ibly marked with that
tranquil confidence which cared nothing about its contents. It was
inquired after with a smile, read with a laugh, and dismissed with
disdain.

But, as justice is due, even to an enemy, it is right to say, that the
speech is as well managed as the embarrassed condition of their affairs
could well admit of; and though hardly a line of it is true, except the
mournful story of Cornwallis, it may serve to amuse the deluded commons
and people of England, for whom it was calculated.

"The war," says the speech, "is still unhappily prolonged by that
restless ambition which first excited our enemies to commence it, and
which still continues to disappoint my earnest wishes and diligent
exertions to restore the public tranquillity."

How easy it is to abuse truth and language, when men, by habitual
wickedness, have learned to set justice at defiance. That the very man
who began the war, who with the most sullen insolence refused to answer,
and even to hear the humblest of all petitions, who has encouraged
his officers and his army in the most savage cruelties, and the most
scandalous plunderings, who has stirred up the Indians on one side, and
the negroes on the other, and invoked every aid of hell in his behalf,
should now, with an affected air of pity, turn the tables from himself,
and charge to another the wickedness that is his own, can only be
equalled by the baseness of the heart that spoke it.

To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right, is an
expression I once used on a former occasion, and it is equally
applicable now. We feel something like respect for consistency even in
error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the
vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable: and amongst the
various assumptions of character, which hypocrisy has taught, and men
have practised, there is none that raises a higher relish of disgust,
than to see disappointed inveteracy twisting itself, by the most visible
falsehoods, into an appearance of piety which it has no pretensions to.

"But I should not," continues the speech, "answer the trust committed
to the sovereign of a free people, nor make a suitable return to my
subjects for their constant, zealous, and affectionate attachment to my
person, family and government, if I consented to sacrifice, either to
my own desire of peace, or to their temporary ease and relief, those
essential rights and permanent interests, upon the