy which
naturally attaches you to men feeling like yourselves, to men who have
hereditary dignities to support, and lands of inheritance to maintain,
as you peers have; you will, I say, no longer have that feeling which
you ought to have for the sufferings of a people whom you suppose to be
habituated to their sufferings and familiar with degradation.
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