The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete: With Index to Volumes I - IVPaine, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete: With Index to Volumes I - IV
Paine, Thomas
Political science
The history of the most savage Indians does not produce instances
exactly of this kind. They, at least, have a formality in their
punishments. With them it is the horridness of revenge, but with your
army it is a still greater crime, the horridness of diversion. The
British generals who have succeeded each other, from the time of General
Gage to yourself, have all affected to speak in language that they have
no right to. In their proclamations, their addresses, their letters
to General Washington, and their supplications to Congress (for they
deserve no other name) they talk of British honor, British generosity,
and British clemency, as if those things were matters of fact; whereas,
we whose eyes are open, who speak the same language with yourselves,
many of whom were born on the same spot with you, and who can no more
be mistaken in your words than in your actions, can declare to all the
world, that so far as our knowledge goes, there is not a more detestable
character, nor a meaner or more barbarous enemy, than the present
British one. With us, you have forfeited all pretensions to reputation,
and it is only by holding you like a wild beast, afraid of your keepers,
that you can be made manageable. But to return to the point in question.
Though I can think no man innocent who has lent his hand to destroy
the country which he did not plant, and to ruin those that he could not
enslave, yet, abstracted from all ideas of right and wrong on the
original question, Captain Asgill, in the present case, is not the
guilty man. The villain and the victim are here separated characters.
You hold the one and we the other. You disown, or affect to disown and
reprobate the conduct of Lippincut, yet you give him a sanctuary; and by
so doing you as effectually become the executioner of Asgill, as if you
had put the rope on his neck, and dismissed him from the world. Whatever
your feelings on this interesting occasion may be are best known to
yourself. Within the grave of your own mind lies buried the fate of
Asgill. He becomes the corpse of your will, or the survivor of your
justice. Deliver up the one, and you save the other; withhold the one,
and the other dies by your choice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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