It is not, Gentlemen, it is not to respect the dispensations of Providence, nor to provide any decent retreat in the mutability of human affairs.  It leaves no medium between insolent victory and infamous defeat.  It tends to alienate our minds further and further from our natural regards, and to make an eternal rent and schism in the British nation.  Those who do not wish for such a separation would not dissolve that cement of reciprocal esteem and regard which can alone bind together the parts of this great fabric.  It ought to be our wish, as it is our duty, not only to forbear this style of outrage ourselves, but to make every one as sensible as we can of the impropriety and unworthiness of the tempers which give rise to it, and which designing men are laboring with such malignant industry to diffuse amongst us.  It is our business to counteract them, if possible,—­if possible, to awake our natural regards, and to revive the old partiality to the English name.  Without something of this kind I do not see how it is ever practicable really to reconcile with those whose affection, after all, must be the surest hold of our government, and which is a thousand times more worth to us than the mercenary zeal of all the circles of Germany.

I can well conceive a country completely overrun, and miserably wasted, without approaching in the least to settlement.  In my apprehension, as long as English government is attempted to be supported over Englishmen by the sword alone, things will thus continue.  I anticipate in my mind the moment of the final triumph of foreign military force.  When that hour arrives, (for it may arrive,) then it is that all this mass of weakness and violence will appear in its full light.  If we should be expelled from America, the delusion of the partisans of military government might still continue.  They might still feed their imaginations with the possible good consequences which might have attended success.  Nobody could prove the contrary by facts.  But in case the sword should do all that the sword can do, the success of their arms and the defeat of their policy will be one and the same thing.  You will never see any revenue from America.  Some increase of the means of corruption, without ease of the public burdens, is the very best that can happen.  Is it for this that we are at war,—­and in such a war?

As to the difficulties of laying once more the foundations of that government which, for the sake of conquering what was our own, has been voluntarily and wantonly pulled down by a court faction here, I tremble to look at them.  Has any of these gentlemen who are so eager to govern all mankind shown himself possessed of the first qualification towards government, some knowledge of the object, and of the difficulties which occur in the task they have undertaken?

I assure you, that, on the most prosperous issue of your arms, you will not be where you stood when you called in war to supply the defects of your political establishment.  Nor would any disorder or disobedience to government which could arise from the most abject concession on our part ever equal those which will be felt after the most triumphant violence.  You have got all the intermediate evils of war into the bargain.