heir honest pride, and wantonly overturning establishments
judged to be just and convenient by the public wisdom of this nation at
their institution, and which long and inveterate use has taught you to
look up to with affection and reverence. As we disapproved of the
proceedings with regard to the forms of your constitution, so we are
equally tender of every leading principle of free government. We never
could think with approbation of putting the military power out of the
coercion of the civil justice in the country where it acts.

We disclaim also any sort of share in that other measure which has been
used to alienate your affections from this country,--namely, the
introduction of foreign mercenaries. We saw their employment with shame
and regret, especially in numbers so far exceeding the English forces as
in effect to constitute vassals, who have no sense of freedom, and
strangers, who have no common interest or feelings, as the arbiters of
our unhappy domestic quarrel.

We likewise saw with shame the African slaves, who had been sold to you
on public faith, and under the sanction of acts of Parliament, to be
your servants and your guards, employed to cut the throats of their
masters.

You will not, we trust, believe, that, born in a civilized country,
formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living in
enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is softened
from its original sternness, we could have thought of letting loose upon
you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce tribes of savages and
cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature are effaced by ignorance
and barbarity. We rather wished to have joined with you in bringing
gradually that unhappy part of mankind into civility, order, piety, and
virtuous discipline, than to have confirmed their evil habits and
increased their natural ferocity by fleshing them in the slaughter of
you, whom our wiser and better ancestors had sent into the wilderness
with the express view of introducing, along with our holy religion, its
humane and charitable manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful
in war. We should think that every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in
murders, in tortures, and other cruelties, too horrible and too full of
turpitude for Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done at our
instigation, by those who we know will make war thus, if they make it at
all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if don