at an accommodation was not impossible. Congress voted a
petition to his Majesty, replete with professions of duty and
attachment; and addressed a letter to the people of England, conjuring
them, by the endearing appellations of 'friends, countrymen, and
brethren,' to prevent the dissolution of 'that connection which the
remembrance of former friendships, pride in the glorious achievements of
common ancestors, and affection for the heirs of their virtues had
heretofore maintained.' _They uniformly disclaimed any idea of
independence, and professed themselves to consider union with England,
on constitutional principles_, as the greatest blessing which could be
bestowed on them."[394]

It is needless to multiply authorities and illustrations; the whole
tenor of the history of the colonies, as presented in the preceding
chapters of this volume, evinces their universal appreciation of the
principles of the British Constitution and their universal attachment to
union with the mother country.[395]

Even in the spring of 1776, after months of agitation by advocates of
separation in various colonies, a majority of the delegates in Congress
were for weeks opposed to separation; and it required long preparation
to familiarize the minds of its advocates to separation, and to
reconcile any considerable number of colonists to hostile severance from
the land of their forefathers. It may easily be conceived what must have
been the shock to a large part, if not a majority, of the colonists, to
have burst upon them, after weeks' secret session of Congress, a
declaration which, under the term Independence, renounced all the
principles and associations in which they had been educated, which they
had often avowed and held dear from their ancestors, which proclaimed
their mother country their enemy, and denounced connection with her a
crime. Such a renunciation of the past, and wrenching from it, could not
otherwise than weaken the foundations of society and the obligation of
oaths, as may be seen by a comparison in these respects of the
sacredness of laws and oaths, and their administration in America before
and since the revolution.

II. The Declaration of Independence was a violation of good faith to
those statesmen and numerous other parties in England who had, in and
out of Parliament, supported the rights and character of the colonies
during the whole contest. They had all done so upon the ground that the
colonists were contending