to limit both their arguments and their ideas to the period of an
European peace only; the moment Britain became plunged in war, every
supposed convenience to us vanished, and all we could hope for was not
to be ruined. Could this be a desirable condition for a young
country to be in?

  Had the French pursued their fortune immediately after the defeat of
Braddock last war, this city and province had then experienced the
woful calamities of being a British subject. A scene of the same
kind might happen again; for America, considered as a subject to the
crown of Britain, would ever have been the seat of war, and the bone
of contention between the two powers.

  On the whole, if the future expulsion of arms from one quarter of
the world would be a desirable object to a peaceable man; if the
freedom of trade to every part of it can engage the attention of a man
of business; if the support or fall of millions of currency can affect
our interests; if the entire possession of estates, by cutting off the
lordly claims of Britain over the soil, deserves the regard of
landed property; and if the right of making our own laws, uncontrolled
by royal or ministerial spies or mandates, be worthy our care as
freemen;- then are all men interested in the support of
independence; and may he that supports it not, be driven from the
blessing, and live unpitied beneath the servile sufferings of
scandalous subjection!

  We have been amused with the tales of ancient wonders; we have read,
and wept over the histories of other nations: applauded, censured,
or pitied, as their cases affected us. The fortitude and patience of
the sufferers- the justness of their cause- the weight of their
oppressions and oppressors- the object to be saved or lost- with all
the consequences of a defeat or a conquest- have, in the hour of
sympathy, bewitched our hearts, and chained it to their fate: but
where is the power that ever made war upon petitioners? Or where is
the war on which a world was staked till now?

  We may not, perhaps, be wise enough to make all the advantages we
ought of our independence; but they are, nevertheless, marked and
presented to us with every character of great and good, and worthy the
hand of him who sent them. I look through the present trouble to a
time of tranquillity, when we shall have it in our power to set an
example of peace to all the world. Were the Quakers really impressed
and influenced by the quiet principles they profess to hold, they
would, however they might disapprove the means, be the first of all
men to approve of independence, because, by separating ourselves
from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, it affords an opportunity never
given to man before of carrying their favourite principle of peace
into general practice, by establishing governments that shall
hereafter exist without wars. O! ye fallen, cringing,
priest-and-Pemberton-ridden people! What more can we say of ye than
that a religious Quaker is a valuable character, and a political
Quaker a real Jesuit.

  Having thus gone over some of the principal points in support of
independence, I must now request the reader to return back with me
to the period when it first began to be a public doctrine, and to
examine the progress it has made among the various classes of men. The
area I mean to begin at, is the breaking out of hostilities, April
19th, 1775. Until this event happened, the continent seemed to view
the dispute as a kind of law-suit for a matter of right, litigating
between the old country and the new; and she felt the same kind and
degree of horror, as if she had seen an oppressive plaintiff, at the
head of a band of ruffians, enter the court, while the cause was
before it, and put the judge, the jury, the defendant and his counsel,
to the sword. Perhaps a more heart-felt convulsion never reached a
country with the same degree of power and rapidity before, and never
may again. Pity for the sufferers, mixed with indignation at the
violence, and heightened with apprehensions of undergoing the same
fate, made the affair of Lexington the affair of the continent.
Every part of it felt the shock, and all vibrated together. A
general promotion of sentiment took place: those who had drank
deeply into Whiggish principles, that is, the right and necessity
not only of opposing, but wholly setting aside the power of the
crown as soon as it became practically dangerous (for in theory it was
always so), stepped into the first stage of independence; while
another class of Whigs, equally sound in principle, but not so
sanguine in enterprise, attached themselves the stronger to the cause,
and fell close in with the rear of the former; their partition was a
mere point. Numbers of the moderate men, whose chief fault, at that
time, arose from entertaining a better opinion of Britain than she
deserved, convinced now of their mistake, gave her up, and publicly
declared themselves good Whigs. While the Tories, seeing it was no
longer a laughing matter, either sank into silent obscurity, or
contented themselves with coming forth and abusing General Gage: not a
single advocate appeared to justify the action of that day; it
seemed to appear to every one with the same magnitude, struck every
one with the same force, and created in every one the same abhorrence.
From this period we may date the growth of independence.

  If the many circumstances which happened at this memorable time,
be taken in one view, and compared with each other, they will
justify a conclusion which seems not to have been attended to, I
mean a fixed design in the king and ministry of driving America into
arms, in order that they might be furnished with a pretence for
seizing the whole continent, as the immediate property of the crown. A
noble plunder for hungry courtiers!

  It ought to be remembered, that the first petition from the Congress
was at this time unanswered on the part of the British king. That
the motion, called Lord North's motion, of the 20th of February, 1775,