He therefore, in two motions, in
two successive years, proposed in Parliament many concessions beyond
what he had reason to think in the beginning of the troubles would ever
be seriously demanded.
So circumstanced, he certainly never could and never did wish the
colonists to be subdued by arms. He was fully persuaded, that, if such
should be the event, they must be held in that subdued state by a great
body of standing forces, and perhaps of foreign forces. He was strongly
of opinion that such armies, first victorious over Englishmen, in a
conflict for English constitutional rights and privileges, and
afterwards habituated (though in America) to keep an English people in a
state of abject subjection, would prove fatal in the end to the
liberties of England itself; that in the mean time this military system
would lie as an oppressive burden upon the national finances; that it
would constantly breed and feed new discussions, full of heat and
acrimony, leading possibly to a new series of wars; and that foreign
powers, whilst we continued in a state at once burdened and distracted,
must at length obtain a decided superiority over us.
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