Page:The Rights of Man to Property!.djvu/17

 It may not be altogether useless, to discuss a little, the causes that have had an influence in falsifying a prediction, which, as events have proved, could have had no just foundation. That those principles which were supposed to be capable of supplanting the monarchical governments of Europe, are such as are congenial to the nature of man, consistent with his rights, and promotive of his happiness, I presume few men in this country, will be disposed to deny. They are principles, such as are incorporated into that Declaration of Independence, which separated us from our allegiance to a Foreign Sovereign; and transferred to the people of these States, the right of governing themselves. The causes however which produced such separation, were no doubt of the most oppressive kind, and capable of stimulating no common degree of energy, in their resistance. Yet, it may well be doubted, whether most of the acts of tyranny, which the Declaration of Independence, charges to the account of George the Third, might not have been perpetrated with impunity, by a native monarch, over the American States, if the fact had been that such a monarch had reigned over them. And even admitting that resistance had followed, it is far from being certain, that such resistance would have been succeeded by the establishment of government on principles fundamentally different from those in previous existence. The monarch himself might