My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force,
and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without
resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no
further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought
by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and
defeated violence.
A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very
endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you
recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing
less will content me than WHOLE AMERICA. I do not choose to consume its strength
along with our own, because in all parts it is the British strength that I
consume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this
exhausting conflict; and still less in the midst of it. I may escape; but I can
make no insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly
to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that has made the
country.
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