e
general cry against the cowardice of the Americans, as if we despised
them for not making the king's soldiery purchase the advantage they have
obtained at a dearer rate. It is not, Gentlemen, it is not to respect
the dispensations of Providence, nor to provide any decent retreat in
the mutability of human affairs. It leaves no medium between insolent
victory and infamous defeat. It tends to alienate our minds further and
further from our natural regards, and to make an eternal rent and schism
in the British nation. Those who do not wish for such a separation would
not dissolve that cement of reciprocal esteem and regard which can alone
bind together the parts of this great fabric. It ought to be our wish,
as it is our duty, not only to forbear this style of outrage ourselves,
but to make every one as sensible as we can of the impropriety and
unworthiness of the tempers which give rise to it, and which designing
men are laboring with such malignant industry to diffuse amongst us. It
is our business to counteract them, if possible,--if possible, to awake
our natural regards, and to revive the old partiality to the English
name. Without something of this kind I do not see how it is ever
practicable really to reconcile with those whose affection, after all,
must be the surest hold of our government, and which is a thousand times
more worth to us than the mercenary zeal of all the circles of Germany.

I can well conceive a country completely overrun, and miserably wasted,
without approaching in the least to settlement. In my apprehension, as
long as English government is attempted to be supported over Englishmen
by the sword alone, things will thus continue. I anticipate in my mind
the moment of the final triumph of foreign military force. When that
hour arrives, (for it may arrive,) then it is that all this mass of
weakness and violence will appear in its full light. If we should be
expelled from America, the delusion of the partisans of military
government might still continue. They might still feed their
imaginations with the possible good consequences which might have
attended success. Nobody could prove the contrary by facts. But in case
the sword should do all that the sword can do, the success of their arms
and the defeat of their policy will be one and the same thing. You will
never see any revenue from America. Some increase of the means of
corruption, without ease of the public burdens, is the very best that
can