flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power had
any thing to do with her. The commerce, by which she hath enriched
herself, are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market
while eating is the custom of Europe.

But she has protected us, say some. That she has engrossed us is true,
and defended the continent at our expense as well as her own is
admitted, and she would have defended Turkey from the same motive, viz.
the sake of trade and dominion.

Alas, we have been long led away by ancient prejudices, and made large
sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted the protection of Great
Britain, without considering, that her motive was INTEREST not
ATTACHMENT; that she did not protect us from OUR ENEMIES on OUR
ACCOUNT, but from HER ENEMIES on HER OWN ACCOUNT, from those who had no
quarrel with us on any OTHER ACCOUNT, and who will always be our
enemies on the SAME ACCOUNT. Let Britain wave her pretensions to the
continent, or the continent throw off the dependence, and we should be
at peace with France and Spain were they at war with Britain. The
miseries of Hanover last war ought to warn us against connections.

It has lately been asserted in parliament, that the colonies have no
relation to each other but through the parent country, i. e. that
Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so on for the rest, are sister
colonies by the way of England; this is certainly a very round-about
way of proving relationship, but it is the nearest and only true way of
proving enemyship, if I may so call it. France and Spain never were,
nor perhaps ever will be our enemies as AMERICANS, but as our being the
subjects of GREAT BRITAIN.

But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon
her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make
war upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her
reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so and the
phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically adopted by the
king and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an
unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not
England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been
the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty
from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender
embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is
so far true of E