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Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
The expression has been often used, and always with a fraudulent design; for when the idea of a natural enemy is conceived, it prevents all other inquiries, and the real cause of the quarrel is hidden in the universality of the conceit.
Never long satisfied with peace, she supposes the discontent universal, and buoyed up with her own importance, conceives herself the only object pointed at.
If any two nations are so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not nature but custom, and the offence frequently originates with the accuser.
The Creator of man did not constitute them the natural enemy of each other.
It admits, neither of peace, truce, or treaty; consequently the warfare is eternal, and therefore it is natural.
We have a perfect idea of a natural enemy when we think of the devil, because the enmity is perpetual, unalterable and unabateable.
There is not left a step in the degradation of character to which you can now descend; you have put your foot on the ground floor, and the key of the dungeon is turned upon you.
It exhibits you as a nation without faith; with whom oaths and treaties are considered as trifles, and the breaking them as the breaking of a bubble.
But there is something in corruption, which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees every thing stained and impure; for unless you were capable of such conduct yourselves, you would never…
The proposition is an universal affront to the rank which man holds in the creation, and an indignity to him who placed him there.
Were it possible a people could sink into such apostacy they would deserve to be swept from the earth like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Can Bedlam, in concert with Lucifer, form a more mad and devilish request?
We are invited to submit to a man who has attempted by every cruelty to destroy us, and to join him in making war against France, who is already at war against him for our support.
Say not when mischief is done, that you had not warning, and remember that we do not begin it, but mean to repay it.
If you openly profess yourselves savages, it is high time we should treat you as such, and if nothing but distress can recover you to reason, to punish will become an office of charity.
But be assured of this, that the instant you put your threat into execution, a counter-blow will follow it.
But think not, gentlemen, that our distance secures you, or our invention fails us.
It has never been the custom of France and England when at war, to make those havocs on each other, because the ease with which they could retaliate rendered it as impolitic as if each had destroyed his own.
We mean now to take you seriously up upon your own ground and principle, and as you do, so shall you be done by.
Repeated aggravations will provoke a retort, and policy justify the measure.
In France, we have found an affectionate friend and faithful ally; in Britain, we have found nothing but tyranny, cruelty, and infidelity.
I consider you in this declaration, like madmen biting in the hour of death.
Like men in a state of intoxication, you forget that the rest of the world have eyes, and that the same stupidity which conceals you from yourselves exposes you to their satire and contempt.
