can make no laws without his consent. In point of right and
good order, it is something very ridiculous that a youth of
twenty-one (which hath often happened) shall say to several
millions of people, older and wiser than himself, I forbid this or
that act of yours to be law. But in this place I decline this sort
of reply, though I will never cease to expose the absurdity of it;
and only answer that, England being the king's residence and
America not makes quite another case. The king's negative _here_
is ten times more dangerous and fatal than it can be in England;
for _there_ he will scarcely refuse his consent to a bill for
putting England into as strong a state of defense as possible, and
in America he would never suffer such a bill to be passed.

"America is only a secondary object in the system of British
politics--England consults the good of _this_ country no further
than it answers her _own_ purpose. Wherefore, her own interest
leads her to suppress the growth of _ours_ in every case which
doth not promote her advantage, or in the least interferes with
it. A pretty state we should soon be in under such a secondhand
government, considering what has happened! Men do not change from
enemies to friends by the alteration of a name; and in order to
show that reconciliation _now_ is a dangerous doctrine, I affirm
_that it would be policy in the king at this time to repeal the
acts, for the sake of reinstating himself in the government of the
provinces_; in order _that he may accomplish by craft and
subtlety, in the long run, what he can not do by force in the
short one_. Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related.

"2dly. That as even the best terms which we can expect to obtain
can amount to no more than a temporary expedient, or a kind of
government by guardianship, which can last no longer than till the
colonies come of age, so the general face and state of things, in
the interim, will be unsettled and unpromising. Emigrants of
property will not choose to come to a country whose form of
government hangs but by a thread, and which is every day tottering
on the brink of commotion and disturbance; and numbers of the
present inhabitants would lay hold of the interval to dispose of
their effects and quit the continent.

"But the most powerful of all arguments is, that nothing but
independence, _i. e._, a continental form of government, can keep