Page:Emancipate your colonies!.djvu/12

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part so far from Paris, as London from the Orkneys, or Paris from Perpignan. You start—think then, what may be the feelings of the colonists. Are they Frenchmen? they will feel like Frenchmen? Are they not Frenchmen? then where is our right to govern them?

Is equality what you want? I will tell you how to make it. As often as France sends commissaries with fleets and armies to govern the colonies, let the colonies send commissaries with equal fleets and armies to govern France.

What are a thousand such pleas to the purpose? Let us leave imagination, and consult feelings. Is it for their advantage to be governed by you rather than by themselves? Is it for your advantage to govern them, rather than leave them to themselves?

Is it then for their advantage to be governed by a people who never know, nor ever can know either their inclinations or their wants? What is it you ever can know about them? The wishes they entertain? The wants they labour under? No such

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