would fetch a curse from the soul of piety itself. But in this
country the aggravation is heightened by a new combination of
affecting circumstances. America was young, and, compared with other
countries, was virtuous. None but a Herod of uncommon malice would
have made war upon infancy and innocence: and none but a people of
the most finished fortitude, dared under those circumstances, have
resisted the tyranny. The natives, or their ancestors, had fled from
the former oppressions of England, and with the industry of bees had
changed a wilderness into a habitable world. To Britain they were
indebted for nothing. The country was the gift of heaven, and God
alone is their Lord and Sovereign.

The time, sir, will come when you, in a melancholy hour, shall reckon
up your miseries by your murders in America. Life, with you, begins
to wear a clouded aspect. The vision of pleasurable delusion is
wearing away, and changing to the barren wild of age and sorrow. The
poor reflection of having served your king will yield you no
consolation in your parting moments. He will crumble to the same
undistinguished ashes with yourself, and have sins enough of his own
to answer for. It is not the farcical benedictions of a bishop, nor
the cringing hypocrisy of a court of chaplains, nor the formality of
an act of Parliament, that can change guilt into innocence, or make
the punishment one pang the less. You may, perhaps, be unwilling to
be serious, but this destruction of the goods of Providence, this
havoc of the human race, and this sowing the world with mischief,
must be accounted for to him who made and governs it. To us they are
only present sufferings, but to him they are deep rebellions.

If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful and
offensive war. Most other sins are circumscribed within narrow