rfection of
national glory, you may, with all the pride of criminal happiness,
expire unenvied and unrivalled. But when the tumult of war shall cease,
and the tempest of present passions be succeeded by calm reflection, or
when those, who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy
of debts and misfortunes, when the yearly revenue scarcely be able to
discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for
the other, ideas far different from the present will arise, and embitter
the remembrance of former follies. A mind disarmed of its rage feels no
pleasure in contemplating a frantic quarrel. Sickness of thought, the
sure consequence of conduct like yours, leaves no ability for enjoyment,
no relish for resentment; and though, like a man in a fit, you feel
not the injury of the struggle, nor distinguish between strength and
disease, the weakness will nevertheless be proportioned to the violence,
and the sense of pain increase with the recovery.

To what persons or to whose system of politics you owe your present
state of wretchedness, is a matter of total indifference to America.
They have contributed, however unwillingly, to set her above themselves,
and she, in the tranquillity of conquest, resigns the inquiry. The case
now is not so properly who began the war, as who continues it. That
there are men in all countries to whom a state of war is a mine of
wealth, is a fact never to be doubted. Characters like these naturally
breed in the putrefaction of distempered times, and after fattening
on the disease, they perish with it, or, impregnated with the stench,
retreat into obscurity.

But there are several erroneous notions to which you likewise owe a
share of your misfortunes, and which, if continued, will only increase
your trouble and your losses. An opinion hangs about the gentlemen
of the minority, that America would relish measures under their
administration, which she would not from the present cabinet. On this
rock Lord Chatham would have split had he gained the helm, and several
of his survivors are steering the same course. Such distinctions in
the infancy of the argument had some degree of foundation, but they now
serve no other purpose than to lengthen out a war, in which the limits
of a dispute, being fixed by the fate of arms, and guaranteed by
treaties, are not to be changed or altered by trivial circumstances.

The ministry, and many of the minority, sacrifice their time in
disputi