t
years, thousands and tens of thousands have advanced, and are daily
advancing into the first state of manhood, who know nothing of Britain
but as a barbarous enemy, and to whom the independence of America
appears as much the natural and established government of the country,
as that of England does to an Englishman. And on the other hand,
thousands of the aged, who had British ideas, have dropped and are
daily dropping, from the stage of business and life.--The natural
progress of generation and decay operates every hour to the
disadvantage of Britain. Time and death, hard enemies to contend with,
fight constantly against her interest; and the bills of mortality, in
every part of America, are the thermometers of her decline. The
children in the streets are from their cradle bred to consider her as
their only foe. They hear of her cruelties; of their fathers, uncles,
and kindred killed; they see the remains of burned and destroyed
houses, and the common tradition of the school they go to, tells them,
_those things were done by the British._

These are circumstances which the mere English state politician, who
considers man only in a state of manhood, does not attend to. He gets
entangled with parties coeval or equal with himself at home, and
thinks not how fast the rising generation in America is growing beyond
his knowledge of them, or they of him. In a few years all personal
remembrance will be lost, and who is king or minister in England, will
be but little known and scarcely inquired after.

The new British administration is composed of persons who have ever
been against the war, and who have constantly reprobated all the
violent measures of the former one. They considered the American war
as destructive to themselves, and opposed it on that ground. But what
are these things to America? She has nothing to do with English
parties. The ins and the outs are nothing to her. It is the whole
country she is at war with, or must be at peace with.

Were every minister in England a _Chatham_, it would now weigh little
or nothing in the scale of American politics. Death has preserved to
the memory of this statesman _that fame_, which he by living, would
have lost. His plans and opinions, towards the latter part of his
life, would have been attended with as many evil consequences, and as
much reprobated here, as those of Lord North; and considering him a
wise man, they abound with inconsistencies amounting to absurdities.