words, _to tear them by the arbitrary
power of Parliament, from the arms of their families and friends, and
drag them not only to dreary but distant dungeons_. Yet this act was
contrived some years before the breaking out of hostilities. And
again, though the blood of martyrs and patriots had not streamed on
the scaffolds, it streamed in the streets, in the massacre of the
inhabitants of Boston, by the British soldiery in the year 1770.

Had the Abbe said that the causes which produced the revolution in
America were originally _different_ from those which produced
revolutions in other parts of the globe, he had been right. Here the
value and quality of liberty, the nature of government, and the
dignity of man, were known and understood, and the attachment of the
Americans to these principles produced the revolution, as a natural
and almost unavoidable consequence. They had no particular family to
set up or pull down. Nothing of personality was incorporated with
their cause. They started even-handed with each other, and went no
faster into the several stages of it, than they were driven by the
unrelenting and imperious conduct of Britain. Nay, in the last act,
the declaration of independence, they had nearly been too late; for
had it not been declared at the exact time it was, I saw no period in
their affairs since, in which it could have been declared with the
same effect, and probably not at all.

But the object being formed before the reverse of fortune took place,
that is, before the operations of the gloomy campaign of 1776, their
honour, their interest, their everything, called loudly on them to
maintain it; and that glow of thought and energy of heart, which even
distant prospect of independence inspires, gave confidence to their
hopes, and resolution to their conduct, which a state of dependence
could never have reached. They looked forward to happier days and
scenes of rest, and qualified the hardships of the campaign by
contemplating the establishment of their new-born system.

If, on the other hand, we take a review of what part great Britain has
acted, we shall find every thing which ought to make a nation blush.
The most vulgar abuse, accompanied by that species of haughtiness
which distinguishes the hero of a mob from the character of a
gentleman; it was equally as much from her manners as from her
injustice that she lost the colonies. By the latter she provoked their
principles, by the former she wore