Page:Common sense - addressed to the inhabitants of America.djvu/28

20 be included within the following decriptions. Intereted men who are not to be truted, weak men who cannot ee, prejudiced men who will not ee, and a certain ett of moderate men who think better of the European world than it deerves; and this lat clas, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the caue of more calamities to this Continent, than all the other three.

It is the good fortune of many to live ditant from the cene of preent orrow; the evil is not ufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariounes with which all American property is poeed. But let our imaginations tranport us for a few moments to Boton; that feat of wretchednes will teach us widom, and intruct us for ever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trut. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in eae and affluence, have now no other alternative than to tay and tarve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by government if they leave it. In their preent condition they are prioners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief, they would be expoed to the fury of both armies.

Men of paive tempers look omewhat lightly over the offences of Britain, and till hoping for the bet, are apt to call out, "come, come, we hall be friends again for all this." But examine the paions and feelings of mankind: Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchtone of nature, and then tell me, whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully erve, the power that hath carried fire and word into your land? If you cannot do all thee, then are you only deceiving yourelves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon poterity. Your future connexion with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of preent convenience, will in a little time fall into a relape more wretched than the firt. But if you ay, you can till pas the violations over, than I ak, hath your houe been burnt? Hath your property been detroyed before your face? Are your wife and children detitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lot a parent or a child by their hands, and yourelf the ruined and wretched urvivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of thoe who have. But if you have, and till can hake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of huband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the pirit of a ycophant.

This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by thoe feelings and affections which nature jutifies, and without which, we hould be incapable of dicharging the ocial duties of life, or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpoe of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly lumbers, that we may purue determinately ome fixed object. It is not in the power of England or of Europe to conquer