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.

Then I say, is England already ruined, for America is already
independent: and if Lord Shelburne will not allow this, he immediately
denies the fact which he infers. Besides, to make England the mere
creature of America, is paying too great a compliment to us, and too
little to himself.

But the declaration is a rhapsody of inconsistency. For to say, as Lord
Shelburne has numberless times said, that the war against America is
ruinous, and yet to continue the prosecution of that ruinous war for
the purpose of avoiding ruin, is a language which cannot be understood.
Neither is it possible to see how the independence of America is to
accomplish the ruin of England after the war is over, and yet not affect
it before. America cannot be more independent of he