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Updated: June 23, 2025
I have dwelt thus long on this point, because I know the pretender is the last refuge of those who defend a standing army; not that I propose to convince any man of the folly of such apprehensions, or to fortify him against such terrours for the time to come; for if any man, in reality, now dreads the pretender, fear must be his distemper; he is doomed to live in terrours, and it is of no importance whether he dreads an invasion or a goblin, whether he is afraid to disband the army, or to put out his candle in the night; his imagination is tainted, and he must be cured, not by argument, but by physick.
The more refined and penetrating part of mankind, who take wide surveys of the wilds of life, who see the innumerable terrours and distresses that are perpetually preying on the heart of man, and discern with unhappy perspicuity, calamities yet latent in their causes, are glad to close their eyes upon the gloomy prospect, and lose in a short insensibility the remembrance of others' miseries and their own.
That other evidence will appear against him when he shall be reduced, in consequence of our agreeing to this motion, to the level with his fellow-subjects, that all informations are now precluded by the terrours of resentment, or the expectations of favour, has been insinuated by the noble lord, who made the motion: whether his insinuation be founded only upon conjecture, whether it be one of those visions which are raised by hope in a warm imagination, or upon any private informations communicated to his lordship, I pretend not to determine; but if we may judge from the known conduct of the opposition, if we consider their frequent triumphs before the battle, and their chimerical schemes of discoveries, or prosecutions and punishments, their constant assurance of success upon the approach of a new contest, and their daily predictions of the ruin of the administration, we cannot but suspect that men so long accustomed to impose upon themselves, and flatter one another with fallacious hopes, may now, likewise, be dreaming of intelligence which they never will receive, and amusing themselves with suspicions which they have no reasonable expectation of seeing confirmed.
He was therefore contented, for a time, that I should accompany him in all his excursions. But his fear abated as he grew more familiar with its objects; and the contempt to which his rusticity exposed him from such of his companions as had accidentally known the town longer, obliged him to dissemble his remaining terrours.
For this purpose, sir, did this great man summon all his politicks together, and call to council all his confidants and all his dependants; and it was, at length, after mature deliberation, determined, by their united wisdom, to put more ships into commission, to aggravate the terrours of the impress by new violence and severity, to draw the sailors by the promise of large rewards from the service of the merchants, to collect a mighty fleet, and to despatch it on a secret expedition.
To treat such designs as serious, would be to think too contemptuously of Bostonian understandings. The artifice, indeed, is not new: the blusterer, who threatened in vain to destroy his opponent, has, sometimes, obtained his end, by making it believed, that he would hang himself. But terrours and pity are not the only means by which the taxation of the Americans is opposed.
I visited him near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much; the last words which I heard from him were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did freely submit to the will of God, being without fear; he had often triumphed over the king of terrours in others, and given many repulses in the defence of patients; but, when his own turn came, he submitted with a meek, rational, and religious courage.
It is now three months since I have been suffered to pay and receive visits, to dance at publick assemblies, to have a place kept for me in the boxes, and to play at lady Racker's rout; and you may easily imagine what I think of those who have so long cheated me with false expectations, disturbed me with fictitious terrours, and concealed from me all that I have found to make the happiness of woman.
Those, therefore, who advised his majesty to assert to the senate what they knew from no better authority, those whose daring insolence could make their sovereign instrumental in alarming the people with false terrours, and oppressing them with unnecessary burdens, well deserve to feel a senatorial censure.
Elevated with such success, and encouraged by such prospects, we ought surely, my lords, to press forward in a path, where we have hitherto found no difficulties, and which leads directly to solid peace and happiness, which no dangers or terrours can hereafter interrupt: we ought, instead of relaxing, to redouble our efforts; and to remember, that by exerting all our strength and all our influence for a short time, we shall not only secure ourselves and our posterity from insolence and oppression, but shall establish the tranquillity of the world, and promote the general felicity of the human species.
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