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Page 11
But she has protected us, say some. That she has engrossed
us is true, and defended the continent at our expense as well
as her own is admitted, and she would have defended Turkey
from the same motive, viz. the sake of trade and dominion.
Alas, we have been long led away by ancient prejudices,
and made large sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted
the protection of Great Britain, without considering,
that her motive was INTEREST not ATTACHMENT; that she
did not protect us from OUR ENEMIES on OUR ACCOUNT,
but from HER ENEMIES on HER OWN ACCOUNT, from those
who had no quarrel with us on any OTHER ACCOUNT,
and who will always be our enemies on the SAME ACCOUNT.
Let Britain wave her pretensions to the continent,
or the continent throw off the dependence, and we should
be at peace with France and Spain were they at war with Britain.
The miseries of Hanover last war ought to warn us against connections.
It has lately been asserted in parliament, that the colonies
have no relation to each other but through the parent country,
i. e. that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so on for the rest,
are sister colonies by the way of England; this is certainly
a very round-about way of proving relationship, but it is the
nearest and only true way of proving enemyship, if I may so call it.
France and Spain never were, nor perhaps ever will be our enemies
as AMERICANS, but as our being the subjects of GREAT BRITAIN.
But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame
upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young,
nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion,
if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true,
or only partly so and the phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY
hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites,
with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias
on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England,
is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum
for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART
of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but
from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England,
that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home,
pursues their descendants still.
In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits
of three hundred and sixty miles (the extent of England)
and carry our friendship on a larger scale; we claim brotherhood
with every European Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.
It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations
we surmount the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge
our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town
in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate most
with his fellow-parishioners (because their interests in many
cases will be common) and distinguish him by the name of NEIGHBOUR;
if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea
of a street, and salutes him by the name of TOWNSMAN; if he travel out
of the county, and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions
of street and town, and calls him COUNTRYMAN, i. e. COUNTRYMAN;
but if in their foreign excursions they should associate in France
or any other part of EUROPE, their local remembrance would be enlarged
into that of ENGLISHMEN. And by a just parity of reasoning,
all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe,
are COUNTRYMEN; for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared
with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale,
which the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones;
distinctions too limited for continental minds. Not one third of
the inhabitants, even of this province, are of English descent.
Wherefore I reprobate the phrase of parent or mother country applied
to England only, as being false, selfish, narrow and ungenerous.
But admitting, that we were all of English descent, what does
it amount to? Nothing. Britain, being now an open enemy,
extinguishes every other name and title: And to say that
reconciliation is our duty, is truly farcical. The first
king of England, of the present line (William the Conqueror)
was a Frenchman, and half the Peers of England are descendants
from the same country; therefore, by the same method of reasoning,
England ought to be governed by France.
Much hath been said of the united strength of Britain and the colonies,
that in conjunction they might bid defiance to the world. But this
is mere presumption; the fate of war is uncertain, neither do
the expressions mean any thing; for this continent would never suffer
itself to be drained of inhabitants, to support the British arms
in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.
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