erations with detestation.

The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair
of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent--of
at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern
of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the
contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by
the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of continental union, faith
and honour. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with
the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will
enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.

By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new aera for politics
is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals,
&c. prior to the nineteenth of April, i. e. to the commencement of
hostilities, are like the almanacs of the last year; which, though
proper then are superseded and useless now. Whatever was advanced by
the advocates on either side of the question then, terminated in one
and the same point. viz. a union with Great-Britain: the only
difference between the parties was the method of effecting it; the one
proposing force, the other friendship; but it hath so far happened that
the first hath failed, and the second hath withdrawn her influence.

As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation which, like
an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were, it is but
right, that we should examine the contrary side of the argument, and
inquire into some of the many material injuries which these colonies
sustain, and always will sustain, by being connected with, and
dependent on Great Britain: To examine that connection and dependence,
on the principles of nature and common sense, to see what we have to
trust to, if separated, and what we are to expect, if dependant.

I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under
her former connection with Great Britain that the same connection is
necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same
effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We
may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk that it
is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is
to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting
more than is true, for I answer roundly, that America would have