e very civil, good sort of people, with whom we
find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity.
"Turks, Jews, and infidels"; Melimelli or the Little Turtle; barbarians
and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With
chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and trade. Name,
however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against
her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in
common with whom, we claim Shakespeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our
countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own
only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own
institutions has been borrowed: representation, jury trial, voting the
supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and criminal
jurisprudence; against our fellow Protestants, identified in blood, in
language, in religion, with ourselves. In what school did the worthies
of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of
America, learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly
asserted by their wisdom and valor? American resistance to British
usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and
their compatriots; not more by Washington, Hancock, and Henry, than by
Chatham and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It
ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was
with us. It was a selfish and corrupt ministry, and their servile tools,
to whom we were not more opposed than they were. I trust that none such
may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the
purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I
acknowledge the influence of a Shakespeare and a Milton upon my
imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sidney upon my
political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which, would to God I
possessed in common with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a
Sherlock, and a Porteus upon my religion. This is a British influence
which I can never shake off. I allow much to the just and honest
prejudices growing out of the Revolution. But by whom have they been
suppressed, when they ran counter to the interests of my country? By
Washington. By whom, would you listen to them, are they most keenly
felt? By felons escaped from the jails of Paris, Newgate, and
Kilmainham, since the breaking out of the French Revolution; who, in
this abus