liberty, have been defended to this day by the remoteness of our situation
and of our fame. The extremity of Britain is now disclosed; and whatever
is unknown becomes an object of magnitude. But there is no nation beyond
us; nothing but waves and rocks, and the still more hostile Romans, whose
arrogance we cannot escape by obsequiousness and submission. These
plunderers of the world, after exhausting the land by their devastations,
are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by
ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people
who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to
slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they
make a desert, they call it peace. [114]

31. "Our children and relations are by the appointment of nature the
dearest of all things to us. These are torn away by levies to serve in
foreign lands. [115] Our wives and sisters, though they should escape the
violation of hostile force, are polluted under names of friendship and
hospitality. Our estates and possessions are consumed in tributes; our
grain in contributions. Even our bodies are worn down amidst stripes and
insults in clearing woods and draining marshes. Wretches born to slavery
are once bought, and afterwards maintained by their masters: Britain every
day buys, every day feeds, her own servitude. [116] And as among domestic
slaves every new comer serves for the scorn and derision of his fellows;
so, in this ancient household of the world, we, as the newest and vilest,
are sought out to destruction. For we have neither cultivated lands, nor
mines, nor harbors, which can induce them to preserve us for our labors.
The valor too and unsubmitting spirit of subjects only render them more
obnoxious to their masters; while remoteness and secrecy of situation
itself, in proportion as it conduces to security, tends to inspire
suspicion. Since then all Lopes of mercy are vain, at length assume
courage, both you to whom safety and you to whom glory is dear. The