the injury of arms should fail in provoking them sufficiently, the
insult of such a declaration might fill it up. But by passing the
motion and getting it afterwards rejected in America, it enabled
them, in their wicked idea of politics, among other things, to hold
up the colonies to foreign powers, with every possible mark of
disobedience and rebellion. They had applied to those powers not to
supply the continent with arms, ammunition, etc., and it was
necessary they should incense them against us, by assigning on their
own part some seeming reputable reason why. By dividing, it had a
tendency to weaken the States, and likewise to perplex the adherents
of America in England. But the principal scheme, and that which has
marked their character in every part of their conduct, was a design
of precipitating the colonies into a state which they might
afterwards deem rebellion, and, under that pretence, put an end to
all future complaints, petitions and remonstrances, by seizing the
whole at once. They had ravaged one part of the globe, till it could
glut them no longer; their prodigality required new plunder, and
through the East India article tea they hoped to transfer their
rapine from that quarter of the world to this. Every designed quarrel
had its pretence; and the same barbarian avarice accompanied the
plant to America, which ruined the country that produced it.

That men never turn rogues without turning fools is a maxim, sooner
or later, universally true. The commencement of hostilities, being in
the beginning of April, was, of all times the worst chosen: the
Congress were to meet the tenth of May following, and the distress
the continent felt at this unparalleled outrage gave a stability to
that body which no other circumstance could have done. It suppressed
too all inferior debates, and bound them together by a necessitous
affection, without giving them time to differ upon trifles. The