The fault
would be their own, and their punishment just.
The British army in America care not how long the war lasts. They
enjoy an easy and indolent life. They fatten on the folly of one
country and the spoils of another; and, between their plunder and
their prey, may go home rich. But the case is very different with
the laboring farmer, the working tradesman, and the necessitous poor
in England, the sweat of whose brow goes day after day to feed, in
prodigality and sloth, the army that is robbing both them and us.
Removed from the eye of that country that supports them, and distant
from the government that employs them, they cut and carve for
themselves, and there is none to call them to account.
But England will be ruined, says Lord Shelburne, if America is
independent.
Then I say, is England already ruined, for America is already
independent: and if Lord Shelburne will not allow this, he immediately
denies the fact which he infers. Besides, to make England the mere
creature of America, is paying too great a compliment to us, and too
little to himself.
But the declaration is a rhapsody of inconsistency. For to say, as
Lord Shelburne has numberless times said, that the war against America
is ruinous, and yet to continue the prosecution of that ruinous war
for the purpose of avoiding ruin, is a language which cannot be
understood. Neither is it possible to see how the independence of
America is to accomplish the ruin of England after the war is over,
and yet not affect it before.
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