se, and
naturally encourage the belief from a partiality to themselves. There
was a time when I felt the same prejudices, and reasoned from the
same errors; but experience, sad and painful experience, has taught me
better. What the conduct of former armies was, I know not, but what the
conduct of the present is, I well know. It is low, cruel, indolent and
profligate; and had the people of America no other cause for separation
than what the army has occasioned, that alone is cause sufficient.

The field of politics in England is far more extensive than that of
news. Men have a right to reason for themselves, and though they cannot
contradict the intelligence in the London Gazette, they may frame upon
it what sentiments they please. But the misfortune is, that a general
ignorance has prevailed over the whole nation respecting America. The
ministry and the minority have both been wrong. The former was always
so, the latter only lately so. Politics, to be executively right, must
have a unity of means and time, and a defect in either overthrows the
whole. The ministry rejected the plans of the minority while they were
practicable, and joined in them when they became impracticable. From
wrong measures they got into wrong time, and have now completed the
circle of absurdity by closing it upon themselves.

I happened to come to America a few months before the breaking out of
hostilities. I found the disposition of the people such, that they might
have been led by a thread and governed by a reed. Their suspicion was
quick and penetrating, but their attachment to Britain was obstinate,
and it was at that time a kind of treason to speak against it. They
disliked the ministry, but they esteemed the nation. Their idea of
grievance operated without resentment, and their single object was
reconciliation. Bad as I believed the ministry to be, I never conceived
them capable of a measure so rash and wicked as the commencing of
hostilities; much less did I imagine the nation would encourage it.
I viewed the dispute as a kind of law-suit, in which I supposed the
parties would find a way either to decide or settle it. I had no
thoughts of independence or of arms. The world could not then have
persuaded me that I should be either a soldier or an author. If I had
any talents for either, they were buried in me, and might ever have
continued so, had not the necessity of the times dragged and driven them
into action. I had formed my plan of lif