citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction.
By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our
great title is AMERICANS- our inferior one varies with the place.

  So far as my endeavors could go, they have all been directed to
conciliate the affections, unite the interests, and draw and keep
the mind of the country together; and the better to assist in this
foundation work of the revolution, I have avoided all places of profit
or office, either in the state I live in, or in the United States;
kept myself at a distance from all parties and party connections,
and even disregarded all private and inferior concerns: and when we
take into view the great work which we have gone through, and feel, as
we ought to feel, the just importance of it, we shall then see, that
the little wranglings and indecent contentions of personal parley, are
as dishonorable to our characters, as they are injurious to our
repose.

  It was the cause of America that made me an author. The force with
which it struck my mind and the dangerous condition the country
appeared to me in, by courting an impossible and an unnatural
reconciliation with those who were determined to reduce her, instead
of striking out into the only line that could cement and save her, A
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, made it impossible for me, feeling as I
did, to be silent: and if, in the course of more than seven years, I
have rendered her any service, I have likewise added something to
the reputation of literature, by freely and disinterestedly
employing it in the great cause of mankind, and showing that there may
be genius without prostitution.

  Independence always appeared to me practicable and probable,
provided the sentiment of the country could be formed and held to
the object: and there is no instance in the world, where a people so
extended, and wedded to former habits of thinking, and under such a
variety of circumstances, were so instantly and effectually
pervaded, by a turn in politics, as in the case of independence; and
who supported their opinion, undiminished, through such a succession
of good and ill fortune, till they crowned it with success.

  But as the scenes of war are closed, and every man preparing for
home and happier times, I therefore take my leave of the subject. I
have most sincerely followed it from beginning to end, and through all
its turns and windings: and whatever country I may hereafter be in,
I shall always feel an honest pride at the part I have taken and
acted, and a gratitude to nature and providence for putting it in my
power to be of some use to mankind.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1783.

                        A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS

                      TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA.

  IN "Rivington's New York Gazette," of December 6th, is a
publication, under the appearance of a letter from London, dated
September 30th; and is on a subject which demands the attention of the
United States.

  The public will remember that a treaty of commerce between the
United States and England was set on foot last spring, and that
until the said treaty could be completed, a bill was brought into
the British Parliament by the then chancellor of the exchequer, Mr.
Pitt, to admit and legalize (as the case then required) the commerce
of the United States into the British ports and dominions. But neither
the one nor the other has been completed. The commercial treaty is
either broken off, or remains as it began; and the bill in
Parliament has been thrown aside. And in lieu thereof, a selfish
system of English politics has started up, calculated to fetter the
commerce of America, by engrossing to England the carrying trade of
the American produce to the West India islands.

  Among the advocates for this last measure is Lord Sheffield, a
member of the British Parliament, who has published a pamphlet
entitled "Observations on the Commerce of the American States." The
pamphlet has two objects; the one is to allure the Americans to
purchase British manufactures; and the other to spirit up the
British Parliament to prohibit the citizens of the United States
from trading to the West India islands.

  Viewed in this light, the pamphlet, though in some parts dexterously
written, is an absurdity. It offends, in the very act of endeavoring
to ingratiate; and his lordship, as a politician, ought not to have
suffered the two objects to have appeared together. The latter alluded
to, contains extracts from the pamphlet, with high encomiums on Lord
Sheffield, for laboriously endeavoring (as the letter styles it) "to
show the mighty advantages of retaining the carrying trade."

  Since the publication of this pamphlet in England, the commerce of
the United States to the West Indies, in American vessels, has been
prohibited; and all intercourse, except in British bottoms, the
property of and navigated by British subjects, cut off.

  That a country has a right to be as foolish as it pleases, has
been proved by the practice of England for many years past: in her
island situation, sequestered from the world, she forgets that her
whispers are heard by other nations; and in her plans of politics
and commerce she seems not to know, that other votes are necessary
besides her own. America would be equally as foolish as Britain,
were she to suffer so great a degradation on her flag, and such a