present time is preferable to all others. The argument turns
thus--at the conclusion of the last war, we had experience, but wanted
numbers; and forty or fifty years hence, we should have numbers,
without experience; wherefore, the proper point of time, must be some
particular point between the two extremes, in which a sufficiency of
the former remains, and a proper increase of the latter is obtained:
And that point of time is the present time.

The reader will pardon this digression, as it does not properly come
under the head I first set out with, and to which I again return by the
following position, viz.

Should affairs be patched up with Britain, and she to remain the
governing and sovereign power of America, (which, as matters are now
circumstanced, is giving up the point entirely) we shall deprive
ourselves of the very means of sinking the debt we have, or may
contract. The value of the back lands which some of the provinces are
clandestinely deprived of, by the unjust extension of the limits of
Canada, valued only at five pounds sterling per hundred acres, amount
to upwards of twenty-five millions, Pennsylvania currency; and the
quit-rents at one penny sterling per acre, to two millions yearly.

It is by the sale of those lands that the debt may be sunk, without
burthen to any, and the quit-rent reserved thereon, will always lessen,
and in time, will wholly support the yearly expence of government. It
matters not how long the debt is in paying, so that the lands when sold
be applied to the discharge of it, and for the execution of which, the
Congress for the time being, will be the continental trustees.

I proceed now to the second head, viz. Which is the easiest and most
practicable plan, RECONCILIATION or INDEPENDANCE; With some occasional
remarks.

He who takes nature for his guide is not easily beaten out of his
argument, and on that ground, I answer GENERALLY--THAT _INDEPENDANCE_
BEING A _SINGLE SIMPLE LINE,_ CONTAINED WITHIN OURSELVES; AND
RECONCILIATION, A MATTER EXCEEDINGLY PERPLEXED AND COMPLICATED, AND IN
WHICH, A TREACHEROUS CAPRICIOUS COURT IS TO INTERFERE, GIVES THE ANSWER
WITHOUT A DOUBT.

The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is
capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any
other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy.
Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is
nevertheless subject to change,