But even these considerations
must cease, when national objects interfere and oppose them.
Repeated aggravations will provoke a retort, and policy justify the
measure. We mean now to take you seriously up upon your own ground and
principle, and as you do, so shall you be done by.
You ought to know, gentlemen, that England and Scotland, are far
more exposed to incendiary desolation than America, in her present
state, can possibly be. We occupy a country, with but few towns, and
whose riches consist in land and annual produce. The two last can
suffer but little, and that only within a very limited compass. In
Britain it is otherwise. Her wealth lies chiefly in cities and large
towns, the depositories of manufactures and fleets of merchantmen.
There is not a nobleman's country seat but may be laid in ashes by a
single person. Your own may probably contribute to the proof: in
short, there is no evil which cannot be returned when you come to
incendiary mischief. The ships in the Thames, may certainly be as
easily set on fire, as the temporary bridge was a few years ago; yet
of that affair no discovery was ever made; and the loss you would
sustain by such an event, executed at a proper season, is infinitely
greater than any you can inflict. The East India House and the Bank,
neither are nor can be secure from this sort of destruction, and, as
Dr. Price justly observes, a fire at the latter would bankrupt the
nation. It has never been the custom of France and England when at
war, to make those havocs on each other, because the ease with which
they could retaliate rendered it as impolitic as if each had destroyed
his own.
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