But not for one moment would he fight them to compel their return to British allegiance.

If the American colonies want to go, let them by all means cut adrift.

They are only a useless source of expenditure.

The trade they represent does not depend upon allegiance but upon wants that England can supply if she keeps shop in the proper way, if, that is, she makes it to their interest to buy in her market.

Indeed, colonies of all kinds seem to him quite useless.
They ever are, he says, and ever were, "a drain to and an incumbrance on the Mother-country, requiring perpetual and expensive nursing in their infancy, and becoming headstrong and ungovernable in proportion as they grow up." All wise relations depend upon self-interest, and that needs no compulsion.