The Abbe, in saying that the several particulars he has enumerated did
not exist in America, and neglecting to point out the particular
period in which the means they did not exist, reduces thereby his
declaration to a nullity, by taking away all meaning from the passage.

They did not exist in 1763, and they all existed before 1776;
consequently as there was a time when they did _not_, and another when
they _did_ exist, the _time when_ constitutes the essence of the fact;
and not to give it, is to withhold the only evidence which proves the
declaration right or wrong, and on which it must stand or fall. But
the declaration as it now appears, unaccompanied by time, has an
effect in holding out to the world, that there was no real cause for
the revolution, because it denied the existence of all those causes
which are supposed to be justifiable, and which the Abbe styles
energetic.

I confess myself exceedingly at a loss to find out the time to which
the Abbe alludes; because, in another part of the work, in speaking of
the stamp act, which was passed in 1764, he styles it "An _usurpation_
of the Americans' _most precious and sacred rights_." Consequently he
here admits the most energetic of all causes, that is, _an usurpation
of their most precious and sacred rights_, to have existed in America
twelve years before the declaration of independence, and ten years
before the breaking out of hostilities. The time, therefore, in which
the paragraph is true, must be antecedent to the stamp act, but as at
that time there was no revolution, nor any idea of one, it
consequently applies without a meaning; and as it cannot, on the
Abbe's own principle, be applied to any time _after_ the stamp act, it
is therefore a wandering, solitary paragraph connected with nothing,