both these characters till no addition can be made, and has not
reputation left with us to obtain credit for the slightest promise.
The will of God has parted us, and the deed is registered for
eternity. When she shall be a spot scarcely visible among the
nations, America shall flourish the favorite of heaven, and the
friend of mankind.

For the domestic happiness of Britain and the peace of the world, I
wish she had not a foot of land but what is circumscribed within her
own island. Extent of dominion has been her ruin, and instead of
civilizing others has brutalized herself. Her late reduction of
India, under Clive and his successors, was not so properly a conquest
as an extermination of mankind. She is the only power who could
practise the prodigal barbarity of tying men to mouths of loaded
cannon and blowing them away. It happens that General Burgoyne, who
made the report of that horrid transaction, in the House of Commons,
is now a prisoner with us, and though an enemy, I can appeal to him
for the truth of it, being confident that he neither can nor will
deny it. Yet Clive received the approbation of the last Parliament.

When we take a survey of mankind, we cannot help cursing the wretch,
who, to the unavoidable misfortunes of nature, shall wilfully add the
calamities of war. One would think there were evils enough in the
world without studying to increase them, and that life is
sufficiently short without shaking the sand that measures it. The
histories of Alexander, and Charles of Sweden, are the histories of
human devils; a good man cannot think of their actions without
abhorrence, nor of their deaths without rejoicing. To see the
bounties of heaven destroyed, the beautiful face of nature laid
waste, and the choicest works of creation and art tumbled into ruin,