ustoms to
be exacted in America by act of Parliament, the seeds sown of a total
disunion of the countries, though as yet that event may be at a
considerable distance." By 1774 he said, in an article written for an
English newspaper, that certain "angry writers" on the English side were
using "their utmost efforts to persuade us that this war with the
colonies (for a war it will be) is a national cause, when in fact it is
a ministerial one." But he very rarely spoke thus. It was at once his
official duty as well as his strong personal wish to find some other
exit from the public embarrassments than by this direful conclusion.
Therefore, so long as war did not exist he refused to admit that it was
inevitable, and he spared no effort to prevent it, leaving to fervid
orators to declare the contrary and to welcome it; nor would he ever
allow himself to be discouraged by any measure of apparent hopelessness.

His great dread was that the colonies might go so fast and so far as to
make matters incurable before thinking people were ready to recognize
such a crisis as unavoidable. He seldom wrote home without some words
counseling moderation. He wanted to see "much patience and the utmost
discretion in our general conduct." It must not, however, be supposed
that such language was used to cover any lukewarmness, or irresolution,
or tendency towards halfway or temporizing measures. On the contrary, he
was wholly and consistently the opposite of all this. His moderation was
not at all akin to the moderation of Dickinson and such men, who were
always wanting to add another to the long procession of petitions and
protests. He only desired that the leading should be done by the wise
men, so as not to have a Braddock's defeat in so grave and perilous an
undertaking. He feared that a mob might make an irrevocable blunder, and
the mischievous rabble create a condition of affairs which the real
statesmen of the provinces could neither mend nor excuse. Certainly his
anxiety was not without cause. He warned his country people that there
was nothing which their enemies in England more wished than that, by
insurrections, they would give a good pretense for establishing a large
military force in the colonies. As between friends, he said, every
affront is not worth a duel, so "between the governed and governing
every mistake in government, every encroachment on right, is not worth a
rebellion." So he thought that an "immediate rupture" was not i