I could see no fair, justifiable expedience pleaded to favor this new suspension of the liberty of the subject.  If the English in the colonies can support the independency to which they have been unfortunately driven, I suppose nobody has such a fanatical zeal for the criminal justice of Henry the Eighth that he will contend for executions which must be retaliated tenfold on his own friends, or who has conceived so strange an idea of English dignity as to think the defeats in America compensated by the triumphs at Tyburn.  If, on the contrary, the colonies are reduced to the obedience of the crown, there must be, under that authority, tribunals in the country itself fully competent to administer justice on all offenders.  But if there are not, and that we must suppose a thing so humiliating to our government as that all this vast continent should unanimously concur in thinking that no ill fortune can convert resistance to the royal authority into a criminal act, we may call the effect of our victory peace, or obedience, or what we will, but the war is not ended; the hostile mind continues in full vigor, and it continues under a worse form.  If your peace be nothing more than a sullen pause from arms, if their quiet be nothing but the meditation of revenge, where smitten pride smarting from its wounds festers into new rancor, neither the act of Henry the Eighth nor its handmaid of this reign will answer any wise end of policy or justice.  For, if the bloody fields which they saw and felt are not sufficient to subdue the reason of America, (to use the expressive phrase of a great lord in office,) it is not the judicial slaughter which is made in another hemisphere against their universal sense of justice that will ever reconcile them to the British government.

I take it for granted, Gentlemen, that we sympathize in a proper horror of all punishment further than as it serves for an example.  To whom, then does the example of an execution in England for this American rebellion apply?  Remember, you are told every day, that the present is a contest between the two countries, and that we in England are at war for our own dignity against our rebellious children.  Is this true?  If it be, it is surely among such rebellious children that examples for disobedience should be made, to be in any degree instructive:  for who ever thought of teaching parents their duty by an example from the punishment of an undutiful son?  As well might the execution of a fugitive negro in the plantations be considered as a lesson to teach masters humanity to their slaves.  Such executions may, indeed, satiate our revenge; they may harden our hearts, and puff us up with pride and arrogance.  Alas! this is not instruction.

If anything can be drawn from such examples by a parity of the case, it is to show how deep their crime and how heavy their punishment will be, who shall at any time dare to resist a distant power actually disposing of their property without their voice or consent to the disposition, and overturning their franchises without charge or hearing.  God forbid that England should ever read this lesson written in the blood of any of her offspring!