ill last my time_." Should a
thought so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies in the present
contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered by future
generations with detestation.

"The sun never shone 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 they 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 honor. 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 era for
politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All
plans, proposals, etc., prior to the nineteenth of April, _i. e._,
to the commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacs of 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year; which, though proper then, are superseded and useless now.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 has failed,
and the second has withdrawn her influence.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 dependent.

"I have heard it asserted by some, that as America has flourished
under her former connection with Great Britain, the same
connection is necessary toward 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 th