The war, on the part of
Britain, was originally a war of covetousness. The sordid and not
the splendid passions gave it being. The fertile fields and prosperous
infancy of America appeared to her as mines for tributary wealth.
She viewed the hive, and disregarding the industry that had enriched
it, thirsted for the honey. But in the present stage of her affairs,
the violence of temper is added to the rage of avarice; and therefore,
that which at the first setting out proceeded from purity of principle
and public interest, is now heightened by all the obligations of
necessity; for it requires but little knowledge of human nature to
discern what would be the consequence, were America again reduced to
the subjection of Britain. Uncontrolled power, in the hands of an
incensed, imperious, and rapacious conqueror, is an engine of dreadful
execution, and woe be to that country over which it can be
exercised. The names of Whig and Tory would then be sunk in the
general term of rebel, and the oppression, whatever it might be,
would, with very few instances of exception, light equally on all.
Britain did not go to war with America for the sake of dominion,
because she was then in possession; neither was it for the extension
of trade and commerce, because she had monopolized the whole, and
the country had yielded to it; neither was it to extinguish what she
might call rebellion, because before she began no resistance
existed. It could then be from no other motive than avarice, or a
design of establishing, in the first instance, the same taxes in
America as are paid in England (which, as I shall presently show,
are above eleven times heavier than the taxes we now pay for the
present year, 1780) or, in the second instance, to confiscate the
whole property of America, in case of resistance and conquest of the
latter, of which she had then no doubt.
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