limits, that is, the power of one man cannot give them a very general
extension, and many kinds of sins have only a mental existence from
which no infection arises; but he who is the author of a war, lets
loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a
nation to death. We leave it to England and Indians to boast of these
honors; we feel no thirst for such savage glory; a nobler flame, a
purer spirit animates America. She has taken up the sword of virtuous
defence; she has bravely put herself between Tyranny and Freedom,
between a curse and a blessing, determined to expel the one and
protect the other.

It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there
was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which
America is now engaged. She invaded no land of yours. She hired no
mercenaries to burn your towns, nor Indians to massacre their
inhabitants. She wanted nothing from you, and was indebted for
nothing to you: and thus circumstanced, her defence is honorable and
her prosperity is certain.

Yet it is not on the justice only, but likewise on the importance of
this cause that I ground my seeming enthusiastical confidence of our
success. The vast extension of America makes her of too much value in
the scale of Providence, to be cast like a pearl before swine, at the
feet of an European island; and of much less consequence would it be
that Britain were sunk in the sea than that America should miscarry.
There has been such a chain of extraordinary events in the discovery
of this country at first, in the peopling and planting it afterwards,
in the rearing and nursing it to its present state, and in the
protection of it through the present war, that no man can doubt, but
Providence has some nobler end to accomplish than the gratification