War & Peace Quote by Mercy Otis Warren

“Extraordinary exertions” is Warren’s genteel way of saying: we bled for the empire, and you know it. The line reads like a ledger entry, but it’s actually a pressure point, pressing Parliament’s own earlier praise into service as evidence for the prosecution. By anchoring her claim in what “the British parliament” already “acknowledged,” Warren weaponizes official language against official power. It’s not a plea for sympathy; it’s an indictment dressed as civility.

The context is the post-Seven Years’ War hangover, when Britain looked at its swollen debt and decided the colonies should help pay, notably through measures like the Stamp Act and Townshend duties. Warren’s sentence reaches back to the “late war” (the French and Indian War in North America) to remind readers that colonial manpower, money, and logistics weren’t incidental. They were, by Parliament’s own admission, “more than adequate” relative to colonial “ability” - a key moral metric in eighteenth-century political argument. Taxation isn’t just a financial question here; it’s a question of proportional obligation and violated reciprocity.

The subtext is sharper: if the colonies already gave beyond their capacity when asked, Britain’s new demands aren’t partnership but extraction. Warren’s careful phrasing also anticipates a propaganda battle. As a playwright and polemicist, she understands tone as strategy: restraint signals credibility, while the repeated emphasis on British acknowledgment preempts charges of colonial exaggeration. She’s building a record, not venting - and that’s why the sentence lands like a quiet legal brief that doubles as revolutionary fuel.