rived 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 flourished as much, and
probably much more, had no European power had any thing to do with
her. The articles of commerce by which she has 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 hath 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
motives, viz., for 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_; and 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 waive 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 hath 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 roundabout 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