next unconstitutional act, all the
fashionable world will be ready to say, "Your prophecies are ridiculous,
your fears are vain, you see how little of the mischiefs which you
formerly foreboded are come to pass." Thus, by degrees, that artful
softening of all arbitrary power, the alleged infrequency or narrow
extent of its operation, will be received as a sort of aphorism,--and
Mr. Hume will not be singular in telling us, that the felicity of
mankind is no more disturbed by it than by earthquakes or thunder, or
the other more unusual accidents of Nature.

The act of which I speak is among the fruits of the American war,--a war
in my humble opinion productive of many mischiefs, of a kind which
distinguish it from all others. Not only our policy is deranged, and our
empire distracted, but our laws and our legislative spirit appear to
have been totally perverted by it. We have made war on our colonies, not
by arms only, but by laws. As hostility and law are not very concordant
ideas, every step we have taken in this business has been made by
trampling on some maxim of justice or some capital principle of wise
government. What precedents were established, and what principles
overturned, (I will not say of English privilege, but of general
justice,) in the Boston Port, the Massachusetts Charter, the Military
Bill, and all that long array of hostile acts of Parliament by which the
war with America has been begun and supported! Had the principles of any
of these acts been first exerted on English ground, they would probably
have expired as soon as they touched it. But by being removed from our
persons, they have rooted in our laws, and the latest posterity will
taste the fruits of them.

Nor is it the worst effect of this unnatural contention, that our _laws_
are corrupted. Whilst _manners_ remain entire, they will correct the
vices of law, and soften it at length to their own temper. But we have
to lament that in most of the late proceedings we see very few traces of
that generosity, humanity, and dignity of mind, which formerly
characterized this nation. War suspends the rules of moral obligation,
and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated.
Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They
vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert even the
natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to
consider our fellow-citizens in an hostile light, the w