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Page 10
In England a king hath little more to do than to make war
and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish
the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed
for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for,
and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man
to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians
that ever lived.
THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AMERICAN AFFAIRS
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts,
plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other Preliminaries
to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice
and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine
for themselves; that he will put ON, or rather that he will not put OFF
the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond
the present day.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between
England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy,
from different motives, and with various designs; but all have been
ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last
resource, decide this contest; the appeal was the choice of the king,
and the continent hath accepted the challenge.
It hath been reported of the late Mr. Pelham (who tho' an
able minister was not without his faults) that on his being
attacked in the house of commons, on the score, that his measures
were only of a temporary kind, replied "THEY WILL LAST MY TIME."
Should a thought so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies
in the present contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered
by future generations with detestation.
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not
the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom, but of
a continent--of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe.
'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are
virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less
affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.
Now is the seed-time of continental union, faith and honour.
The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point
of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge
with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.
By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new aera
for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen.
All plans, proposals, &c. prior to the nineteenth of April,
i. e. to the commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacs
of the last year; which, though proper then are superseded
and useless now. Whatever was advanced by the advocates on
either side of the question then, terminated in one and the
same point. viz. a union with Great-Britain: the only difference
between the parties was the method of effecting it; the one
proposing force, the other friendship; but it hath so far
happened that the first hath failed, and the second hath
withdrawn her influence.
As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation which,
like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were,
it is but right, that we should examine the contrary side
of the argument, and inquire into some of the many material injuries
which these colonies sustain, and always will sustain,
by being connected with, and dependent on Great Britain:
To examine that connection and dependence, on the principles
of nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to,
if separated, and what we are to expect, if dependant.
I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath
flourished under her former connection with Great Britain
that the same connection is necessary towards her future
happiness, and will always have the same effect.
Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument.
We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk
that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years
of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.
But even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly,
that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more,
had no European power had any thing to do with her. The commerce,
by which she hath enriched herself, are the necessaries of life,
and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.
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