Wesley Corpus

Did the King and Parliament undertake this war, on purpose to overturn a castle in the air, to destroy a constitution that never existed ? Or is this said purely ad movendam invidiam, “to inflame the minds of the people?” I would rather impute it to the power of preju dice; as also the following wonderful sentence: “How horrid, to sheathe our swords in the bowels of our brethren, for no other end than to make them acknowledge our supremacy l’” Yes, for this end,--to make them lay down their arms, which they have taken up against their lawful Sovereign; to make them restore what they have illegally and violently taken from their fellow-subjects; to make them repair the cruel wrongs they have done them, as far as the nature of the thing will aduit, and to make them allow to all that civil and religious liberty whereof they have at present deprived them. These are the ends for which our Government has very unwillingly undertaken this war, after having tried all the rmethods they could devise to secure them without violence. 44. Having considered the justice, you come now to consider the policy, of this war. “In the last reigns, the colonies, foregoing every advantage which they might derive from trading with foreign nations, consented to send only to us, whatever it was for our interest to receive from them; and to receive only from us, whatever it was for our interest to send them.” (Page 67.) They consented to do this / No ! they only pretended to do it; it was a mere copy of their countenance. They never did, in fact, abstain from trading with other nations, Holland and France in particular. They never did, at least for forty years past, conform to the Act of Navigation. They did not send only to us what we wanted, or receive only from us what they wanted. What I did they not “allow us to regulate their trade in any manner which we thought best?” (Page 68.) No such thing. They only allowed us to make laws to regulate their trade. But they observed them as they thought best; sometimes a little, sometimes not at all.