I have heard it aſſerted by ſome, that as America hath flouriſhed under her former connexion with Great-Britain, that the ſame connexion 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 hath 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 flouriſhed as much, and probably much more, had no European power taken any notice of 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 hath protected us, ſay ſome. That ſhe hath engroſſed us is true, and defended the Continent at our expence 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 againſt 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 connexions.
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 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; andit
