darkened by asking, and extinguished by receiving, the smallest
favor from America; for the criminal who owes his life to the grace
and mercy of the injured, is more executed by living, than he who
dies.

  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.