Your lordship wishes for an opportunity to plead before Congress the
cause of England and America, and to save, as you say, both from ruin.
That the country, which, for more than seven years has sought our
destruction, should now cringe to solicit our protection, is adding
the wretchedness of disgrace to the misery of disappointment; and if
England has the least spark of supposed honor left, that spark must be
darkened by asking, and extinguished by receiving, the smallest
favor from America; for the criminal who owes his life to the grace
and mercy of the injured, is more executed by living, than he who
dies.
But a thousand pleadings, even from your lordship, can have no
effect. Honor, interest, and every sensation of the heart, would plead
against you. We are a people who think not as you think; and what is
equally true, you cannot feel as we feel. The situations of the two
countries are exceedingly different. Ours has been the seat of war;
yours has seen nothing of it. The most wanton destruction has been
committed in our sight; the most insolent barbarity has been acted
on our feelings. We can look round and see the remains of burnt and
destroyed houses, once the fair fruit of hard industry, and now the
striking monuments of British brutality. We walk over the dead whom we
loved, in every part of America, and remember by whom they fell. There
is scarcely a village but brings to life some melancholy thought,
and reminds us of what we have suffered, and of those we have lost
by the inhumanity of Britain.
Pages:
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263