is, can be
pursued, which is not attended with some mischief; none but conceited
pretenders in public business will hold any other language: and none but
weak and unexperienced men will believe them, if they should. If we were
found in such a crisis, let those, whose bold designs, and whose
defective arrangements, brought us into it, answer for the consequences.
The business of the then ministry evidently was, to take such steps, not
as the wishes of our author, or as their own wishes dictated, but as the
bad situation in which their predecessors had left them, absolutely
required.

The disobedience to this act was universal throughout America; nothing,
it was evident, but the sending a very strong military, backed by a very
strong naval force, would reduce the seditious to obedience. To send it
to one town, would not be sufficient; every province of America must be
traversed, and must be subdued. I do not entertain the least doubt but
this could be done. We might, I think, without much difficulty, have
destroyed our colonies. This destruction might be effected, probably in
a year, or in two at the utmost. If the question was upon a foreign
nation, where every successful stroke adds to your own power, and takes
from that of a rival, a just war with such a certain superiority would
be undoubtedly an advisable measure. But _four million_ of debt due to
our merchants, the total cessation of a trade annually worth _four
million_more, a large foreign traffic, much home manufacture, a very
capital immediate revenue arising from colony imports, indeed the
produce of every one of our revenues greatly depending on this trade,
all these were very weighty accumulated considerations, at least well to
be weighed, before that sword was drawn, which even by its victories
must produce all the evil effects of the greatest national defeat. How
public credit must have suffered, I need not say. If the condition of
the nation, at the close of our foreign war, was what this author
represents it, such a civil war would have been a bad couch, on which
to repose our wearied virtue. Far from being able to have entered into
new plans of economy, we must have launched into a new sea, I fear a
boundless sea, of expense. Such an addition of debt, with such a
diminution of revenue and trade, would have left us in no want of a
"State of the Nation" to aggravate the picture of our distresses.

Our trade felt this to its vitals; and our then ministers