Chains need not be put upon those who will
be restrained without them. This contest may end in the softer phrase of
English superiority and American obedience.
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution
of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious
politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious,
how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers
of negroes?
But let us interrupt awhile this dream of conquest, settlement, and
supremacy. Let us remember, that being to contend, according to one
orator, with three millions of whigs, and, according to another, with
ninety thousand patriots of Massachusetts bay, we may possibly be
checked in our career of reduction. We may be reduced to peace upon
equal terms, or driven from the western continent, and forbidden to
violate, a second time, the happy borders of the land of liberty. The
time is now, perhaps, at hand, which sir Thomas Browne predicted,
between jest and earnest:
"When America should no more send out her treasure,
But spend it at home in American pleasure."
If we are allowed, upon our defeat, to stipulate conditions, I hope the
treaty of Boston will permit us to import into the confederated cantons
such products as they do not raise, and such manufactures as they do not
make, and cannot buy cheaper from other nations, paying, like others,
the appointed customs; that, if an English ship salutes a fort with four
guns, it shall be answered, at least, with two; and that, if an
Englishman be inclined to hold a plantation, he shall only take an oath
of allegiance to the reigning powers, and be suffered, while he lives
inoffensively, to retain his own opinion of English rights, unmolested
in his conscience by an oath of abjuration.
Pages:
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394