When subordinate communities oppose the decrees of the general
legislature with defiance thus audacious, and malignity thus
acrimonious, nothing remains but to conquer or to yield; to allow their
claim of independence, or to reduce them, by force, to submission and
allegiance.
It might be hoped, that no Englishman could be found, whom the menaces
of our own colonists, just rescued from the French, would not move to
indignation, like that of the Scythians, who, returning from war, found
themselves excluded from their own houses by their slaves.
That corporations, constituted by favour, and existing by sufferance,
should dare to prohibit commerce with their native country, and threaten
individuals by infamy, and societies with, at least, suspension of
amity, for daring to be more obedient to government than themselves, is
a degree of insolence which not only deserves to be punished, but of
which the punishment is loudly demanded by the order of life and the
peace of nations.
Yet there have risen up, in the face of the publick, men who, by
whatever corruptions, or whatever infatuation, have undertaken to defend
the Americans, endeavour to shelter them from resentment, and propose
reconciliation without submission.
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