If, on the other hand, we take a review of what part great Britain has acted, we shall find every thing which ought to make a nation blush.  The most vulgar abuse, accompanied by that species of haughtiness which distinguishes the hero of a mob from the character of a gentleman; it was equally as much from her manners as from her injustice that she lost the colonies.  By the latter she provoked their principles, by the former she wore out their temper; and it ought to be held out as an example to the world, to shew how necessary it is to conduct the business of government with civility.  In short, other revolutions may have originated in caprice, or generated in ambition, but here, the most unoffending humility was tortured into rage, and the infancy of existence made to weep.

A union so extensive, continued and determined, suffering with patience, and never in despair, could not have been produced by common causes.  It must be something capable of reaching the whole soul of man and arming it with perpetual energy.  In vain it is to look for precedents among the revolutions of former ages, to find out, by comparison, the causes of this.  The spring, the progress, the object, the consequences, nay the men, their habits of thinking, and all the circumstances of the country, are different.  Those of other nations are, in general, little more than the history of their quarrels.  They are marked by no important character in the annals of events; mixt in the mass of general matters, they occupy but a common page; and while the chief of the successful partizans stept into power, the plundered multitude sat down and sorrowed.  Few, very few of them are accompanied with reformation, either in government or manners; many of them with the most consummate profligacy.—­Triumph on the one side, and misery on the other, were the only events.  Pains, punishments, torture, and death, were made the business of mankind, until compassion, the fairest associate of the heart, was driven from its place; and the eye, accustomed to continual cruelty, could behold it without offence.

But as the principles of the present resolution differed from those which preceded it, so likewise has the conduct of America, both in government and war.  Neither the foul finger of disgrace, nor the bloody hand of vengeance has hitherto put a blot upon her fame.  Her victories have received lustre from a greatness of lenity; and her laws been permitted to slumber, where they might justly have awakened to punish.  War, so much the trade of the world, has here been only the business of necessity; and when the necessity shall cease, her very enemies must confess, that as she drew the sword in her just defence, she used it without cruelty, and sheathed it without revenge.

As it is not my design to extend these remarks to a history, I shall now take my leave of this passage of the Abbe, with an observation, which, until something unfolds itself to convince me otherwise, I cannot avoid believing to be true;—­which is, that it was the fixt determination of the British Cabinet to quarrel with America at all events.