Great Britain is
supposed to have been placed upon the globe; but the Colonies, (that is, her limbs,) being severed from her,
she is seen lifting her eyes and mangled stumps to heaven; her
shield, which she is unable to wield, lies useless by her side; her
lance has pierced New England: the laurel branch has fallen from
the hand of Pennsylvania: the English oak has lost its head, and
stands a bare trunk, with a few withered branches; briars and
thorns are on the ground beneath it; the British ships have brooms
at their top-mast heads, denoting their being on sale; and
Britannia herself is seen sliding off the
world, (no longer able to hold its balance) her fragments
overspread with the label, Date Obolum
Bellisario.
History affords us many instances of the ruin
of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper
and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of
one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of
another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken
policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights,
privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and
ought to enjoy; it being a matter of no moment to the state,
whether a subject grows rich and flourishing on the Thames or the
Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin. These measures never fail to create
great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people
favored and the people oppressed: whence a total separation of
affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of
connections, necessarily ensue, by which the whole state is
weakened, and perhaps ruined for ever!