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Is consistency worth preserving? Is your boasted conquest-abjuring decree, that decree which might indeed be boasted of if it were kept, is that most beneficent of all laws to be any thing better than waste paper?—The letter, I fear, has been long broken: the spirit of it may be yet restored, and restored with added lustre. Set free your colonies, then every thing is as it should be. We incorporated Savoy and Avignon, you may say, because it was their wish to join us: we part with our distant brethren because like us they choose to be governed by themselves.—Mutual convenience sanctioned our compliance with the wishes of our foreign neighbours: mutual inconvenience, the result of unnatural conjunction, mutual inconvenience as soon as it was understood, made us follow and even anticipate the wishes of our distant fellow-citizens.—Reduction of the expences of defence was the inducement to our union with those whom we either bordered on or inclosed: the same advantage but in a much superior degree, rewards us for the respect we shew to the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of another hemisphere.—To neutral powers we give much cause for satisfaction, none for jealousy. Our acquirements are two small provinces: our sacrifices are besides continental
