rench Alliance might have placed the United States in a
position somewhat similar to that of South Africa or to that of Ireland
if you like. The effect of British brutal and stupid violence on a high
strung and independence-loving people will always be very much the same
everywhere.

But to return to Washington's letter. You very likely read it when as a
young man you read Irving's life of him; but it never occurred to you to
think that his "predatory" and guerilla war was wicked. It was on your
side; you believed that his desire for the independence of the country
was just and right, and being so, could be rightfully supported by
predatory as well as regular warfare. Your youthful instinct was sound.
You had not then learned to worship mere financeering. You had not then
imbibed a passion for that part of the British constitution which
declares that any resistance whether in support of independence, home
or anything else which interferes with the operations of a financial
clique in London is a crime.

But when you see the principles and tactics of Washington and your own
great grandfather repeated in a country far off they seem different, and
when you see them turned against a country which gradually has come to
embody in your mind fashionable society, you think them very dreadful.
From your great grandfather's time to yours is a very short distance in
history but a long distance, it seems, in political morals.

The proposition for which you contend, or for which you profess to
contend, for I decline to believe that anyone of your name really
accepts such stuff, is nothing but the old principle of the bully and
brute. The little man must yield where his case is shown to be hopeless
and save the brute's time and money. After every battle of the
revolution the British and the loyalists thought that your ancestor and
his friends ought to give it up, and this went on for over seven years
in spite of the assistance of France.

I am inclined to think that if you were really put to the test you would
not live up to your own principles. I am inclined to think that if I and
several others, outnumbering you in the proportion of the English to the
Boers, should present revolvers and say that being men of better
business capacity we would now kindly take charge of your private
affairs and manage them for you to your great advantage, you would not
act quite as piously as you preach. The one or two drops of the blood of
old John