of the British court. Their hope was conquest and confiscation. Good
heavens! what volumes of thanks does America owe to Britain? What
infinite obligation to the tool that fills, with paradoxical vacancy,
the throne! Nothing but the sharpest essence of villany, compounded
with the strongest distillation of folly, could have produced a
menstruum that would have effected a separation. The Congress in 1774
administered an abortive medicine to independence, by prohibiting the
importation of goods, and the succeeding Congress rendered the dose
still more dangerous by continuing it. Had independence been a
settled system with America, (as Britain has advanced,) she ought to
have doubled her importation, and prohibited in some degree her
exportation. And this single circumstance is sufficient to acquit
America before any jury of nations, of having a continental plan of
independence in view; a charge which, had it been true, would have
been honorable, but is so grossly false, that either the amazing
ignorance or the wilful dishonesty of the British court is
effectually proved by it.

The second petition, like the first, produced no answer; it was
scarcely acknowledged to have been received; the British court were
too determined in their villainy even to act it artfully, and in
their rage for conquest neglected the necessary subtleties for
obtaining it. They might have divided, distracted and played a
thousand tricks with us, had they been as cunning as they were cruel.

This last indignity gave a new spring to independence. Those who knew
the savage obstinacy of the king, and the jobbing, gambling spirit of
the court, predicted the fate of the petition, as soon as it was sent
from America; for the men being known, their measures were easily
foreseen. As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on