This strange law is not made for a trivial object, not for a single
port, or for a single fortress, but for a great kingdom; for the
religion, the morals, the laws, the liberties, the lives and fortunes of
millions of human creatures, who without their consent, or that of
their lawful government, are, by an arbitrary act of this regicide and
homicide government, which they call a law, incorporated into their
tyranny.
In other words, their will is the law, not only at home, but as to
the concerns of every nation. Who has made that law but the regicide
republic itself, whose laws, like those of the Medes and Persians, they
cannot alter or abrogate, or even so much as take into consideration?
Without the least ceremony or compliment, they have sent out of the
world whole sets of laws and lawgivers. They have swept away the very
constitutions under which the legislators acted, and the laws were made.
Even the fundamental sacred rights of man they have not scrupled to
profane. They have set this holy code at naught with ignominy and scorn.
Thus they treat all their domestic laws and constitutions, and even what
they had considered as a law of nature; but whatever they have put
their seal on for the purposes of their ambition, and the ruin of their
neighbours, this alone is invulnerable, impassible, immortal. Assuming
to be masters of everything human and divine, here, and here alone, it
seems they are limited, "cooped and cabined in;" and this omnipotent
legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its
favourite attribute, the love of peace. In other words, they are
powerful to usurp, impotent to restore; and equally by their power and
their impotence they aggrandize themselves, and weaken and impoverish
you and all other nations.