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Page 23
First. Because it will come to that one time or other.
Secondly. Because, the longer it is delayed the harder
it will be to accomplish.
I have frequently amused myself both in public and private
companies, with silently remarking, the specious errors
of those who speak without reflecting. And among the many
which I have heard, the following seems the most general, viz.
that had this rupture happened forty or fifty years hence,
instead of NOW, the Continent would have been more able
to have shaken off the dependance. To which I reply, that our
military ability, AT THIS TIME, arises from the experience
gained in the last war, and which in forty or fifty years time,
would have been totally extinct. The Continent, would not,
by that time, have had a General, or even a military officer left;
and we, or those who may succeed us, would have been as ignorant
of martial matters as the ancient Indians: And this single position,
closely attended to, will unanswerably prove, that the present time
is preferable to all others. The argument turns thus--at the conclusion
of the last war, we had experience, but wanted numbers;
and forty or fifty years hence, we should have numbers,
without experience; wherefore, the proper point of time,
must be some particular point between the two extremes,
in which a sufficiency of the former remains, and a proper
increase of the latter is obtained: And that point of time
is the present time.
The reader will pardon this digression, as it does not properly
come under the head I first set out with, and to which I again return
by the following position, viz.
Should affairs be patched up with Britain, and she to remain the governing
and sovereign power of America, (which, as matters are now circumstanced,
is giving up the point entirely) we shall deprive ourselves of the very means
of sinking the debt we have, or may contract. The value of the back lands
which some of the provinces are clandestinely deprived of, by the unjust
extension of the limits of Canada, valued only at five pounds sterling
per hundred acres, amount to upwards of twenty-five millions,
Pennsylvania currency; and the quit-rents at one penny sterling per acre,
to two millions yearly.
It is by the sale of those lands that the debt may be sunk,
without burthen to any, and the quit-rent reserved thereon,
will always lessen, and in time, will wholly support the yearly
expence of government. It matters not how long the debt is in
paying, so that the lands when sold be applied to the discharge
of it, and for the execution of which, the Congress for the time
being, will be the continental trustees.
I proceed now to the second head, viz. Which is the easiest
and most practicable plan, RECONCILIATION or INDEPENDANCE;
With some occasional remarks.
He who takes nature for his guide is not easily beaten out of his argument,
and on that ground, I answer GENERALLY--THAT _INDEPENDANCE_
BEING A _SINGLE SIMPLE LINE,_ CONTAINED WITHIN OURSELVES;
AND RECONCILIATION, A MATTER EXCEEDINGLY PERPLEXED AND COMPLICATED,
AND IN WHICH, A TREACHEROUS CAPRICIOUS COURT IS TO INTERFERE,
GIVES THE ANSWER WITHOUT A DOUBT.
The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is
capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any
other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy.
Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which,
is nevertheless subject to change, and which, every secret enemy is
endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, Legislation
without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name;
and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending
for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never
existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property
of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind
of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before
them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal;
there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself
at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories dared not have assembled
offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited
to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should be drawn, between,
English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of America taken in arms.
The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors.
The one forfeits his liberty, the other his head.
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