both these
characters till no addition can be made, and has not reputation left
with us to obtain credit for the slightest promise. The will of God has
parted us, and the deed is registered for eternity. When she shall be
a spot scarcely visible among the nations, America shall flourish the
favorite of heaven, and the friend of mankind.

For the domestic happiness of Britain and the peace of the world, I
wish she had not a foot of land but what is circumscribed within her own
island. Extent of dominion has been her ruin, and instead of civilizing
others has brutalized herself. Her late reduction of India, under Clive
and his successors, was not so properly a conquest as an extermination
of mankind. She is the only power who could practise the prodigal
barbarity of tying men to mouths of loaded cannon and blowing them away.
It happens that General Burgoyne, who made the report of that horrid
transaction, in the House of Commons, is now a prisoner with us,
and though an enemy, I can appeal to him for the truth of it, being
confident that he neither can nor will deny it. Yet Clive received the
approbation of the last Parliament.

When we take a survey of mankind, we cannot help cursing the wretch,
who, to the unavoidable misfortunes of nature, shall wilfully add the
calamities of war. One would think there were evils enough in the world
without studying to increase them, and that life is sufficiently short
without shaking the sand that measures it. The histories of Alexander,
and Charles of Sweden, are the histories of human devils; a good man
cannot think of their actions without abhorrence, nor of their deaths
without rejoicing. To see the bounties of heaven destroyed, the
beautiful face of nature laid waste, and the choicest works of creation
and art tumbled into ruin, would fetch a curse from the soul of piety
itself. But in this country the aggravation is heightened by a new
combination of affecting circumstances. America was young, and, compared
with other countries, was virtuous. None but a Herod of uncommon malice
would have made war upon infancy and innocence: and none but a people
of the most finished fortitude, dared under those circumstances, have
resisted the tyranny. The natives, or their ancestors, had fled from the
former oppressions of England, and with the industry of bees had changed
a wilderness into a habitable world. To Britain they were indebted for
nothing. The country was the gift of heaven, and