第76章

But a thousand pleadings, even from your lordship, can have no effect.Honor, interest, and every sensation of the heart, would plead against you.We are a people who think not as you think; and what is equally true, you cannot feel as we feel.The situations of the two countries are exceedingly different.Ours has been the seat of war;yours has seen nothing of it.The most wanton destruction has been committed in our sight; the most insolent barbarity has been acted on our feelings.We can look round and see the remains of burnt and destroyed houses, once the fair fruit of hard industry, and now the striking monuments of British brutality.We walk over the dead whom we loved, in every part of America, and remember by whom they fell.There is scarcely a village but brings to life some melancholy thought, and reminds us of what we have suffered, and of those we have lost by the inhumanity of Britain.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.You were not contented while you had her, and to weep for her now is childish.

But Lord Shelburne thinks something may yet be done.What that something is, or how it is to be accomplished, is a matter in obscurity.By arms there is no hope.The experience of nearly eight years, with the expense of an hundred million pounds sterling, and the loss of two armies, must positively decide that point.Besides, the British have lost their interest in America with the disaffected.

Every part of it has been tried.There is no new scene left for delusion: and the thousands who have been ruined by adhering to them, and have now to quit the settlements which they had acquired, and be conveyed like transports to cultivate the deserts of Augustine and Nova Scotia, has put an end to all further expectations of aid.

If you cast your eyes on the people of England, what have they to console themselves with for the millions expended? Or, what encouragement is there left to continue throwing good money after bad?

America can carry on the war for ten years longer, and all the charges of government included, for less than you can defray the charges of war and government for one year.And I, who know both countries, know well, that the people of America can afford to pay their share of the expense much better than the people of England can.Besides, it is their own estates and property, their own rights, liberties and government, that they are defending; and were they not to do it, they would deserve to lose all, and none would pity them.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.