Knowing to what violent resentments and incurable animosities, civil discords are apt to exasperate and inflame the contending parties, we think ourselves required by indispensable obligations to Almighty God, to your Majesty, to our fellow subjects, and to ourselves, immediately to use all the means in our power, not incompatible with our safety, for stopping the further effusion of blood, and for averting the impending calamities that threaten the British Empire."Not incompatible with our safety..."
We don't want trouble.
We're doing everything within reason to avoid trouble.
But damn it, there's a line that must not be crossed.
"We shall decline the ungrateful task of describing the irksome variety of artifices, practiced by many of your Majesty's Ministers, **the delusive presences, fruitless terrors, and unavailing severities, that have, from time to time, been dealt out by them**..."
ReplyDeleteAnd after this petition, it only got worse.
July 8, 1775. Almost a year to the day before they Declared "Enough!" And even then, it took the threat of losing all their arms to provoke them enough to go to war. What depredations might they have faced if they had let it happen? The question comes around again.