Nothing less will content me
than whole America. I do not choose to consume its strength along with
our own, because in all parts it is the British strength that I consume.
I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this
exhausting conflict; and still less in the midst of it. I may escape;
but I can make no insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do
not choose to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that
has made the country.
In the character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the
predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as
an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become
suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt
to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicanery, what
they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of
liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other
people of the earth.
Sir, from these six sources--of descent, of form of government, of
religion in the northern provinces, of manners in the southern, of
education, of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of
government--from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown
up.
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