out their temper; and it ought to
be held out as an example to the world, to shew how necessary it is to
conduct the business of government with civility. In short, other
revolutions may have originated in caprice, or generated in ambition,
but here, the most unoffending humility was tortured into rage, and
the infancy of existence made to weep.

A union so extensive, continued and determined, suffering with
patience, and never in despair, could not have been produced by common
causes. It must be something capable of reaching the whole soul of man
and arming it with perpetual energy. In vain it is to look for
precedents among the revolutions of former ages, to find out, by
comparison, the causes of this. The spring, the progress, the object,
the consequences, nay the men, their habits of thinking, and all the
circumstances of the country, are different. Those of other nations
are, in general, little more than the history of their quarrels. They
are marked by no important character in the annals of events; mixt in
the mass of general matters, they occupy but a common page; and while
the chief of the successful partizans stept into power, the plundered
multitude sat down and sorrowed. Few, very few of them are accompanied
with reformation, either in government or manners; many of them with
the most consummate profligacy.--Triumph on the one side, and misery
on the other, were the only events. Pains, punishments, torture, and
death, were made the business of mankind, until compassion, the
fairest associate of the heart, was driven from its place; and the
eye, accustomed to continual cruelty, could behold it without offence.

But as the principles of the present resolution differed from those
which preceded it, so likewise has the conduct of America, both in
government and war. Neither the foul finger of disgrace, nor the
bloody hand of vengeance has hitherto put a blot upon her fame. Her
victories have received lustre from a greatness of lenity; and her
laws been permitted to slumber, where they might justly have awakened
to punish. War, so much the trade of the world, has here been only the
business of necessity; and when the necessity shall cease, her very
enemies must confess, that as she drew the sword in her just defence,
she used it without cruelty, and sheathed it without revenge.

As it is not my design to extend these remarks to a history, I shall
now take my leave of this passage of the Abbe, with an observatio