(Goldsmith.)
[319]: Lord Chesterfield remarque qu'un Français d'alors n'entend point le mot de patrie; qu'il faut lui parler de son prince.
[320]: L'exécuteur de Charles Ier.
[321]: Montesquieu, liv. XIX, chap. XXVII.
[322]: Jugement d'Addison.
[323]: Junius a écrit sous l'anonyme et les critiques n'ont pu encore démêler avec certitude son véritable nom.—Pour Sheridan, voyez tome II, p. 85, et tome III, p. 408.—Pour Burke, tome III, p. 88.
[324]: But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now «none so poor to do her reverence.»
We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent oppressive acts: they must be repealed—you will repeal them; I pledge myself for it, that you will in the end repeal them; I stake my reputation on it:—I will consent to be taken for an idiot, if they are not finally repealed.
You may swell every expence, and every effort, still more extravagantly pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent—doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies;—to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never!
But, my Lords, who is the man, that in addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? To call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment; unless thoroughly done away, it will be a stain on the national character—it is a violation of the Constitution—I believe it is against law.