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.
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