onger; their prodigality required new plunder, and through
the East India article tea they hoped to transfer their rapine from that
quarter of the world to this. Every designed quarrel had its pretence;
and the same barbarian avarice accompanied the plant to America, which
ruined the country that produced it.

That men never turn rogues without turning fools is a maxim, sooner or
later, universally true. The commencement of hostilities, being in the
beginning of April, was, of all times the worst chosen: the Congress
were to meet the tenth of May following, and the distress the continent
felt at this unparalleled outrage gave a stability to that body which
no other circumstance could have done. It suppressed too all inferior
debates, and bound them together by a necessitous affection, without
giving them time to differ upon trifles. The suffering likewise softened
the whole body of the people into a degree of pliability, which laid the
principal foundation-stone of union, order, and government; and which,
at any other time, might only have fretted and then faded away
unnoticed and unimproved. But Providence, who best knows how to time her
misfortunes as well as her immediate favors, chose this to be the time,
and who dare dispute it?

It did not seem the disposition of the people, at this crisis, to
heap petition upon petition, while the former remained unanswered. The
measure however was carried in Congress, and a second petition was sent;
of which I shall only remark that it was submissive even to a dangerous
fault, because the prayer of it appealed solely to what it called the
prerogative of the crown, while the matter in dispute was confessedly
constitutional. But even this petition, flattering as it was, was
still not so harmonious as the chink of cash, and consequently not
sufficiently grateful to the tyrant and his ministry. From every
circumstance it is evident, that it was the determination of the British
court to have nothing to do with America but to conquer her fully and
absolutely. They were certain of success, and the field of battle was
the only place of treaty. I am confident there are thousands and tens of
thousands in America who wonder now that they should ever have thought
otherwise; but the sin of that day was the sin of civility; yet it
operated against our present good in the same manner that a civil
opinion of the devil would against our future peace.

Independence was a doctrine scarce and rar