Note 282 — CONCLUSION

It is very difficult to make the mass of mankind believe that the state of things is ever to be otherwise than they have been accustomed to see it. I have very often heard old persons describe the impossibility of making any one believe that the American colonies could ever be separated from this country. It was always considered as an idle dream of discontented politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of a speech, but which no practical man, devoid of the spirit of party, considered to be within the limits of possibility. There was a period when the slightest concession would have satisfied the Americans; but all the world was in heroics; one set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, and another at the Lion: blood and treasure men, breathing war, vengeance, and contempt; and in eight years afterwards, an awkward looking gentleman in plain clothes walked up to the drawing-room of St. James's, in the midst of the gentlemen of the Lion and Lamb, and was introduced as the ambassador from the United States of America.—Works of Sidney Smith, Vol. III., p. 336.

"If you are told of the existence of discontent in any of your colonial possessions, do not believe it; and if any application be made to you for the redress of the grievances of any of your colonial possessions, reject the prayer at once; for if you grant that, you may be asked for something more. Redress no grievance, lest it should lead to a petition for the removal of another cause of complaint. Believe only the accounts which reach you from governors, and others officially connected with your colonies; and treat any statements in opposition to their accounts as the invention of demagogues, whom you should hang if you could catch them, and thus tranquillize the colony."—Franklin.