A thousand images arise to us, which,
from situation, you cannot see, and are accompanied by as many ideas
which you cannot know; and therefore your supposed system of reasoning
would apply to nothing, and all your expectations die of themselves.
The question whether England shall accede to the independence of
America, and which your lordship says is to undergo a parliamentary
discussion, is so very simple, and composed of so few cases, that it
scarcely needs a debate.
It is the only way out of an expensive and ruinous war, which has no
object, and without which acknowledgment there can be no peace.
But your lordship says, the sun of Great Britain will set whenever
she acknowledges the independence of America.- Whereas the metaphor
would have been strictly just, to have left the sun wholly out of
the figure, and have ascribed her not acknowledging it to the
influence of the moon.
But the expression, if true, is the greatest confession of
disgrace that could be made, and furnishes America with the highest
notions of sovereign independent importance. Mr. Wedderburne, about
the year 1776, made use of an idea of much the same kind,-
Relinquish America! says he- What is it but to desire a giant to
shrink spontaneously into a dwarf.
Alas! are those people who call themselves Englishmen, of so
little internal consequence, that when America is gone, or shuts her
eyes upon them, their sun is set, they can shine no more, but grope
about in obscurity, and contract into insignificant animals? Was
America, then, the giant of the empire, and England only her dwarf
in waiting! Is the case so strangely altered, that those who once
thought we could not live without them, are now brought to declare
that they cannot exist without us? Will they tell to the world, and
that from their first minister of state, that America is their all
in all; that it is by her importance only that they can live, and
breathe, and have a being? Will they, who long since threatened to
bring us to their feet, bow themselves to ours, and own that without
us they are not a nation? Are they become so unqualified to debate
on independence, that they have lost all idea of it themselves, and
are calling to the rocks and mountains of America to cover their
insignificance? Or, if America is lost, is it manly to sob over it
like a child for its rattle, and invite the laughter of the world by
declarations of disgrace? Surely, a more consistent line of conduct
would be to bear it without complaint; and to show that England,
without America, can preserve her independence, and a suitable rank
with other European powers.
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