No human foresight can discern, no conclusion
can be formed, what turn a war might take, if once set on foot by an
invasion. She is not now in a fit disposition to make a common cause
of her own affairs, and having no conquests to hope for abroad, and
nothing but expenses arising at home, her everything is staked upon
a defensive combat, and the further she goes the worse she is off.
There are situations that a nation may be in, in which peace or war,
abstracted from every other consideration, may be politically right or
wrong. When nothing can be lost by a war, but what must be lost
without it, war is then the policy of that country; and such was the
situation of America at the commencement of hostilities: but when no
security can be gained by a war, but what may be accomplished by a
peace, the case becomes reversed, and such now is the situation of
England.
That America is beyond the reach of conquest, is a fact which
experience has shown and time confirmed, and this admitted, what, I
ask, is now the object of contention? If there be any honor in
pursuing self-destruction with inflexible passion- if national suicide
be the perfection of national glory, you may, with all the pride of
criminal happiness, expire unenvied and unrivalled. But when the
tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present passions be
succeeded by calm reflection, or when those, who, surviving its
fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes, when
the yearly revenue scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the
one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different
from the present will arise, and embitter the remembrance of former
follies.
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