If the principles of all he has said and wrote on the occasion be viewed
with common temper, the gentlemen of the party will perceive, that, on a
supposition that the Americans had rebelled merely in order to enlarge
their liberty, Mr. Burke would have thought very differently of the
American cause. What might have been in the secret thoughts of some of
their leaders it is impossible to say. As far as a man so locked up as
Dr. Franklin could be expected to communicate his ideas, I believe he
opened them to Mr. Burke. It was, I think, the very day before he set
out for America that a very long conversation passed between them, and
with a greater air of openness on the Doctor's side than Mr. Burke had
observed in him before. In this discourse Dr. Franklin lamented, and
with apparent sincerity, the separation which he feared was inevitable
between Great Britain and her colonies. He certainly spoke of it as an
event which gave him the greatest concern. America, he said, would never
again see such happy days as she had passed under the protection of
England.
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