Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/531

No. 178] But who has told you that the English had signed the decree of outlawry launched against the Americans? — Brave Germans, you have been deceived ; do not degrade by such a suspicion a nation which has produced great men and fine laws, which long nourished in her bosom the sacred fire of liberty, and which deserves, from these claims, consideration and respect. — Alas ! in the British Isles, as in the rest of the world, a small number of ambitious men stir up the people, and produce public calamities. The critical moment has arrived : England, unhappy nation, is at war with her brothers only because despotism, for several years, has been waging there a successful contest against liberty. Do not believe therefore that you are defending the cause of the English ; you are fighting to increase the authority of a few ministers whom they abhor and scorn.

Do you wish to know the true motives which put arms in your hands?

Vain luxury, despicable expenditures have ruined the finances of the princes who govern you ; their extortions have utterly drained their resources ; they have too often deceived the confidence of their neighbors to be able to have recourse to them again. They would therefore have to give up that excessive luxury, those every-recurring whims, which are their most important occupation; they can not make up their minds to it, they will not do so. England, drained of men and money, is purchasing at great expense money and men ; your princes seize eagerly this temporary and ruinous resource ; they levy soldiers, they sell them, they deliver them : that is the employment of your arms ; that is for what you are destined. Your blood will be the price of corruption and the plaything of ambition. This money which has just been acquired by trafficking in your lives, will pay shameful debts or help to contract new ones. An avaricious usurer, a vile courtesan, a base actor, are going to receive these guineas given in exchange for your existence.

O blind spendthrifts, who gamble with men's lives, and waste the: fruits of their toil, of their sweat, of their substance, a tardy repentance, heart-rending remorse, will be your executioners, but will not relieve those nations which you trample upon ; you will regret your husband men and their crops, your soldiers, your subjects ; you will weep over the misfortunes which you will have wrought with your own hands, and which will involve you together with all your people. A formidable neighbor smiles at your blindness, and is preparing to take advantage of it ; he is already forging the fetters with which he plans to load you ;