uct and will at
last most assuredly deceive and ruin you.

If ever a nation was made and foolish, blind to its own interest and
bent on its own destruction, it is Britain. There are such things as
national sins, and though the punishment of individuals may be reserved
to another world, national punishment can only be inflicted in this
world. Britain, as a nation, is, in my inmost belief, the greatest and
most ungrateful offender against God on the face of the whole earth.
Blessed with all the commerce she could wish for, and furnished, by
a vast extension of dominion, with the means of civilizing both the
eastern and western world, she has made no other use of both than
proudly to idolize her own "thunder," and rip up the bowels of whole
countries for what she could get. Like Alexander, she has made war her
sport, and inflicted misery for prodigality's sake. The blood of India
is not yet repaid, nor the wretchedness of Africa yet requited. Of
late she has enlarged her list of national cruelties by her butcherly
destruction of the Caribbs of St. Vincent's, and returning an answer by
the sword to the meek prayer for "Peace, liberty and safety." These
are serious things, and whatever a foolish tyrant, a debauched court,
a trafficking legislature, or a blinded people may think, the national
account with heaven must some day or other be settled: all countries
have sooner or later been called to their reckoning; the proudest
empires have sunk when the balance was struck; and Britain, like an
individual penitent, must undergo her day of sorrow, and the sooner it
happens to her the better. As I wish it over, I wish it to come, but
withal wish that it may be as light as possible.

Perhaps your lordship has no taste for serious things; by your
connections in England I should suppose not; therefore I shall drop this
part of the subject, and take it up in a line in which you will better
understand me.

By what means, may I ask, do you expect to conquer America? If you could
not effect it in the summer, when our army was less than yours, nor
in the winter, when we had none, how are you to do it? In point of
generalship you have been outwitted, and in point of fortitude outdone;
your advantages turn out to your loss, and show us that it is in our
power to ruin you by gifts: like a game of drafts, we can move out of
one square to let you come in, in order that we may afterwards take
two or three for one; and as we can always keep a