en founded on the hope of
expectation of making the matter up--a hope, which, though general on
the side of America, had never entered the head or heart of the British
court. Their hope was conquest and confiscation. Good heavens! what
volumes of thanks does America owe to Britain? What infinite obligation
to the tool that fills, with paradoxical vacancy, the throne! Nothing
but the sharpest essence of villany, compounded with the strongest
distillation of folly, could have produced a menstruum that would have
effected a separation. The Congress in 1774 administered an abortive
medicine to independence, by prohibiting the importation of goods,
and the succeeding Congress rendered the dose still more dangerous by
continuing it. Had independence been a settled system with America, (as
Britain has advanced,) she ought to have doubled her importation, and
prohibited in some degree her exportation. And this single circumstance
is sufficient to acquit America before any jury of nations, of having
a continental plan of independence in view; a charge which, had it been
true, would have been honorable, but is so grossly false, that either
the amazing ignorance or the wilful dishonesty of the British court is
effectually proved by it.

The second petition, like the first, produced no answer; it was
scarcely acknowledged to have been received; the British court were too
determined in their villainy even to act it artfully, and in their rage
for conquest neglected the necessary subtleties for obtaining it. They
might have divided, distracted and played a thousand tricks with us, had
they been as cunning as they were cruel.

This last indignity gave a new spring to independence. Those who knew
the savage obstinacy of the king, and the jobbing, gambling spirit of
the court, predicted the fate of the petition, as soon as it was sent
from America; for the men being known, their measures were easily
foreseen. As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on
the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the reasonableness of
the person of whom we ask it: who would expect discretion from a fool,
candor from a tyrant, or justice from a villain?

As every prospect of accommodation seemed now to fail fast, men began to
think seriously on the matter; and their reason being thus stripped of
the false hope which had long encompassed it, became approachable by
fair debate: yet still the bulk of the people hesitated; they startled
at