was nurtured by folly and rashness; it was founded on ideas totally subversive of the British Constitution; it was unjust and wicked in the extreme; it was carried on with violence and without prudence; and prosecuted in all its parts with the most unrelenting and unheard-of cruelty. In respect to the recovery of North America, he confessed that he had been "a very Quixote," and expected, because he most anxiously wished, that our Colonies might be prevailed upon to return to their "former state of connection" with this country. He had indeed pushed his expectations further, he believed, than any impartial person informed of all the circumstances both here and in America, the present Administration excepted, ever had: but his hopes had long since vanished. "He had waked," he said, "from those dreams of British dominion, and every important consequence which he flattered himself might be derived from them. But as in the course of what he might have urged in favour of those delusive hopes and vain and idle expectations, some expressions of a loose, general, and indeterminate nature, might have fallen from him, he wished to be perfectly understood. Much as he valued America; necessary as the possession of the Colonies might be to the power and independence of Great Britain; fatal as her final separation might prove, whenever that event might take place; as a friend to liberty, as a reverer of the English Constitution, as a lover of natural and political justice, he would be much better pleased to see America for ever severed from Great Britain, than restored to her possession by force of arms or conquest. He loved his country; he admired her political institutions; but if her future greatness, power, and extent of dominion were only to be established and maintained on the ruins of the Constitution, he would be infinitely better pleased to see this country free, though curtailed in power and wealth, than possessing everything the most sanguine expectation could picture to itself, if her greatness was to be purchased at the expense of her constitution and liberty."
Early in November, Grafton informed Shelburne, that
