Wesley Corpus

“And the miseries of a public bankruptcy impending.” Just as they have done these hundred years. Fifty years ago I used to be much alarmed at things of this kind. When I heard a doleful prophecy of ruin impending on the nation, I really imagined something would follow. Nay, nothing in the world: These predictions are mere brutum fulmen; thunder without lightning. 46. Now for a little more of this fine painting ! But, remember 1 it is not drawn from the life. “A nation once the protector of liberty in distant countries, endeavouring to reduce its own brethren to servitude.” Say, to lay down the arms which they have taken up against their King and coun try. “Insisting upon such a supremacy over them as would leave them nothing they could call their own.” (Page 89.) Yes; the supremacy insisted on would leave them all the liberty, civil and religious, which they have had from their first settlement. You next compare them to the brave Corsicans, taking arms against the Genoese. But the Cor sicans were not colonies from Genoa: Therefore, there is nothing similar in the case. Neither in that you next quote, the case of Holland. You say, Yes: “The United Provinces of Holland were once subject to the Spaniards; but, being provoked by the violation of their charters, they were driven to that resistance which we and all the world have ever since admired.” (Page 90.) Provoked by the violation of their charters / yea, by the total subversion both of their religious and civil liberties; the taking away their goods, imprisoning their persons, and shedding their blood like water, without the least colour of right, yea, without the very form of law; inso much that the Spanish Governor, the Duke of Alva, made his open boast, that “in five years he had caused upwards of eighteen thousand persons to fall by the hands of the common hangman.” I pray, what has this to do with America? Add to this that the Hollanders were not colonies from Spain, but an independent people, who had the same right to govern Spain, as the Spaniards to govern Holland. 47. As another parallel case, you bring the war of the Romans with the allied states of Italy.