Such
distinctions in the infancy of the argument had some degree of
foundation, but they now serve no other purpose than to lengthen out a
war, in which the limits of a dispute, being fixed by the fate of
arms, and guaranteed by treaties, are not to be changed or altered
by trivial circumstances.
The ministry, and many of the minority, sacrifice their time in
disputing on a question with which they have nothing to do, namely,
whether America shall be independent or not. Whereas the only question
that can come under their determination is, whether they will accede
to it or not. They confound a military question with a political
one, and undertake to supply by a vote what they lost by a battle. Say
she shall not be independent, and it will signify as much as if they
voted against a decree of fate, or say that she shall, and she will be
no more independent than before. Questions which, when determined,
cannot be executed, serve only to show the folly of dispute and the
weakness of disputants.
From a long habit of calling America your own, you suppose her
governed by the same prejudices and conceits which govern
yourselves. Because you have set up a particular denomination of
religion to the exclusion of all others, you imagine she must do the
same, and because you, with an unsociable narrowness of mind, have
cherished enmity against France and Spain, you suppose her alliance
must be defective in friendship. Copying her notions of the world from
you, she formerly thought as you instructed, but now feeling herself
free, and the prejudice removed, she thinks and acts upon a
different system.
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