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HistRevolV2_551-600.indd 50 3/16/12 12:02 PM CHAPTER X X V I I I Peace proclaimed in America • General Carleton delays the Withdraw of the Troops from New York • Situation of the Loyalists-Efforts in their Favor by some Gentlemen in Parliament-Their final Destination-Their Dissatisfaction, and subsequent Conduct CHAP. xxvm [248] The discordant sounds of war that had long grated the ears of 1 7 s 3 the children of America, were now suspended, and the benign and heavenly voice of harmony soothed their wounded feelings, and they flattered themselves the dread summons to slaughter and death would not again resound on their shores. The independence of America acknowledged by the first powers in Europe, and even Great Britain willing to re-sheathe the sword on the same honorable terms for the United States, every prospect of tranquillity appeared. These were events for which the statesman had sighed in the arduous exertions of the cabinet; for which the hero had bared his breast, and the blood of the citizens had flowed in copious streams on the borders of the Atlantic, from the river St. Mary's to the St. Croix, on the eastern extreme of the American territory. Peace was proclaimed in the American army, [249] by order of the commander in chief, on the nineteenth of April, one thousand seven hundred eighty-three. This was just EIGHT YEARS from the memorable day, when the first blood was drawn in the contest between the American colonies and the parent state, in the fields of Concord and Lexington. The operation and consequences of the restoration of peace, were now the subject of contemplation. This opened objects of magnitude indeed, to a young republic, which had rapidly passed through the grades of youth and puberty, and was fast arriving to the age of maturity: a republic consisting of a number of confederated states, which by this time had received many as inhabitants, who were not originally from the stock of England. Some of them, indeed, were from more free governments, but others had fled from the slavery of 600 HistRevolV2_601-650.indd 1 3/16/12 12:03 PM VOLUME THREE 601 despotic courts; from their numbers and abilities they had become CHAP. xxvm respectable, and their opinions weighty in the political scale. From 1 1 8 3 these and other circumstances it might be expected, that in time, the general enthusiasm for a republican system ofgovernment in America, might languish, and new theories be adopted, or old ones modified under different names and terms, until the darling system of [250] the inhabitants of the United States, might be lost or forgotten in a growing rabiosity for monarchy. Symptoms of this nature, already began to appear in the language of some interested and ambitious men, who endeavoured to confound ideas, and darken opinion, by asserting that republicanism was an indefinite term. In social circles they frequently insinuated, that no precise meaning could be affixed to a word, by which the people were often deceived and led to pursue a shadow instead of an object of any real stability. This was indeed, more the language of art than principle, and seemed to augur the decline of public virtue in a free state. It required the utmost vigilance to guard against, and counteract designs thus secretly covered. It was not unexpected by the judicious observers of human conduct, that many contingencies might arise, to defeat or to render fruitless the efforts that had been made on the practicability of erecting and maintaining a pure, unadulterated, republican government. Time must unfold the futility of such an expectation, or establish the system on a basis, that will lead mankind to rejoice in the success of an experiment that has been too often tried in vain. Those who have been nurtured in [251] the dark regions of despotism, who have witnessed the sale of the peasantry with the glebe they have cultivated from infancy, and who have seen the fire and the son, transferred with the stables and the cattle, from master to master, cannot realize the success of a theory that has a tendency to exalt the species, and elevate the lower grades of mankind to a condition nearer to an equality with adventitious superiority. It is not wonderful, that a people of this description and education, should be incredulous of the utility of more free modes of government. They are naturally tenacious of old customs, habits, and their own fortuitous...

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