ing of mine to set it off, for nature only can do it
justice.

But has any part of your conduct to America corresponded with the title
you set up? If in your general national character you are unpolished and
severe, in this you are inconsistent and unnatural, and you must have
exceeding false notions of national honor to suppose that the world can
admire a want of humanity or that national honor depends on the
violence of resentment, the inflexibility of temper, or the vengeance of
execution.

I would willingly convince you, and that with as much temper as the
times will suffer me to do, that as you opposed your own interest by
quarrelling with us, so likewise your national honor, rightly conceived
and understood, was no ways called upon to enter into a war with
America; had you studied true greatness of heart, the first and fairest
ornament of mankind, you would have acted directly contrary to all that
you have done, and the world would have ascribed it to a generous cause.
Besides which, you had (though with the assistance of this country)
secured a powerful name by the last war. You were known and dreaded
abroad; and it would have been wise in you to have suffered the world to
have slept undisturbed under that idea. It was to you a force existing
without expense. It produced to you all the advantages of real power;
and you were stronger through the universality of that charm, than any
future fleets and armies may probably make you. Your greatness was so
secured and interwoven with your silence that you ought never to have
awakened mankind, and had nothing to do but to be quiet. Had you been
true politicians you would have seen all this, and continued to draw
from the magic of a name, the force and authority of a nation.

Unwise as you were in breaking the charm, you were still more unwise
in the manner of doing it. Samson only told the secret, but you have
performed the operation; you have shaven your own head, and wantonly
thrown away the locks. America was the hair from which the charm was
drawn that infatuated the world. You ought to have quarrelled with no
power; but with her upon no account. You had nothing to fear from any
condescension you might make. You might have humored her, even if there
had been no justice in her claims, without any risk to your reputation;
for Europe, fascinated by your fame, would have ascribed it to your
benevolence, and America, intoxicated by the grant, would have slumbered
in he