. The principles of our forefathers become suspected to us,
because we see them animating the present opposition of our children.
The faults which grow out of the luxuriance of freedom appear much more
shocking to us than the {88} base vices which are generated from the
rankness of servitude. Accordingly, the least resistance to power
appears more inexcusable in our eyes than the greatest abuses of
authority. All dread of a standing military force is looked upon as a
superstitious panic. All shame of calling in foreigners and savages in
a civil contest is worn off. We grow indifferent to the consequences
inevitable to ourselves from the plan of ruling half the empire by a
mercenary sword. We are taught to believe that a desire of domineering
over our countrymen is love to our country, that those who hate civil
war abet rebellion, and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of
lenity, moderation, and tenderness of the privileges of those who
depend on this kingdom are a sort of treason to the state.

It is impossible that we should remain long in a situation which breeds
such notions and dispositions without some great alteration in the
national character. Those ingenuous and feeling minds who are so
fortified against all other things, and so unarmed to whatever
approaches in the shape of disgrace, finding these principles, which
they considered as sure means of honour, to be grown into disrepute,
will retire disheartened and disgusted. Those of a more robust make,
the bold, able, ambitious men who pay some of their court to power
through the people, and substitute the voice of transient opinion in
the place of true glory, will give in to the general mode; and those
superior understandings which ought to correct vulgar prejudice will
confirm and aggravate its errors. Many things have been long operating
towards a gradual change in our principles. {89} But this American war
has done more in a very few years than all the other causes could have
effected in a century. It is therefore not on its own separate
account, but because of its attendant circumstances that I consider its
continuance or its ending in any way but that of an honourable and
liberal accommodation as the greatest evils which can befall us. For
that reason I have troubled you with this long letter. For that reason
I entreat you again and again neither to be persuaded, shamed, or
frighted out of the principles that have hitherto led so many of