Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/351

Rh because the creditors had no right of constraint over the debtors. They were before the war, matters of perfect external obligation, accompanied by a right of constraint; but the war having taken away this right of constraint over the debtors, they were changed into an internal obligation, binding the conscience only. For it will not surely be denied, that the creditor lost the right of constraint over his debtor. From the authority of this respectable author, therefore—from the clearest principles of the laws of nature and nations, these debts became subject to forfeiture or remission. Those authors state, in language as emphatic and nervous as the human mind can conceive, or the human tongue can utter, that independent nations have the power of confiscating the property of their enemies: and so had this gallant nation. America, being a sovereign and complete nation, in all its forms and departments, possessed all the rights of the most powerful and ancient nations. Respecting the power of legislation, it was a nation complete, and without human control. Respecting public justice, it was a nation blessed by heaven, with the experience of past times; not like those nations, whose crude systems of jurisprudence originated in the ages of barbarity and ignorance of human rights. America was a sovereign nation, when her sons stepped forth, to resist the unjust hand of oppression, and declared themselves independent. The consent of Great Britain was not necessary, (as the gentlemen on the other side urge,) to create us a nation. Yes, sir, we were a nation, long before the monarch of that little island in the Atlantic ocean, gave his puny assent to it. (These words he accompanied by a most significant gesture—rising on tiptoe—pointing as to a vast distance, and half closing his eye-lids, as if endeavouring, with