, and it was necessary
they should incense them against us, by assigning on their own part
some seeming reputable reason why. By dividing, it had a tendency to
weaken the States, and likewise to perplex the adherents of America in
England. But the principal scheme, and that which has marked their
character in every part of their conduct, was a design of
precipitating the colonies into a state which they might afterwards
deem rebellion, and, under that pretence, put an end to all future
complaints, petitions and remonstrances, by seizing the whole at once.
They had ravaged one part of the globe, till it could glut them no
longer; 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.
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