( 12 )
Thus you may save the good citizens: for you may save every body. Keep to the plan of domination, you save nobody. The first victims are the very persons you are so solicitous to save: so at least it is in two great islands: for there they are already overpowered. Then comes your armament, with double destruction at its heels: if it is repulsed, you are disappointed and disgraced; if it conquers, then come beheadings and confiscations. Such are the two plans. Which then do you choose? Universal safety, or reciprocal destruction? Abhorrence, or admiration? The curses of your friends, or the benedictions of your enemies?
But suppose the Colonists unanimous, and unanimous in your favour, ought you even then to keep them? By no means: they are a million or two: you are five or six-and-twenty millions. Think not that because I mentioned them first, it is for their sake in the first place that I wish to see them free. No: it is the mischief you do yourselves by maintaining this unnatural domination; it is the mischief to the six-and-twenty millions, that occupies a much higher place in my thoughts.
