n the most
Protestant part of this Protestant empire found it for its advantage to
unite with the two principal Popish states, to unite itself in the
closest bonds with France and Spain, for our destruction, that we should
refuse to unite with our own Catholic countrymen for our own
preservation? Ought we, like madmen, to tear off the plasters that the
lenient hand of prudence had spread over the wounds and gashes which in
our delirium of ambition we had given to our own body? No person ever
reprobated the American war more than I did, and do, and ever shall. But
I never will consent that we should lay additional, voluntary penalties
on ourselves, for a fault which carries but too much of its own
punishment in its own nature. For one, I was delighted with the proposal
of internal peace. I accepted the blessing with thankfulness and
transport. I was truly happy to find _one_ good effect of our civil
distractions: that they had put an end to all religious strife and
heart-burning in our own bowels. What must be the sentiments of a man
who would wish to perpetuate domestic hostility when the causes of
dispute are at an end, and who, crying out for peace with one part of
the nation on the most humiliating terms, should deny it to those who
offer friendship without any terms at all?

But if I was unable to reconcile such a denial to the contracted
principles of local duty, what answer could I give to the broad claims
of general humanity? I confess to you freely, that the sufferings and
distresses of the people of America in this cruel war have at times
affected me more deeply than I can express. I felt every gazette of
triumph as a blow upon my heart, which has an hundred times sunk and
fainted within me at all the mischiefs brought upon those who bear the
whole brunt of war in the heart of their country. Yet the Americans are
utter strangers to me; a nation among whom I am not sure that I have a
single acquaintance. Was I to suffer my mind to be so unaccountably
warped, was I to keep such iniquitous weights and measures of temper and
of reason, as to sympathize with those who are in open rebellion against
an authority which I respect, at war with a country which by every title
ought to be, and is, most dear to me,--and yet to have no feeling at all
for the hardships and indignities suffered by men who by their very
vicinity are bound up in a nearer relation to us, who contribute their
share, and more than their share, to th