Page:Common sense - addressed to the inhabitants of America.djvu/44

36 us at no los: And every line convinces, even in the moment of reading, that he who hunts the woods for prey, the naked and untutored Indian, is les a Savage than the King of Britain.

Sir John Dalrymple, the putative father of a whining jeuitical piece, fallaciouly called, "The addres of the people of England, to the inhabitants of America," hath, perhaps, from a vain uppoition, that the people here were to be frightened at the pomp and decription of a King, given (though very unwiely on his part) the real character of the preent one: "But," ays this writer, "if you are inclined to pay compliments to an adminitration which we do not complain of (meaning the Marquis of Rockingham's at the repeal of the tamp-act) it is very unfair in you to withhold them from that Prince by whoe they were permitted to do any thing. [sic]" This is Toryim with a witnes! Here is idolatry even without a mak: And he who can calmly hear and diget uch doctrine, hath forfeited his claim to rationality—an apotate from the order of manhood, and ought to be conidered—as one, who hath not only given up the proper dignity of man, but unk himelf beneath the rank of animals, and contemptibly crawl through the world like a worm.

However, it matters very little now, what the King of England either ays or does; he hath wickedly broken through every moral and human obligation, trampled nature and concience beneath his feet; and, by a teady and contitutional pirit of inolence and cruelty, procured for himelf an univeral hatred. It is now the interet of America to provide for herelf. She hath already a large and young family, whom it is more her duty to take care of, than to be granting away her property, to upport a power, who is become a reproach to the names of men and chritians.—, whoe office it is to watch over the morals of a nation, of whatoever ect or denomination ye are of, as well as ye, who are more immediately the guardians of the public liberty, if ye wih to preerve your native country uncontaminated by European corruption, ye mut in ecret wih a eparation.—But leaving the moral part to private reflection, I hall chiefly confine my farther remarks to the following heads:

Firt,—That it is the interet of America to be eparated from Britain.

Secondly,—Which is the eaiet and mot practicable plan, or ? with ome occaional remarks.

In upport of the firt, I could, if I judged it proper, produce the opinion of ome of the ablet and mot experienced men on this Continent; and whoe entiments on that head are not yet publicly known. It is in reality a elf evident poition: For no nation, in a tate of foreign dependence, limited in its commerce, and cramped and fettered in its legilative powers, can ever arrive at any material eminence. America doth not yet know what opulence is; and although the progres which he hath made tands unparalleled in the hitory of other nations, it is but childhood, compared with what he would be capable