of the
country.[2]

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Extract from, "_A short Review of the present Reign_," in England.
_Page 45, in the New Annual Register for the year 1780_.

"_THE Commissioners, who, in consequence of Lord North's
conciliatory bills, went over to America, to propose terms of
peace to the colonies, were wholly unsuccessful. The concessions
which formerly would have been received with the utmost
gratitude, were rejected with disdain. Now was the time of
American pride and haughtiness. It is probable, however, that it
was not pride and haughtiness alone that dictated the
Resolutions of Congress, but a distrust of the sincerity of the
offers of Britain, a determination not to give up their
independence, and_ ABOVE ALL, THE ENGAGEMENTS INTO WHICH _I_
HAD ENTERED BY THEIR LATE TREATY WITH FRANCE."

But this passionate encomium of the Abbe is deservedly subject to
moral and philosophical objections. It is the effusion of wild
thinking, and has a tendency to prevent that humanity of reflection
which the criminal conduct of Britain enjoins on her as a duty.--It is
a laudanum to courtly iniquity.--It keeps in intoxicated sleep the
conscience of a nation; and more mischief is effected by wrapping up
guilt in splendid excuse, than by directly patronizing it.

Britain is now the only country which holds the world in disturbance
and war; and instead of paying compliments to the excess of her
crimes, the Abbe would have appeared much more in character, had he
put to her, or to her monarch, this serious question--

Are there not miseries enough in the world, too difficult to be
encountered and too pointed to be borne, without studying to enlarge
the list and arming it with new destruction? Is life so very long,
that it is necessary, nay even a duty, to shake the sand, and hasten
out the period of duration? Is the path so elegantly smooth, so decked
on every side, and carpeted with joys, that wretchedness is wanting to
enrich it as a soil? Go ask thine aching heart, when sorrow from a
thousand causes wounds it, go, ask thy sickened self when every
medicine fails, whether this be the case or not?

Quitting my remarks on this head, I proceed to another, in which the
Abbe has let loose a vein of ill-nature, and, what is still worse, of
injustice.

After caviling at the treaty, he goes on to characterize the several
parties combined in the war.--"Is it possible," says the Abbe, "th