You felt none
for others; you deserve none for yourselves. Nature does not
interest herself in cases like yours, but, on the contrary, turns from
them with dislike, and abandons them to punishment. You may now
present memorials to what court you please, but so far as America is
the object, none will listen. The policy of Europe, and the propensity
there in every mind to curb insulting ambition, and bring cruelty to
judgment, are unitedly against you; and where nature and interest
reinforce with each other, the compact is too intimate to be
dissolved.
Make but the case of others your own, and your own theirs, and you
will then have a clear idea of the whole. Had France acted towards her
colonies as you have done, you would have branded her with every
epithet of abhorrence; and had you, like her, stepped in to succor a
struggling people, all Europe must have echoed with your own
applauses. But entangled in the passion of dispute you see it not as
you ought, and form opinions thereon which suit with no interest but
your own. You wonder that America does not rise in union with you to
impose on herself a portion of your taxes and reduce herself to
unconditional submission. You are amazed that the southern powers of
Europe do not assist you in conquering a country which is afterwards
to be turned against themselves; and that the northern ones do not
contribute to reinstate you in America who already enjoy the market
for naval stores by the separation. You seem surprised that Holland
does not pour in her succors to maintain you mistress of the seas,
when her own commerce is suffering by your act of navigation; or
that any country should study her own interest while yours is on the
carpet.
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