She invaded no land of yours. She hired no mercenaries
to burn your towns, nor Indians to massacre their inhabitants. She
wanted nothing from you, and was indebted for nothing to you: and thus
circumstanced, her defence is honorable and her prosperity is certain.
Yet it is not on the justice only, but likewise on the importance of
this cause that I ground my seeming enthusiastical confidence of our
success. The vast extension of America makes her of too much value
in the scale of Providence, to be cast like a pearl before swine, at
the feet of an European island; and of much less consequence would
it be that Britain were sunk in the sea than that America should
miscarry. There has been such a chain of extraordinary events in the
discovery of this country at first, in the peopling and planting it
afterwards, in the rearing and nursing it to its present state, and in
the protection of it through the present war, that no man can doubt,
but Providence has some nobler end to accomplish than the
gratification of the petty elector of Hanover, or the ignorant and
insignificant king of Britain.
As the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Christian
church, so the political persecutions of England will and have already
enriched America with industry, experience, union, and importance.
Before the present era she was a mere chaos of uncemented colonies,
individually exposed to the ravages of the Indians and the invasion of
any power that Britain should be at war with. She had nothing that she
could call her own.
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