Man knows no Master save creating Heaven
Or those whom choice and common good ordain.

Thomson.

Common Sense

By Thomas Paine

INTRODUCTION.

Perhaps the views in the following pages are not yet popular enough to win general approval. When people have long been in the habit of not thinking something wrong, it takes on a surface appearance of being right. Any challenge to it at first raises a loud outcry in defense of custom. But the uproar soon dies down. Time makes more converts than reason does.

A long and violent abuse of power usually leads people to question whether that power is rightful at all. Often their questions reach matters that might never have been raised if the sufferers had not been provoked into examining them. The King of England has taken it upon himself, by his own claimed right, to support Parliament in what he calls its rights.

The good people of this country are severely oppressed by this partnership. They therefore have an undoubted right to examine the claims of both king and Parliament, and to reject the overreach of either one.

In the following pages, the author has carefully avoided everything personal among ourselves. Neither compliments nor criticism of individuals form any part of it. The wise and worthy do not need a pamphlet to triumph. Those whose views are unwise or unfriendly will abandon them on their own, unless too much effort is spent trying to convert them.

The cause of America is, to a great extent, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have arisen, and will arise, that are not local but universal. They affect the principles of everyone who loves mankind, and their outcome engages such people’s feelings.

Laying a country waste with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and wiping the defenders of those rights from the face of the earth: this is the concern of every person whom nature has given the power to feel. Regardless of criticism from any party, one member of that group is the

AUTHOR

P.S. The publication of this new edition has been delayed so that the author could respond, if necessary, to any attempt to refute the doctrine of independence. Since no answer has yet appeared, it is now assumed that none will. The time needed to prepare such a work for the public has long since passed.

Who wrote this work does not matter to the public, since what deserves attention is the doctrine itself, not the man. Still, it may be worth saying that he is unconnected with any party. He is under no influence, public or private, except the influence of reason and principle.

Philadelphia, February 14, 1776

OF THE ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL, WITH CONCISE REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.

Some writers have so confused society with government that they leave little or no distinction between them. In fact, the two are not only different but have different origins. Society is produced by our needs, and government by our wickedness.

Society promotes our happiness positively, by uniting our affections. Government promotes it negatively, by restraining our vices. The one encourages people to deal with one another. The other creates distinctions among them. The first is a patron; the second is a punisher.

Society in every condition is a blessing. Government, even in its best form, is only a necessary evil, and in its worst form an intolerable one. A government may make us suffer, or expose us to the same miseries we might expect in a country without government. When it does, our misfortune is made worse by the thought that we ourselves supply the means of our suffering.

Government, like clothing, is the badge of lost innocence. The palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. If the promptings of conscience were clear, consistent, and always obeyed, people would need no other lawgiver.

That is not the case, however. So each person finds it necessary to give up part of his property to pay for the protection of the rest. He is led to do this by the same prudence that, in every other situation, advises him to choose the lesser of two evils.

Security, then, is the true purpose and goal of government. It follows beyond dispute that whatever form of government seems most likely to secure it for us, at the least cost and with the greatest benefit, is better than all others.

To form a clear and accurate idea of the purpose of government, let us imagine a small number of people settled in some remote part of the earth, cut off from everyone else. They will then represent the first settling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought.

A thousand motives will drive them toward it. One person’s strength is so unequal to his needs, and his mind so unsuited to permanent solitude, that he is soon forced to seek the help and comfort of another, who in turn needs the same from him.

Four or five people working together could build a decent dwelling in the middle of a wilderness. One person alone might labor for an entire normal lifetime without accomplishing anything. Once he had cut down his timber, he could not move it, nor raise it once moved. Meanwhile hunger would pull him away from his work, and each different need would call him in a different direction.

Disease, or even simple bad luck, would mean death. Neither might be fatal in itself, yet either would leave him unable to support himself. He would be reduced to a condition in which he could be said to perish rather than to die.

Necessity, acting like the force of gravity, would therefore soon draw our newly arrived settlers into society. The mutual benefits of that society would take the place of law and government and make them unnecessary, as long as the settlers remained perfectly just to one another.

But nothing except heaven is immune to vice. The first hardships of emigration bound the settlers together in a common cause. As they overcome those hardships, they will inevitably begin to slacken in their duty and attachment to each other. This slackness will show them the need to establish some form of government to make up for the lack of moral virtue.

Some convenient tree will provide them with a State House. Under its branches the whole colony can gather to discuss public matters. Very likely their first laws will be called only Regulations, and will be enforced by no penalty other than public disapproval. In this first parliament, every man will have a seat by natural right.

But as the colony grows, its public business will grow too, and its members will live farther apart. It will become too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion, as they did at first. Then their numbers were small, their homes close together, and their public business limited and minor.

This will show them the convenience of agreeing to leave lawmaking to a select number chosen from the whole body. These representatives are assumed to have the same concerns at stake as those who appointed them. They are expected to act in the same way the whole body would act if it were present.

If the colony keeps growing, it will become necessary to increase the number of representatives. To make sure the interests of every part of the colony are looked after, the best arrangement will be to divide the whole into convenient districts, each sending its proper number of representatives.

The elected must never develop an interest separate from that of the electors. To prevent this, prudence will show the wisdom of holding elections often. The elected will then return within a few months to live among the general body of electors again. Their loyalty to the public will be secured by the sensible thought that they should not make a rod for their own backs.

This frequent exchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community. The members of the community will then support one another naturally. The strength of government and the happiness of the governed depend on this, not on the empty name of king.

Here, then, is the origin and rise of government: an arrangement made necessary because moral virtue is unable to govern the world. Here too is the purpose and goal of government: freedom and security.

Our eyes may be dazzled by show, or our ears misled by sound. Prejudice may bend our wills, or self-interest cloud our understanding. However much that happens, the simple voice of nature and reason will say that this is right.

I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature that no human skill can overturn. The simpler anything is, the less likely it is to break down, and the easier it is to repair when it does. With this principle in mind, I offer a few remarks on the much-praised constitution of England.

It was noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was built; that much is granted. When the world was overrun with tyranny, even the smallest step away from it was a glorious rescue. But it is easy to show that the English constitution is imperfect, prone to upheavals, and unable to deliver what it seems to promise.

Absolute governments, though they disgrace human nature, have one advantage: they are simple. If the people suffer, they know the source of their suffering. They also know the remedy, and are not confused by a variety of causes and cures.

The constitution of England, by contrast, is so extremely complex that the nation may suffer for years on end without being able to discover which part is at fault. Some will blame one part and some another, and every political doctor will prescribe a different medicine.

I know it is difficult to overcome local or long-standing prejudices. Yet if we allow ourselves to examine the parts that make up the English constitution, we will find them to be the degraded remains of two ancient tyrannies, combined with some new republican materials.

First: the remains of monarchical tyranny, in the person of the king.

Second: the remains of aristocratic tyranny, in the persons of the peers.

Third: the new republican materials, in the persons of the Commons, on whose virtue the freedom of England depends.

The first two, being hereditary, are independent of the people. In a constitutional sense, therefore, they contribute nothing to the freedom of the state.

To say that the English constitution is a union of three powers that check one another is ridiculous. Either the words have no meaning, or they flatly contradict each other.

To say that the Commons is a check on the king assumes two things:

First, that the king cannot be trusted unless he is watched. This amounts to saying that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.

Second, that the Commons, by being appointed for that purpose, are either wiser or more trustworthy than the Crown.

But the same constitution that gives the Commons power to check the king by withholding funds then gives the king power to check the Commons by allowing him to reject their other bills. So it assumes once again that the king is wiser than those it has already assumed to be wiser than him. A plain absurdity!

There is something extremely ridiculous in the way monarchy is put together. It first cuts a man off from the means of being informed, yet gives him power to act in cases that require the highest judgment. A king’s position shuts him away from the world, yet a king’s work requires him to know the world thoroughly.

These different parts therefore oppose and cancel each other in an unnatural way. By doing so, they prove the whole role to be absurd and useless.

Some writers have explained the English constitution this way. The king, they say, is one party, and the people another. The peers are a house acting on behalf of the king, and the Commons a house acting on behalf of the people. But this has all the marks of a house divided against itself.

The phrases may be pleasantly arranged, but when examined they turn out to be empty and ambiguous. This always happens when the most careful wording is used to describe something that either cannot exist or is too incomprehensible to be described. The result is words of sound only. They may please the ear, but they cannot inform the mind.

This explanation also takes for granted an earlier question: how did the king come by a power that the people are afraid to trust and always obliged to check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people. Nor can any power that needs checking come from God. Yet the arrangements the constitution makes assume that such a power exists.

But those arrangements are not equal to the task. The means either cannot or will not achieve the goal, and the whole affair is a felo de se, an act of self-destruction.

The heavier weight will always lift the lighter one, and all the wheels of a machine are set in motion by one. So it only remains to find out which power in the constitution has the most weight, because that power will govern.

The other powers, or some of them, may clog its motion, or, as the saying goes, check its speed. But as long as they cannot stop it, their efforts will be useless. The first moving power will get its way in the end, and what it lacks in speed it will make up for with time.

There is no need to point out that the Crown is this overbearing part of the English constitution. It is also obvious that the Crown draws all its importance simply from being the giver of government posts and pensions. So, although we have been wise enough to shut and lock the door against absolute monarchy, we have also been foolish enough to hand the Crown the key.

The English preference for their own government of king, lords, and commons comes as much from national pride as from reason, or more. Individuals are certainly safer in England than in some other countries. But the king’s will is as much the law of the land in Britain as it is in France.

The only difference is the form it takes. In France, the king’s will comes directly from his mouth. In England, it reaches the people in the more formidable shape of an act of Parliament. The fate of Charles the First has only made kings more subtle, not more just.

So, setting aside all national pride and all attachment to familiar forms, the plain truth is this. If the crown is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey, that is owed entirely to the constitution of the people, not to the constitution of the government.

An inquiry into the constitutional errors of the English form of government is badly needed at this moment. We are never in a fit state to do justice to others while some strong partiality governs us. In the same way, we cannot do justice to ourselves while we remain chained by a stubborn prejudice.

A man attached to a prostitute is unfit to choose a wife or to judge one. In the same way, any bias in favor of a rotten constitution of government will prevent us from recognizing a good one.

OF MONARCHY AND HEREDITARY SUCCESSION.

In the order of creation, human beings were originally equal. That equality could only have been destroyed by something that happened later. The distinction between rich and poor can largely be explained without resorting to the harsh, ugly words “oppression” and “greed.”

Oppression is often the result of wealth, but it is seldom or never the means of acquiring it. And although greed will keep a man from falling into desperate poverty, it generally makes him too fearful to become wealthy.

But there is another, greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be given: the division of people into kings and subjects. Male and female are distinctions made by nature. Good and bad are distinctions made by heaven.

How a race of men came into the world raised so far above everyone else, and set apart as if they were some new species, is worth investigating. So is the question of whether they bring happiness or misery to mankind.

In the early ages of the world, according to the chronology of scripture, there were no kings. As a result, there were no wars. It is the pride of kings that throws mankind into confusion. Holland, which has no king, has enjoyed more peace over the last century than any of the monarchical governments of Europe.

Ancient history supports the same observation. The quiet, rural lives of the first patriarchs have a kind of happiness about them that disappears when we reach the history of the Jewish kings.

Government by kings was first brought into the world by the heathens, and the children of Israel copied the custom from them. It was the most successful invention the Devil ever launched for promoting idolatry. The heathens gave divine honors to their dead kings. The Christian world has improved on the scheme by giving the same honors to its living ones.

How irreverent it is to apply the title “sacred majesty” to a worm who, in the middle of all his splendor, is crumbling into dust!

Exalting one man so far above the rest cannot be justified by the equal rights of nature. Nor can it be defended by the authority of scripture. The will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and by the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings.

In monarchies, every anti-monarchical passage of scripture has been smoothly explained away. Yet these passages certainly deserve the attention of countries that still have their governments to form.

“Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s” is the scripture favored by royal courts. Yet it gives no support to monarchical government, because the Jews at that time had no king and were living as subjects of the Romans.

Nearly three thousand years passed, counting from the creation as Moses describes it, before the Jews, under a national delusion, asked for a king. Until then their government was a kind of republic, run by a judge and the elders of the tribes, except in extraordinary cases where the Almighty intervened directly.

They had no kings. It was considered sinful to acknowledge any being by that title except the Lord of Hosts. When a person seriously considers the idolatrous homage paid to kings, it is no wonder that the Almighty, always jealous of his honor, should disapprove of a form of government that so irreverently invades the privileges of heaven.

Scripture ranks monarchy as one of the sins of the Jews, and pronounces a curse against them for it, held in reserve. The history of that episode deserves close attention.

The children of Israel were being oppressed by the Midianites. Gideon marched against them with a small army, and through divine intervention the victory went to him. The Jews, elated by their success and crediting it to Gideon’s generalship, proposed to make him king. They said, “Rule over us, you and your son and your son’s son.”

This was temptation at its fullest: not just a kingdom, but a hereditary one. But Gideon, in the piety of his soul, replied: “I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you. The Lord shall rule over you.”

Words could not be more explicit. Gideon does not merely decline the honor; he denies their right to give it. Nor does he flatter them with invented expressions of gratitude. In the firm style of a prophet, he charges them with disloyalty to their proper sovereign, the King of heaven.

About one hundred and thirty years later, they fell into the same error again. The Jews’ longing for the idolatrous customs of the heathens is very hard to explain, but so it was. Seizing on the misconduct of Samuel’s two sons, who had been entrusted with some worldly affairs, they came to Samuel abruptly and noisily.

They said, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us, like all the other nations.”

Here we cannot help noticing that their motives were bad. They wanted to be like other nations, that is, like the heathens, when their true glory lay in being as unlike them as possible.

But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel: “Listen to the voice of the people in everything they say to you. They have not rejected you; they have rejected me, THAT I SHOULD NOT REIGN OVER THEM.

“They are doing to you just what they have done in all their works since the day I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods. Now therefore listen to their voice. But protest solemnly to them, and show them the manner of the king who shall reign over them.”

This means not any particular king, but the general manner of the kings of the earth, whom Israel was so eager to imitate. And despite the great distance in time and the difference in customs, that character is still in fashion.

Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said: “This will be the manner of the king who shall reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots.”

(This description matches the present practice of impressing men, that is, seizing them by force for military service.)

“He will appoint captains over thousands and captains over fifties for himself. He will set them to plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his instruments of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be confectioners, cooks, and bakers.”

(This describes the expense and luxury of kings, as well as their oppression.)

“He will take your fields and your olive groves, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards, and give it to his officers and his servants.”

(From this we see that bribery, corruption, and favoritism are the permanent vices of kings.)

“He will take a tenth of your menservants and maidservants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep, and you shall be his servants. And on that day you will cry out because of the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not hear you on that day.”

This explains why monarchy has continued. The characters of the few good kings who have lived since then neither make the title holy nor erase the sinfulness of its origin. The high praise given to David does not refer to him officially as a king, but only as a man after God’s own heart.

Nevertheless, the people refused to obey Samuel’s voice. They said, “No, we will have a king over us, so that we may be like all the nations, and so that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.”

Samuel kept reasoning with them, but it was useless. He set their ingratitude before them, but nothing worked. Seeing them fully set on their folly, he cried out: “I will call to the Lord, and he shall send thunder and rain, so that you may perceive and see that the wickedness you have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking for a king, is great.”

The thunder and rain were a punishment at that time, because it was the season of the wheat harvest.

So Samuel called to the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. And all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, so that we do not die, for we have added this evil to our sins, asking for a king.”

These passages of scripture are direct and definite. They allow no ambiguous interpretation. Either the Almighty has here registered his protest against monarchical government, or scripture is false.

A man also has good reason to believe that there is as much king-craft as priest-craft in keeping the scriptures from the public in Catholic countries. For monarchy, in every instance, is the Popery of government.

To the evil of monarchy we have added the evil of hereditary succession. The first lowers and degrades us. The second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition on future generations.

All men were originally equal, so no one could have a right by birth to set up his own family in permanent preference over all others forever. A man himself might deserve some reasonable degree of honor from the people of his own time, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit it.

One of the strongest natural proofs that hereditary right in kings is foolish is that nature disapproves of it. Otherwise she would not so often make a mockery of it by giving mankind an ass in place of a lion.

Second, at first no man could hold any public honors except those given to him. The people who gave those honors had no power to give away the rights of future generations. They might say, “We choose you as our head.” But they could not, without plain injustice to their children, say, “Your children and your children’s children shall reign over ours forever.”

Such an unwise, unjust, and unnatural agreement might, perhaps in the very next generation, put them under the government of a rogue or a fool.

Most wise men, in their private opinions, have always treated hereditary right with contempt. Yet it is one of those evils that, once established, is not easily removed. Many submit out of fear, others out of superstition, and the more powerful share with the king the plunder of everyone else.

This assumes that the present race of kings had an honorable origin. It is far more likely that, if we could pull away the dark covering of antiquity and trace them back to their beginnings, we would find the first of them was nothing better than the chief ruffian of some restless gang. His savage manners, or his superior cunning, earned him the title of chief among plunderers.

As his power grew and his raids spread, he frightened the quiet and defenceless into buying their safety through regular payments. Yet those who chose him could have had no thought of giving his descendants a hereditary right. Such a permanent exclusion of themselves would have contradicted the free and unrestrained principles they claimed to live by.

So in the early ages of monarchy, hereditary succession could not have arisen as a claim of right. It could only have happened by chance or as a compliment. But few or no records existed in those days, and traditional history was stuffed with fables. After a few generations, it was easy to invent some superstitious tale, conveniently timed, as Mahomet did, to force hereditary right down the throats of the common people.

Perhaps the disorders that threatened, or seemed to threaten, whenever a leader died and a new one had to be chosen also inclined many people at first to favor hereditary claims. Elections among ruffians could hardly have been orderly. In this way it happened, as it has happened since, that what was first accepted as a convenience was later claimed as a right.

Since the Norman Conquest, England has known a few good monarchs but has groaned under a much larger number of bad ones. Yet no one in his right mind can say that their claim, which descends from William the Conqueror, is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed gang of bandits and making himself king of England against the will of the natives is, in plain terms, a shabby and disreputable origin. There is certainly nothing divine about it.

However, there is no need to spend much time exposing the folly of hereditary right. If anyone is foolish enough to believe in it, let them worship the ass and the lion alike, and welcome to it. I will neither imitate their humility nor disturb their devotion.

Still, I would like to ask how they suppose kings first came about. The question allows only three answers: by lot, by election, or by usurpation. If the first king was chosen by lot, that sets a precedent for choosing the next one the same way, which rules out hereditary succession. Saul was chosen by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, and nothing in that event suggests anyone intended it ever to be.

If the first king of any country was chosen by election, that likewise sets a precedent for choosing the next. Some claim that the first electors, by choosing not only a king but a family of kings forever, took away the rights of all future generations. That claim has no parallel, in scripture or out of it, except the doctrine of original sin, which holds that the free will of all humanity was lost in Adam.

Hereditary succession can gain no glory from that comparison, and no other comparison fits. In Adam all sinned, and in the first electors all men obeyed. Through the one, all mankind was made subject to Satan; through the other, to sovereignty. Our innocence was lost in the first case, and our authority in the second. Both prevent us from recovering some earlier condition and privilege.

It follows beyond dispute that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. What a dishonorable rank! What an inglorious connection! Yet the subtlest sophist could not produce a more accurate comparison.

As for usurpation, no one will be bold enough to defend it, and it is an undeniable fact that William the Conqueror was a usurper. The plain truth is that the ancient history of English monarchy cannot bear close examination.

But what concerns mankind is not so much the absurdity of hereditary succession as the harm it does. If it guaranteed a line of good and wise men, it would carry the seal of divine authority. But because it opens the door to the foolish, the wicked, and the unfit, it is by nature a form of oppression.

Men who believe they were born to rule, and others born to obey, soon become insolent. Set apart from the rest of mankind, their minds are poisoned early by a sense of their own importance. The world they live in differs so greatly from the world at large that they have little chance to learn its true interests. When they come to the throne, they are often the most ignorant and unfit people in their whole dominion.

Another harm of hereditary succession is that the throne can fall to a child of any age. During all that time, the regents who govern in the king’s name have every opportunity and temptation to betray their trust. The same national misfortune occurs when a king, worn out by age and illness, enters the last stage of human weakness. In both cases, the public becomes the prey of every scoundrel who can successfully exploit the follies of old age or infancy.

The most plausible argument ever offered for hereditary succession is that it protects a nation from civil wars. If this were true, it would carry real weight. Instead, it is the most barefaced falsehood ever imposed on mankind. The whole history of England contradicts it.

Thirty kings and two minors have reigned in that troubled kingdom since the Conquest. In that time there have been, counting the Revolution, no fewer than eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions. So instead of promoting peace, hereditary succession works against it, and it destroys the very foundation it claims to stand on.

The contest for the crown and the succession between the houses of York and Lancaster drenched England in blood for many years. Twelve pitched battles were fought between Henry and Edward, besides skirmishes and sieges. Henry was twice Edward’s prisoner, and Edward in turn was Henry’s prisoner.

When a quarrel rests on nothing but personal claims, the fortunes of war and the mood of a nation are so uncertain that Henry was carried in triumph from a prison to a palace, while Edward was forced to flee from a palace to a foreign land. Yet sudden changes of mood seldom last. Henry in turn was driven from the throne, and Edward was called back to replace him. Parliament always followed the stronger side.

This contest began in the reign of Henry the Sixth and was not fully extinguished until Henry the Seventh, in whom the two families were united. It covered a period of 67 years, from 1422 to 1489.

In short, monarchy and succession have laid not just this or that kingdom but the whole world in blood and ashes. It is a form of government that the word of God testifies against, and bloodshed will follow it.

If we look into what a king actually does, we find that in some countries kings have no work at all. They idle away their lives with no pleasure to themselves and no benefit to the nation, then leave the stage, and their successors tread the same idle round.

In absolute monarchies, the whole burden of business, civil and military, falls on the king. The children of Israel made this very argument when they asked for a king: “that he may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles.” But in countries where the king is neither a judge nor a general, as in England, one would be puzzled to say what his business is.

The closer any government comes to a republic, the less work there is for a king. It is hard to find the right name for the government of England. Sir William Meredith calls it a republic. But in its present state it does not deserve the name.

The crown has every public office in its gift. Its corrupt influence has so thoroughly swallowed up the power and eaten away the virtue of the House of Commons, the republican part of the constitution, that the government of England is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain.

People quarrel over names without understanding them. What Englishmen take pride in is the republican part of their constitution, not the monarchical part: namely, the liberty of choosing a House of Commons from among themselves. It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery follows. Why is the English constitution sickly? Because monarchy has poisoned the republic, and the crown has taken over the Commons.

In England a king has little more to do than make war and hand out offices. In plain terms, that means impoverishing the nation and setting its people at each other’s throats. A fine job indeed, for which a man is paid eight hundred thousand pounds sterling a year, and worshipped into the bargain! One honest man is worth more to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians who ever lived.

THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense. I ask only one thing of the reader before we begin: that he set aside prejudice and preconceived opinion, and let his reason and his feelings decide for themselves. I ask that he put on, or rather not put off, the true character of a man, and generously widen his view beyond the present day.

Volumes have been written about the struggle between England and America. People of every rank have joined the controversy, from different motives and with various aims. But all of it has been ineffective, and the time for debate is over. Arms, as the last resort, now decide the contest. The appeal to force was the king’s choice, and the continent has accepted the challenge.

It is reported of the late Mr. Pelham, an able minister though not without his faults, that when he was attacked in the House of Commons because his measures were only temporary, he replied, “they will last my time.” If so fatal and unmanly a thought takes hold of the colonies in the present contest, future generations will remember the name of their ancestors with loathing.

The sun never shone on a worthier cause. This is not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent, at least one eighth of the habitable globe. It is not the concern of a day, a year, or an age. Posterity is effectively involved in the contest, and will be affected to some degree, even to the end of time, by what is done now.

Now is the seed time of continental union, faith, and honor. The smallest crack now will be like a name scratched with the point of a pin into the tender bark of a young oak. The wound will grow with the tree, and posterity will read it in full-grown letters.

By moving the question from argument to arms, a new era in politics has begun, and a new way of thinking has arisen. All plans and proposals made before the nineteenth of April, when hostilities began, are like last year’s almanacs. They were suitable then, but they are outdated and useless now.

Whatever the advocates on either side argued then, they all ended at the same point: union with Great Britain. The only difference between the parties was the method of achieving it. One side proposed force, the other friendship. As things have turned out, the first has failed, and the second has withdrawn its influence.

Much has been said about the advantages of reconciliation, which, like a pleasant dream, has passed away and left us where we were. It is only right, then, that we examine the other side of the argument. We should look into some of the many serious injuries these colonies suffer, and always will suffer, by being connected with and dependent on Great Britain.

We should examine that connection and dependence by the principles of nature and common sense, to see what we can rely on if we separate, and what we can expect if we remain dependent.

I have heard some people claim that because America flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, the same connection is necessary for her future happiness and will always have the same effect. No argument could be more misleading. We might as well claim that because a child has thrived on milk, it should never eat meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives should set the pattern for the next twenty.

But even this concedes more than is true. I answer flatly that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, if no European power had ever had anything to do with her. The goods that have enriched her are the necessities of life, and they will always find a market as long as eating remains the custom of Europe.

But she has protected us, some say. It is true that she has monopolized us. It is admitted that she has defended the continent at our expense as well as her own. But she would have defended Turkey for the same reason, namely, for the sake of trade and dominion.

Unfortunately, we have long been misled by old prejudices and have made large sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted about Great Britain’s protection without considering that her motive was self-interest, not affection.

She did not protect us from our enemies for our sake. She protected us from her enemies for her own sake. These were people who had no quarrel with us for any other reason, and who will always be our enemies for that same reason.

If Britain gave up her claims to the continent, or if the continent threw off its dependence, we would be at peace with France and Spain even while they were at war with Britain. The suffering of Hanover in the last war, which came from its tie to the British crown, ought to warn us against such connections.

It has recently been claimed in Parliament that the colonies have no relationship to one another except through the parent country. On this view, Pennsylvania, the Jerseys, and all the rest are sister colonies only by way of England.

That is certainly a very roundabout way of proving a relationship. But it is the most direct and the only true way of proving an “enemyship,” if I may call it that. France and Spain never were, and perhaps never will be, our enemies as Americans. They are our enemies only because we are subjects of Great Britain.

But Britain is the parent country, some people say. Then her conduct is all the more shameful. Even animals do not devour their young, and even savages do not make war on their own families. So if the claim were true, it would only count against her.

But it is not true, or only partly so. The phrase “parent country” or “mother country” has been adopted with Jesuitical cunning by the king and his flatterers. Their low, papist aim is to take unfair advantage of the trusting weakness of our minds.

Europe, not England, is the parent country of America. This new world has been a refuge for persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.

They fled here not from the tender embrace of a mother, but from the cruelty of a monster. And this much is true of England: the same tyranny that drove the first emigrants from home still pursues their descendants.

In this vast part of the globe, we forget the narrow limits of three hundred and sixty miles, which is the length of England. We extend our friendship on a larger scale. We claim brotherhood with every European Christian, and we take pride in the generosity of that feeling.

It is pleasant to see the steady stages by which we overcome the force of local prejudice as our acquaintance with the world grows.

A man born in any English town divided into parishes will naturally associate most with his fellow parishioners, because they will share many interests. He calls such a person his “neighbor.”

If he meets him a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street and greets him as a “townsman.” If he travels outside his county and meets him in another, he forgets the smaller divisions of street and town and calls him a “countryman,” meaning a man of the same county.

But if the two of them traveled abroad and met in France or anywhere else in Europe, their sense of local belonging would expand. They would think of themselves as Englishmen.

By the same reasoning, all Europeans who meet in America, or in any other part of the globe, are countrymen. Compared with the whole, England, Holland, Germany, and Sweden hold the same places on the larger scale that street, town, and county hold on the smaller one. These distinctions are too limited for continental minds.

Not even one third of the inhabitants of this province are of English descent. I therefore condemn the phrase “parent country” or “mother country” when it is applied to England alone. It is false, selfish, narrow, and ungenerous.

But suppose we were all of English descent. What would that amount to? Nothing. Britain is now an open enemy, and that fact cancels every other name and title. To say that reconciliation is our duty is a farce.

The first king of England in the present line, William the Conqueror, was a Frenchman. Half the peers of England are descended from people of the same country. By the same reasoning, then, England ought to be governed by France.

Much has been said about the combined strength of Britain and the colonies, and how together they could defy the world. But this is mere presumption. The outcome of war is uncertain.

Besides, such talk means nothing. This continent would never allow itself to be drained of its people to support British armies in Asia, Africa, or Europe.

And what business do we have defying the world? Our plan is commerce. If we attend to it well, it will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe, because it is in the interest of all Europe to have America as a free port.

America’s trade will always protect her. And her lack of gold and silver will keep invaders away.

I challenge the most passionate advocate of reconciliation to show a single advantage that this continent can gain from being connected with Great Britain. I repeat the challenge: not a single advantage comes from it.

Our grain will fetch its price in any market in Europe. And the goods we import must be paid for wherever we buy them.

But the harms and disadvantages we suffer from that connection are countless. Our duty to humanity at large, as well as to ourselves, tells us to renounce the alliance.

Any submission to or dependence on Great Britain directly tends to drag this continent into European wars and quarrels. It sets us against nations that would otherwise seek our friendship, and against whom we have neither anger nor complaint.

Since Europe is our market for trade, we should form no one-sided connection with any part of it. America’s true interest is to steer clear of European conflicts.

She can never do that while her dependence on Britain makes her a mere makeweight in the scales of British politics, a small extra weight thrown in to tip the balance.

Europe is too crowded with kingdoms to stay at peace for long. Whenever war breaks out between England and any foreign power, America’s trade is ruined because of her connection with Britain.

The next war may not turn out like the last one. If it does not, those who argue for reconciliation now will be wishing for separation then. In that situation, neutrality would protect our merchant ships better than any warship sent to escort them.

Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain and the weeping voice of nature cry out: “It is time to part.”

Even the distance at which the Almighty has placed England and America is strong, natural proof that Heaven never intended one to have authority over the other.

The time at which the continent was discovered adds weight to the argument, and the way it was settled adds still more force. The discovery of America came before the Reformation. It was as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary for the persecuted in future years, when their homelands would offer them neither friendship nor safety.

Great Britain’s authority over this continent is a form of government that must end sooner or later. A serious person can take no real pleasure in looking ahead while painfully certain that what he calls “the present constitution” is merely temporary.

As parents, we can feel no joy in knowing that this government is not lasting enough to secure anything we might leave to our descendants.

The argument is plain. Since we are putting the next generation into debt, we ought to do its work for it. Otherwise we treat our children meanly and shabbily.

To see our duty clearly, we should take our children by the hand and place ourselves a few years further along in life. From that height we will see a view that a few present fears and prejudices now hide from us.

I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offense. Still, I am inclined to believe that everyone who supports reconciliation fits one of the following descriptions:

• Self-interested men, who are not to be trusted.
• Weak men, who cannot see.
• Prejudiced men, who will not see.
• A certain group of moderate men, who think better of the European world than it deserves.

This last group, through poorly judged deliberation, will cause more disasters for this continent than the other three combined.

Many people are fortunate enough to live far from the scene of suffering. The evil has not been brought close enough to their doors to make them feel how insecurely all American property is held.

But let our imaginations carry us for a few moments to Boston. That place of misery will teach us wisdom, and will teach us to renounce forever a power we can never trust.

The people of that unfortunate city were living in comfort and wealth only a few months ago. Now they have no choice but to stay and starve, or leave and beg.

If they remain in the city, they are endangered by the fire of their friends. If they leave it, they are plundered by the soldiers. In their present condition they are prisoners with no hope of rescue. And in a general attack to relieve them, they would be exposed to the fury of both armies.

People of passive temperament take Britain’s offenses rather lightly. Still hoping for the best, they are apt to say, “Come, come, we’ll be friends again despite all this.”

But examine human passions and feelings. Test the idea of reconciliation against nature, as gold is tested on a touchstone. Then tell me whether you can ever again love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that has carried fire and sword into your land.

If you cannot do all these things, you are only deceiving yourselves, and your delay is bringing ruin on your descendants.

A future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural. Because it would rest only on present convenience, it would soon collapse into a relapse worse than the first.

But if you say you can still overlook these violations, then I ask you: Has your house been burned? Has your property been destroyed before your eyes? Do your wife and children lack a bed to lie on or bread to live on?

Have you lost a parent or a child at their hands, leaving yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then you are no judge of those who have.

But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover. Whatever your rank or title in life may be, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a flatterer.

This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters. It is testing them by the feelings and affections that nature justifies. Without those feelings, we could neither carry out the social duties of life nor enjoy its happiness.

I do not mean to display horrors in order to provoke revenge. I mean to wake us from a fatal and unmanly sleep, so that we may pursue some fixed goal with determination.

Neither Britain nor Europe has the power to conquer America, unless America conquers herself through delay and timidity.

This present winter is worth an age if it is used well. But if it is wasted or neglected, the whole continent will share the misfortune. Whoever causes such a precious and useful season to be thrown away deserves every punishment, no matter who he is, what he is, or where he is.

It is contrary to reason, to the universal order of things, and to every example from past ages to suppose that this continent can remain subject to any outside power much longer. Even the most hopeful people in Britain do not think so.

At this moment, not even the greatest human wisdom can devise any plan short of separation that could promise the continent even a single year of security.

Reconciliation is now a deceptive dream. Nature has abandoned the connection, and human contrivance cannot take her place. As Milton wisely put it, “never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.”

Every peaceful method of seeking peace has failed. Our petitions have been rejected with contempt. They have only convinced us that nothing flatters the vanity of kings or hardens their stubbornness more than repeated petitioning.

Nothing has done more than that very practice to make the kings of Europe absolute rulers. Denmark and Sweden are examples.

Therefore, since nothing but force will work, for God’s sake let us come to a final separation. Let us not leave the next generation cutting each other’s throats under the violated, meaningless names of parent and child.

To say that Britain will never try this again is idle fantasy. We thought so when the Stamp Act was repealed, yet a year or two proved us wrong. We might as well suppose that nations once defeated will never renew the quarrel.

As for matters of government, Britain does not have the power to do this continent justice. Its business will soon be too heavy and complex for a power so distant from us, and so ignorant of us, to manage with any reasonable convenience. If they cannot conquer us, they cannot govern us.

Always traveling three or four thousand miles with a complaint or a petition, then waiting four or five months for an answer that takes another five or six to explain, will in a few years be seen as foolish and childish. There was a time when this arrangement was proper, and there is a proper time for it to end.

Small islands that cannot protect themselves are proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care. But there is something very absurd in supposing that a continent should be governed forever by an island.

Nature has never made a satellite larger than the planet it circles. England and America, compared with each other, reverse this ordinary order of nature. It is therefore clear that they belong to different systems: England belongs to Europe, and America belongs to itself.

I am not moved by pride, party loyalty, or resentment to support the doctrine of separation and independence. I am clearly, firmly, and conscientiously convinced that independence is the true interest of this continent. Anything short of it is mere patchwork and can bring no lasting happiness.

To stop short of independence is to leave the sword to our children. It is to shrink back at the very moment when a little more effort, carried a little farther, would make this continent the glory of the earth.

Britain has not shown the slightest inclination toward compromise. We can therefore be sure that no terms can be obtained that are worth the continent’s acceptance. Nor could any terms make up for the blood and money we have already been forced to spend.

The goal we fight for should always bear some fair proportion to its cost. Removing Lord North, or even his whole detestable faction, is not worth the millions we have spent.

A temporary halt to trade was an inconvenience that would have been a fair price for repealing all the acts we complained of, had those repeals been obtained. But if the whole continent must take up arms, and every man must become a soldier, it is hardly worth our while to fight against a contemptible ministry alone.

If repealing the acts is all we fight for, we pay dearly, very dearly, for it. Judged fairly, paying the price of Bunker Hill, in blood, to win a law is as foolish as paying it to win land.

I have always considered the independence of this continent an event that must arrive sooner or later. Given how rapidly the continent has recently grown toward maturity, that event could not be far off.

So when hostilities broke out, it was not worth disputing a matter that time would eventually have settled, unless we meant to be in earnest. Otherwise, we would be like a landlord who wastes his estate on a lawsuit over the trespasses of a tenant whose lease is just about to expire.

No one wished more warmly for reconciliation than I did before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775. But the moment the events of that day became known, I rejected the hardened, sullen Pharaoh of England forever.

I despise the wretch who, while claiming the title of father of his people, can hear of their slaughter without feeling and sleep calmly with their blood upon his soul.

But suppose matters were settled now. What would follow? I answer: the ruin of the continent. And this is so for several reasons.

First. The powers of government would remain in the king’s hands, so he would have a veto over all the legislation of this continent. He has shown himself an inveterate enemy of liberty and has revealed a thirst for arbitrary power.

Is such a man, or is he not, the proper person to say to these colonies, “You shall make no laws except the ones I please”?

Is there anyone in America so ignorant as not to know that, under what is called the present constitution, this continent can make no laws without the king’s permission?

And is there anyone so unwise as not to see that, after everything that has happened, he will allow no law to be made here except those that suit his purposes?

We can be enslaved just as effectively by being denied laws in America as by submitting to laws made for us in England. Once matters are “made up,” as people say, can there be any doubt that the crown will use its whole power to keep this continent as low and humble as possible?

Instead of moving forward, we shall move backward, or else be forever quarreling or ridiculously petitioning. We are already greater than the king wishes us to be. Will he not try to make us smaller from now on?

The whole matter comes down to one question. Is a power that is jealous of our prosperity a proper power to govern us?

Whoever answers no to this question is a supporter of independence. Independence means nothing more than this: whether we shall make our own laws, or whether the king, the greatest enemy this continent has or can have, shall tell us, “There shall be no laws except those I like.”

But, you will say, the king has a veto in England too; the people there can make no laws without his consent.

As a matter of right and good order, there is something very ridiculous in a youth of twenty-one, which has often happened, telling several million people older and wiser than himself, “I forbid this or that act of yours to become law.”

Here, however, I set that kind of reply aside, though I will never stop exposing its absurdity. I answer only that England is the king’s residence and America is not, and this makes a completely different case.

The king’s veto here is ten times more dangerous and fatal than it can be in England. There, he will hardly refuse his consent to a bill for putting England into the strongest possible state of defense. In America, he would never allow such a bill to pass.

America is only a secondary concern in the system of British politics. England looks after the good of this country only so far as it serves her own purposes.

Her own interest therefore leads her to suppress our growth in every case that does not promote her advantage or that interferes with it even slightly. Considering what has happened, what a fine state we would soon be in under such a second-hand government!

Men do not turn from enemies into friends merely by changing a name. To show that reconciliation is now a dangerous doctrine, I affirm this: it would be good policy for the king, at this moment, to repeal the acts in order to reestablish himself in the government of the provinces.

He could then accomplish by craft and cunning over the long run what he cannot accomplish by force and violence in the short run. Reconciliation and ruin are close relatives.

Secondly. Even the best terms we could expect would be no more than a temporary expedient. They would amount to a kind of government by guardianship, which can last only until the colonies come of age.

In the meantime, the general state of things would be unsettled and unpromising. Emigrants with property will not choose to come to a country whose form of government hangs by a thread and which every day totters on the edge of upheaval and disorder.

Meanwhile, many of the present inhabitants would use the interval to dispose of their belongings and leave the continent.

But the most powerful argument of all is this: nothing but independence, meaning a continental form of government, can keep the peace of the continent and protect it from civil wars.

I dread the consequences of a reconciliation with Britain now. It is more than likely that it would be followed by a revolt somewhere, and the results could be far more fatal than all of Britain’s malice.

Thousands have already been ruined by British barbarity, and thousands more will probably suffer the same fate. Those men feel differently from those of us who have suffered nothing.

All they now possess is liberty. What they once enjoyed has been sacrificed in its service, and having nothing more to lose, they scorn submission.

Besides, the general attitude of the colonies toward a British government will be like that of an apprentice whose term of service is nearly finished: they will care very little about her.

A government that cannot keep the peace is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing. And what could Britain do, with her power existing only on paper, if a civil uprising broke out the very day after reconciliation?

I have heard some men say, many of whom I believe spoke without thinking, that they dreaded independence because they feared it would produce civil wars. Our first thoughts are seldom truly correct, and that is the case here. There is ten times more to fear from a patched-up connection than from independence.

I make the sufferers’ case my own. I declare that if I were driven from house and home, my property destroyed and my circumstances ruined, then, as a man who feels injuries, I could never accept the doctrine of reconciliation or consider myself bound by it.

The colonies have shown such a spirit of good order and obedience to continental government that every reasonable person can be at ease on that point.

No one can offer the slightest grounds for fear except reasons that are truly childish and ridiculous, namely, that one colony will strive for superiority over another.

Where there are no distinctions, there can be no superiority; perfect equality offers no temptation. The republics of Europe are all at peace, and we may say they always are. Holland and Switzerland have no wars, foreign or domestic.

Monarchical governments, it is true, are never long at rest. The crown itself tempts ambitious ruffians at home.

And the pride and arrogance that always accompany royal authority swell into open conflict with foreign powers. In the same situations, a republican government, being formed on more natural principles, would settle the misunderstanding by negotiation.

If there is any real reason to fear independence, it is that no plan has yet been laid out. People cannot see their way forward.

So, as an opening into that business, I offer the following suggestions. I modestly state that I think of them only as something that may give rise to something better.

If the scattered thoughts of individuals could be collected, they would often provide material that wise and able men could improve into something useful.

Let the colonial assemblies be elected annually, with only a President at their head. Let representation be more equal. Let their business be entirely domestic and subject to the authority of a Continental Congress.

Let each colony be divided into six, eight, or ten convenient districts. Each district should send a proper number of delegates to Congress, so that each colony sends at least thirty. The total number in Congress will then be at least 390.

Each Congress should meet and choose a president by the following method. When the delegates have assembled, let one colony be drawn by lot from all thirteen colonies. Then let the whole Congress choose, by ballot, a president from among that colony’s delegates.

In the next Congress, let a colony be drawn by lot from only twelve, leaving out the colony that supplied the president in the previous Congress. This process should continue until all thirteen colonies have had their proper turn.

To ensure that nothing becomes law unless it is satisfactorily just, let no less than three-fifths of the Congress count as a majority. Anyone who would stir up discord under a government formed as fairly as this would have joined Lucifer in his revolt.

But there is a particular delicacy about who should first begin this business and how. It seems most fitting and consistent that it should come from some intermediate body between the governed and the governors, that is, between the Congress and the people.

So let a Continental Conference be held, in the following manner and for the following purpose.

The conference should consist of a committee of twenty-six members of Congress, two from each colony, and two members from each House of Assembly or Provincial Convention.

It should also include five representatives of the people at large from each province. They should be chosen in the capital city or town of the province, for and on behalf of the whole province, by as many qualified voters as choose to attend from all parts of it for that purpose. Or, if more convenient, they may be chosen in two or three of the province’s most populous areas.

A conference assembled in this way will unite the two great principles of business: knowledge and power.

The members of Congress, Assemblies, or Conventions have experience in national affairs, so they will be capable and useful advisers. And the whole body, being empowered by the people, will have a truly legal authority.

Once the conference members have met, let their business be to frame a Continental Charter, or Charter of the United Colonies, corresponding to what is called the Magna Carta of England.

This charter should fix the number of members of Congress and members of Assembly, the manner of choosing them, and their dates of sitting. It should also draw the line of business and jurisdiction between the two bodies, always remembering that our strength is continental, not provincial.

It should secure freedom and property to all men, and above all the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience. It should also contain whatever other matters a charter needs.

Immediately afterward, the Conference should dissolve. The bodies chosen in accordance with the charter will then be the legislators and governors of this continent for the time being. May God preserve its peace and happiness. Amen.

Should any group of people later be delegated for this or a similar purpose, I offer them the following extract from Dragonetti, that wise observer of governments. “The science of the politician,” he says, “consists in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men would deserve the gratitude of ages, who should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness, with the least national expense.” The passage comes from Dragonetti’s work on virtue and rewards.

“But where,” some will ask, “is the King of America?” I’ll tell you, friend. He reigns above, and he does not wreak havoc on mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.

Still, so that we may not seem to lack even earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set aside for proclaiming the charter. Let it be brought out and placed on the divine law, the word of God. Let a crown be set on top of it, so the world may know that, so far as we approve of monarchy, in America the law is king.

In absolute governments the king is the law. In free countries the law ought to be king, and there ought to be no other. But so that no one can misuse the crown later, let it be broken up at the end of the ceremony and scattered among the people, to whom that authority rightfully belongs.

A government of our own is our natural right. Anyone who thinks seriously about how uncertain human affairs are will become convinced of something. It is far wiser and safer to form our own constitution calmly and deliberately, while we have the power to do so, than to leave so important an event to time and chance.

If we fail to act now, some Massanello may arise later. He may seize on popular unrest and gather together the desperate and discontented. By taking the powers of government for themselves, they may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a flood.

Massanello was the popular name of Thomas Anello, a fisherman of Naples. At the time, Naples was ruled by the Spanish. In the public marketplace he stirred up his countrymen against Spanish oppression and prompted them to revolt. Within a single day he had become king.

Should the government of America return to British hands, the unstable state of things will tempt some desperate adventurer to try his luck. In that case, what help could Britain give? Before she even heard the news, the fatal deed might be done. We would then be suffering as the wretched Britons once did under the oppression of the Conqueror.

You who oppose independence now do not know what you are doing. By keeping the seat of government vacant, you are opening a door to permanent tyranny.

There are thousands, even tens of thousands, who would think it glorious to drive from the continent the barbarous and hellish power that has stirred up the Indians and Black slaves to destroy us. That cruelty carries a double guilt. It treats us brutally, and it treats them treacherously.

To talk of friendship with people our reason forbids us to trust, and whom our feelings, wounded in a thousand places, teach us to detest, is madness and folly. Every day wears away what little kinship remains between us and them.

Is there any reason to hope that our affection will grow as that relationship fades? Or that we will get along better once we have ten times more, and far greater, matters to quarrel over than ever before?

You who speak to us of harmony and reconciliation: can you give us back the time that has passed? Can you restore innocence to prostitution? No more can you reconcile Britain and America. The last cord has now snapped. The people of England are presenting addresses against us.

Some injuries nature cannot forgive. If she did, she would cease to be nature. A lover could as easily forgive the man who raped his beloved as this continent could forgive Britain’s murders.

The Almighty has planted these inextinguishable feelings in us for good and wise purposes. They guard his image in our hearts, and they set us apart from the herd of ordinary animals.

If we were numb to the touch of affection, the social compact would dissolve. Justice would be wiped from the earth, or would exist only by accident. The robber and the murderer would often go unpunished if the injuries done to our feelings did not provoke us into seeking justice.

O you who love mankind! You who dare to oppose not only the tyranny, but
the tyrant, stand forward! Every corner of the old world is overrun with
oppression. Freedom has been hunted around the globe. Asia and
Africa have long since driven her out. Europe treats her like a stranger, and
England has given her notice to leave. O, receive the fugitive, and
prepare in time a refuge for mankind.

OF THE PRESENT ABILITY OF AMERICA, WITH SOME MISCELLANEOUS REFLEXIONS.

I have never met anyone, in England or in America, who has not admitted the view that a separation between the two countries would happen sooner or later. Yet on no question have we shown less judgment than in trying to describe what we call the ripeness, or fitness, of the continent for independence.

Since everyone accepts the measure itself and differs only about its timing, let us clear up the confusion. Let us take a general survey of things and try, if possible, to find the right moment.

We need not search far. The inquiry ends at once, because the time has found us. The general agreement among us, the remarkable way everything has come together, proves it.

Our great strength lies not in numbers but in unity. Even so, our present numbers are enough to repel the force of the whole world. The continent now has the largest body of armed and disciplined men of any power under heaven.

It has also just reached a particular level of strength. No single colony can support itself alone, yet all of them united can accomplish the task. Either more strength or less than this might prove fatal.

Our land forces are already sufficient. As for naval matters, we must recognize that Britain would never allow an American warship to be built while the continent remained in her hands. A hundred years from now, then, we would be no further along in that area than we are today.

In truth, we would be further behind. The country’s timber is shrinking every day, and whatever remains in the end will be far away and hard to obtain.

If the continent were crowded with inhabitants, its sufferings under present circumstances would be unbearable. The more seaport towns we had, the more we would have to defend and to lose.

Our present population is happily matched to our needs, so no one need be idle. The decline in trade supplies men for an army, and the needs of an army create a new trade.

We have no debts. Whatever debt we take on for this cause will stand as a glorious reminder of our virtue. If we can leave future generations a settled form of government, an independent constitution of their own, the purchase will be cheap at any price.

But spending millions merely to repeal a few vile acts and drive out the present ministry is not worth the cost. It treats posterity with the utmost cruelty, because it leaves them the great work still to do, along with a debt on their backs from which they gain nothing. Such a thought is unworthy of a man of honor. It is the true mark of a narrow heart and a petty, peddling politician.

The debt we may incur is not worth worrying about, provided the work gets done. No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond, and when it bears no interest, it is never a hardship.

Britain is weighed down by a debt of more than one hundred and forty million pounds sterling, on which she pays more than four million in interest. In return for that debt, she has a large navy.

America has no debt and no navy. Yet for one-twentieth of the English national debt, America could have a navy twice as large. The navy of England is currently worth no more than three and a half million pounds sterling.

The first and second editions of this pamphlet were published without the following calculations. They are now included as proof that the above estimate of the navy is accurate. They are drawn from Entic’s naval history.

The figures below give the cost of building a ship of each rate, as calculated by Mr. Burchett, Secretary to the Navy. Each cost includes masts, yards, sails, and rigging, together with eight months’ supply of the boatswain’s and carpenter’s sea stores.

From these figures it is easy to total the value, or rather the cost, of the entire British navy. In 1757, at the height of its glory, it consisted of the following ships and guns:

No country on earth is so well situated, or so able to build a fleet from its own resources, as America. Tar, timber, iron, and rope are her natural products. We need to send abroad for nothing.

The Dutch, by contrast, make large profits by hiring out their warships to the Spanish and Portuguese, yet they must import most of the materials they use.

We ought to see building a fleet as a branch of commerce, since it is the natural industry of this country. It is the best money we can spend. A finished navy is worth more than it cost. It is that delicate point in national policy where commerce and protection meet.

Let us build. If we do not need the ships, we can sell them, and in that way replace our paper currency with real gold and silver.

On the question of manning a fleet, people generally make serious mistakes. It is not necessary for even a quarter of the crew to be sailors.

The privateer Terrible, under Captain Death, fought the fiercest engagement of any ship in the last war. Yet she had fewer than twenty sailors aboard, though her full crew numbered more than two hundred. A few capable and sociable sailors will soon teach enough active landsmen the ordinary work of a ship.

We will therefore never be better placed to begin on maritime affairs than now. Our timber is still standing, our fisheries are blocked, and our sailors and shipbuilders are out of work. Warships of seventy and eighty guns were built in New England forty years ago. Why not the same now?

Shipbuilding is America’s greatest pride, and in time she will surpass the whole world at it. The great empires of the East are mostly inland, and so they cannot possibly rival her. Africa is in a state of barbarism. No power in Europe has either so long a coastline or so large a domestic supply of materials.

Where nature has given one of these, she has withheld the other. Only to America has she been generous with both.

The vast empire of Russia is almost cut off from the sea. Her boundless forests, her tar, iron, and rope, are therefore only goods for trade.

As for our safety, should we be without a fleet? We are no longer the small people we were sixty years ago. Back then we could have left our property in the streets, or rather in the fields, and slept soundly without locks or bolts on our doors and windows.

Things have changed now, and our methods of defense ought to improve as our property increases. Twelve months ago, a common pirate could have sailed up the Delaware and forced the city of Philadelphia to pay whatever sum he demanded on the spot. The same could have happened to other places.

Indeed, any bold fellow in a brig of fourteen or sixteen guns might have robbed the whole continent and carried off half a million in money. These circumstances demand our attention, and they show the need for naval protection.

Some people may say that once we have made peace with Britain, she will protect us. Are we really foolish enough to mean that she should keep a navy in our harbors for that purpose? Common sense tells us that the power which has tried to conquer us is the least fit of all to defend us.

Conquest can be carried out under the pretense of friendship. After a long and brave resistance, we could end up tricked into slavery after all. And if her ships are not to be allowed into our harbors, I would ask how she is supposed to protect us. A navy three or four thousand miles away can be of little use, and in sudden emergencies, none at all.

So if we must protect ourselves in the future anyway, why not do it for ourselves? Why do it for someone else?

The British list of warships is long and impressive, but not a tenth of those ships are fit for service at any given time. Many no longer exist at all. Yet their names are proudly kept on the list as long as a single plank of the ship remains. And of the ships that are fit for service, not a fifth can be spared for any one station at a time.

The East and West Indies, the Mediterranean, Africa, and the other places over which Britain claims authority all make heavy demands on her navy.

Through a mix of prejudice and carelessness, we have formed a false idea of the English navy. We have talked as if we would have to fight the whole of it at once, and so we assumed we would need a navy just as large. Since that could not be built immediately, a group of Tories in disguise has used the idea to discourage us from starting at all.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If America had only a twentieth of Britain’s naval force, she would be more than a match for her. We neither have nor claim any foreign territories, so our whole force would be used on our own coast.

There, in the long run, we would have a two-to-one advantage over an enemy who had to sail three or four thousand miles before attacking us, and the same distance back to repair ships and replace crews.

Britain’s fleet does give her a hold over our trade with Europe. But we would have an equally strong hold over her trade with the West Indies. Those islands lie near the Continent and are entirely at its mercy.

If we decide that a permanent navy is unnecessary, some method could be found to maintain a naval force in peacetime. Suppose merchants were paid bounties to build ships armed with twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty guns and to use them in their trade. The bounties would be set in proportion to the cargo space the merchants lose to the guns.

Fifty or sixty such ships, along with a few guard ships on constant duty, would keep up a sufficient navy. This would also spare us the evil so loudly complained of in England, where the fleet lies rotting in the docks in peacetime.

Joining the strength of commerce with the strength of defense is sound policy. When our power and our wealth support each other, we need fear no foreign enemy.

We have plenty of almost everything needed for defense. Hemp grows so thickly that we will never lack rope. Our iron is better than that of other countries. Our small arms are equal to any in the world. We can cast cannon whenever we choose. We produce saltpeter and gunpowder every day. Our knowledge improves by the hour. Determination is part of our character, and courage has never yet abandoned us.

So what do we lack? Why do we hesitate? From Britain we can expect nothing but ruin. If she is ever allowed to govern America again, this Continent will not be worth living in.

Suspicions will keep arising, and uprisings will keep breaking out. And who will march out to put them down? Who will risk his life to force his own countrymen into obedience to a foreign power?

The dispute between Pennsylvania and Connecticut over some unsettled lands shows how ineffective British government is. It fully proves that only Continental authority can regulate Continental matters.

Another reason the present time is better than any other is this: because our population is still small, much land remains unoccupied. Rather than being squandered by the king on his worthless favorites, this land can later be used not only to pay off the present debt but to support the government permanently. No nation on earth has such an advantage.

The so-called infant state of the Colonies is not an argument against independence. It is an argument for it. We have enough people, and if we had more, we might be less united.

It is worth noticing that the more populous a country becomes, the smaller its armies are. The ancient nations raised far larger armies than modern ones, and the reason is clear. Trade follows from population, and men become too absorbed in trade to pay attention to anything else.

Commerce weakens the spirit of both patriotism and military defense. History shows clearly that a nation’s bravest achievements have always come in its youth.

As its commerce has grown, England has lost its spirit. The city of London, for all its numbers, endures repeated insults with the patience of a coward. The more men have to lose, the less willing they are to take risks. The rich, in general, are slaves to fear, and they submit to the power of the court with the trembling, two-faced servility of a spaniel.

Youth is the time to plant good habits, in nations as in individuals. Half a century from now, it might be difficult or even impossible to unite the Continent under one government. Growing trade and population would produce a vast variety of interests, and these would create confusion. Colony would set itself against colony.

Each colony, strong enough to stand alone, might scorn the help of the others. And while the proud and foolish took pride in their petty differences, the wise would regret that the union had not been formed earlier. The present time, therefore, is the right time to establish it.

Of all bonds, the closeness formed in childhood and the friendship formed in hardship are the most lasting and unchangeable. Our present union bears both marks: we are young, and we have suffered. Yet our harmony has held firm through our troubles, and it marks a memorable era that future generations can take pride in.

The present time is also the one moment that comes to a nation only once: the moment of forming itself into a government. Most nations have let that opportunity slip away. As a result, they have been forced to accept laws from their conquerors instead of making laws for themselves.

First they had a king, and only afterward a form of government. The proper order is the reverse. The articles or charter of government should be drawn up first, and men appointed to carry them out afterward. Let us learn wisdom from the mistakes of other nations and seize the present opportunity to begin government at the right end.

When William the Conqueror subdued England, he imposed law on its people at the point of the sword. Until we agree that the seat of government in America should be filled lawfully and with proper authority, we risk having it seized by some lucky thug who may treat us the same way. And then where will our freedom be? Where will our property be?

As for religion, I hold that every government has an absolute duty to protect all who sincerely practice it. I know of no other business that government has with religion.

Let a man set aside the narrowness of soul and the selfishness of principle that the stingy-minded of every profession are so reluctant to give up, and his fears on this point will vanish at once. Suspicion is the companion of petty minds and the ruin of all good society.

For my own part, I fully and sincerely believe it is the will of the Almighty that there should be a diversity of religious opinions among us. It gives a wider field for our Christian kindness. If we all thought alike, our religious character would have nothing to test it.

On this generous principle, I regard the various denominations among us as children of the same family, differing only in what are called their Christian names.

Earlier, I offered a few thoughts on the value of a Continental Charter, since I only presume to offer suggestions, not detailed plans. Here I take the liberty of returning to the subject.

A charter should be understood as a solemn, binding pledge that the whole community makes to uphold the rights of every separate part, whether of religion, personal freedom, or property. A firm bargain and a fair reckoning make long friends.

Earlier I also mentioned the need for a large and equal representation, and no political matter deserves more of our attention. A small number of voters and a small number of representatives are equally dangerous. If the representatives are not only few but also unequally distributed, the danger grows.

Here is an example. When the Associators’ petition came before the Pennsylvania House of Assembly, only twenty-eight members were present. All eight members from Bucks County voted against it. Had seven of the Chester County members done the same, this whole province would have been governed by just two counties. The province is always exposed to this danger.

The same House made an unjustified attempt in its last session to gain improper authority over the province’s delegates. That overreach should also warn the people at large to be careful about letting power out of their own hands.

A set of instructions for the delegates was put together that, in sense and substance, would have disgraced a schoolboy. After being approved by a few people outside the House, a very few, it was brought in and passed on behalf of the whole colony.

Yet if the whole colony knew how grudgingly that House has approached some necessary public measures, the people would not hesitate for a moment to judge its members unworthy of such trust.

Immediate necessity makes many arrangements convenient that would grow into oppressions if they were continued. What is expedient and what is right are different things.

When America’s troubles demanded joint consultation, no method was so ready, or at that time so proper, as appointing people from the various Houses of Assembly for that purpose. The wisdom with which they have acted has saved this continent from ruin.

But since we will very likely never again be without a Congress, everyone who wishes for good order must admit that the method of choosing its members deserves attention.

I put this question to those who study human nature: is the power both to represent and to elect not too great for one and the same body of men to hold? When we plan for future generations, we should remember that virtue is not hereditary.

We often learn excellent principles from our enemies, and their mistakes frequently surprise us into reason. Mr. Cornwall, one of the Lords of the Treasury, treated the petition of the New York Assembly with contempt.

That House, he said, had only twenty-six members, and so small a number could not decently be taken to speak for the whole. We thank him for his unintended honesty.

Anyone who wants to understand fully how important a large and equal representation is to a state should read Burgh’s Political Disquisitions.

To conclude: however strange it may seem to some, and however unwilling they may be to believe it, many strong and striking reasons can be given to show that nothing will settle our affairs as quickly as an open and determined declaration of independence. Some of them are these.

First. When two nations are at war, it is customary for other powers not involved in the quarrel to step in as mediators and arrange the preliminary terms of a peace. But as long as America calls herself a subject of Great Britain, no power can offer to mediate, however well disposed it may be. In our present state, therefore, we may go on quarreling forever.

Second. It is unreasonable to expect France or Spain to give us any kind of help if we intend to use that help only to repair the breach and strengthen the connection between Britain and America. Those powers would suffer from the consequences.

Third. As long as we declare ourselves subjects of Britain, foreign nations must regard us as rebels. For men to take up arms while still calling themselves subjects sets a precedent somewhat dangerous to those nations’ own peace.

We, who are here on the spot, can resolve the paradox. But combining resistance with submission requires an idea far too subtle for ordinary understanding.

Fourth. Suppose a manifesto were published and sent to foreign courts. It would set out the miseries we have suffered and the peaceful methods we have tried, without success, to obtain redress. It would declare that, no longer able to live happily or safely under the cruel disposition of the British court, we had been forced to break off all connection with her.

At the same time, it would assure all those courts of our peaceful intentions toward them and of our wish to trade with them. Such a statement would do more good for this Continent than a whole shipload of petitions to Britain.

Under our present title of British subjects, we can be neither received nor heard abroad. The customs of every court are against us, and they will stay that way until independence gives us rank among other nations.

These steps may seem strange and difficult at first. But like every other step we have already taken, they will soon become familiar and agreeable.

Until independence is declared, the continent will feel like a man who keeps putting off some unpleasant business from day to day. He knows it must be done, hates to begin it, and wishes it were over. All the while, he is haunted by the thought that it cannot be avoided.

APPENDIX.

Since the first edition of this pamphlet was published (or rather, on the very day it came out), the King’s Speech appeared in this city. If the spirit of prophecy had guided the birth of this work, it could not have arrived at a better or more necessary moment.

The bloodthirstiness of the Speech shows why the pamphlet’s doctrine must be pursued. People read in a spirit of revenge. Instead of terrifying them, the Speech prepared the way for the manly principles of independence.

Ceremony, and even silence, whatever their motive, do harm when they give the slightest approval to base and wicked works. If this principle is accepted, it follows that the King’s Speech, as a piece of complete villainy, deserved and still deserves the condemnation of both Congress and the people.

Yet a nation’s peace at home depends greatly on the purity of what may be called its national manners. It is therefore often better to pass over some things in silent contempt than to invent new ways of showing dislike. Such new methods might bring even the smallest change to manners, which guard our peace and safety.

This prudent restraint is perhaps the main reason the King’s Speech has not yet suffered a public execution.

The Speech, if it deserves that name, is nothing better than a deliberate, audacious libel against truth, against the common good, and against the existence of mankind. It is a formal and pompous way of offering up human sacrifices to the pride of tyrants.

But this general slaughter of mankind is one of the privileges of kings and the certain consequence of having them. Nature does not recognize them, so they do not recognize nature. We ourselves created them, yet they do not recognize us. They have become the gods of their own creators.

The Speech has one good quality: it is not designed to deceive, and we could not be deceived by it even if we wanted to be. Brutality and tyranny are plain on its face. It leaves us in no doubt.

Every line convinces us, even as we read it, that the naked, untaught Indian who hunts the woods for prey is less a savage than the King of Britain.

Sir John Dalrymple is the supposed author of a whining, Jesuitical piece falsely titled “The Address of the People of England to the Inhabitants of America.” He perhaps vainly assumed that people here would be frightened by the grandeur and description of a king. In any case, he has very unwisely revealed the real character of the present one.

“But,” this writer says, “if you are inclined to pay compliments to an administration, which we do not complain of,” (meaning the Marquis of Rockingham’s administration, which repealed the Stamp Act) “it is very unfair in you to withhold them from that prince, by whose nod alone they were permitted to do any thing.”

This is Toryism in its plainest form. Here is idolatry without even a mask. Anyone who can calmly hear and swallow such a doctrine has given up his claim to reason. He is a deserter from the order of manhood.

He should be regarded as someone who has not only abandoned the proper dignity of a man but has sunk below the level of animals. He crawls contemptibly through the world like a worm.

However, it now matters very little what the King of England says or does. He has wickedly broken through every moral and human obligation and trampled nature and conscience underfoot. Through a steady, ingrained spirit of insolence and cruelty, he has earned universal hatred.

It is now in America’s interest to provide for herself. She already has a large and young family. Her duty is to care for that family rather than to give away her property to support a power that has become a disgrace to the names of men and Christians.

Some of you watch over the morals of a nation, whatever your sect or denomination. Others among you more directly guard public liberty. If you wish to keep your native country free from European corruption, you must privately wish for separation.

But I will leave the moral side to private reflection. My further remarks will be confined mainly to the following points:

• First, that it is in America’s interest to be separated from Britain.
• Second, which plan is easier and more practical: reconciliation or independence? With some occasional remarks.

In support of the first point, I could, if I thought it proper, cite the opinions of some of the ablest and most experienced men on this continent, whose views on the subject are not yet publicly known.

But the point is really self-evident. A nation that depends on a foreign power, with its commerce limited and its lawmaking powers cramped and shackled, can never reach any real greatness.

America does not yet know what wealth is. Her progress so far is unmatched in the history of other nations. Yet it is only childhood compared with what she could achieve if she held her legislative powers in her own hands, as she ought to.

England is now proudly coveting something that would do her no good if she got it. Meanwhile, the continent hesitates over a matter that will ruin her if it is neglected.

England benefits from America’s commerce, not from conquering her. That commerce would largely continue even if the two countries were as independent of each other as France and Spain, because for many goods neither can find a better market.

But independence from Britain, or from any other country, is now the main and only object worth contending for. Like all truths discovered through necessity, it will appear clearer and stronger every day:

• First, because it will come to that sooner or later.
• Second, because the longer it is delayed, the harder it will be to achieve.

I have often amused myself, in public and private company, by silently noting the plausible errors of people who speak without thinking. Of the many I have heard, the most common seems to be this: if this break had come forty or fifty years from now instead of today, the continent would have been better able to throw off its dependence.

I reply that our present military ability comes from the experience we gained in the last war. In forty or fifty years, that experience would be completely gone.

By then the continent would not have a single general, or even a military officer, left. We, or those who come after us, would know as little about military matters as the ancient Indians.

This single point, carefully considered, proves beyond answer that the present time is better than any other. The argument runs as follows. At the end of the last war, we had experience but lacked numbers. Forty or fifty years from now, we would have numbers but no experience.

The right moment must therefore fall somewhere between these two extremes. It must be a point where enough experience remains and the population has grown sufficiently. That point is the present.

The reader will forgive this digression, since it does not strictly belong under the first point I set out to prove. I return to that point with the following claim.

Suppose our affairs are patched up with Britain and she remains the governing, sovereign power over America. As things now stand, that would mean surrendering the whole question. In that case, we would deprive ourselves of the very means of paying off the debt we already have or may still incur.

Consider the back lands that some provinces have been secretly stripped of through the unjust extension of Canada’s borders. Valued at only five pounds sterling per hundred acres, these lands are worth more than twenty-five million in Pennsylvania currency. The quit-rents on them, the small annual rents owed on granted land, would bring in two million a year at one penny sterling per acre.

Selling these lands could pay off the debt without burdening anyone. The quit-rent kept on them would steadily reduce the yearly cost of government and, in time, cover it entirely.

It does not matter how long the debt takes to repay, as long as the money from the land sales goes toward it. The Congress of the day would act as the continental trustee for carrying this out.

I now turn to the second point: which plan is easier and more practical, reconciliation or independence? Again, I add some occasional remarks.

Whoever takes nature as a guide is not easily driven from an argument. On that basis, I answer in general terms. Independence is a single, simple line that lies entirely within our own control.

Reconciliation, by contrast, is extremely tangled and complicated, and a treacherous, unpredictable court would have a hand in it. This contrast settles the question beyond doubt.

The present state of America is truly alarming to anyone capable of reflection. We are without law and without government. We have no form of power except what rests on courtesy and is granted by it.

We are held together by an unprecedented agreement of feeling. Yet that agreement can change, and every secret enemy is trying to break it apart.

Our present condition is legislation without law, wisdom without a plan, and a constitution without a name. Most astonishing of all, we are perfect independence fighting for dependence. There is no precedent for this. Such a case has never existed before, and who can say how it will end?

No one’s property is secure under this loose, unbraced arrangement. The mind of the people drifts at random. Seeing no fixed goal before them, they chase whatever fancy or opinion suggests.

Nothing is a crime, and there is no such thing as treason. As a result, everyone feels free to act as he pleases.

The Tories would not have dared to gather for hostile purposes if they had known that doing so would forfeit their lives under the laws of the state.

A clear distinction should be drawn between English soldiers taken in battle and inhabitants of America taken in arms. The first are prisoners, but the second are traitors. The one forfeits his liberty, the other his head.

For all our wisdom, some of our proceedings show a visible weakness that encourages disagreement. The continental belt is buckled too loosely.

If something is not done in time, it will be too late to do anything. We will then fall into a condition where neither reconciliation nor independence is possible.

The king and his worthless followers have returned to their old game of dividing the continent. Nor do we lack printers among us who will busily spread plausible falsehoods.

The sly and hypocritical letter that appeared a few months ago in two New York papers, and in two others as well, proves that some men lack either judgment or honesty.

It is easy to slip into holes and corners and talk of reconciliation. But do such men seriously consider how difficult the task is, and how dangerous it could become if the continent split over it?

Do they take into account all the different classes of people whose situations and circumstances must be weighed along with their own? Do they put themselves in the place of the sufferer who has already lost everything? Do they consider the soldier who has left everything behind to defend his country?

If their misjudged moderation suits only their own private situations, without regard for others, events will show them that “they are reckoning without their Host.” They are tallying the bill without the innkeeper who will actually present it.

Some say, “Put us back on the footing we were on in sixty-three.” I answer that Britain no longer has the power to grant this request, and she will not offer it.

Even if she could, and even if she did, I ask a reasonable question: by what means could such a corrupt and faithless court be held to its promises?

Another parliament, or even the present one, might later repeal the agreement, claiming that it was obtained by force or granted unwisely. Where would we find redress then?

Nations cannot be taken to court. Cannon are the lawyers of kings. The sword decides the case, and it is the sword of war, not of justice.

Returning to the footing of sixty-three would require more than putting the laws back as they were. Our circumstances would also have to be restored. Our burnt and destroyed towns would need to be repaired or rebuilt, and our private losses made good. Our public debts, incurred for defense, would have to be paid off.

Otherwise, we would be millions worse off than we were in that enviable time.

If such a request had been granted a year ago, it would have won the heart and soul of the continent. But now it is too late. “The Rubicon is passed.”

Besides, taking up arms merely to force the repeal of a law about money seems as unjustifiable under divine law, and as offensive to human feeling, as taking up arms to force obedience to it. On neither side does the goal justify the means. Human lives are too valuable to be thrown away on such small matters.

What conscientiously justifies the use of arms is something else: the violence done and threatened against our persons, the destruction of our property by armed force, and the invasion of our country with fire and sword. The moment that kind of defense became necessary, all subjection to Britain should have ended. American independence should have been dated from, and announced by, the first musket fired against her.

This line is consistent. It was not drawn on a whim or stretched by ambition. It was produced by a chain of events that the colonies did not author.

I will close these remarks with some timely and well-meant suggestions. We should keep in mind that independence may come about in three different ways, and that one of the three will eventually be America’s fate. It may come by the lawful voice of the people in Congress, by military power, or by a mob.

Our soldiers may not always be citizens, and the crowd may not always be a body of reasonable people. As I have already remarked, virtue is not hereditary, and it is not permanent either.

If independence comes by the first of these means, we have every opportunity and every encouragement to form the noblest, purest constitution on earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. Nothing like the present situation has happened since the days of Noah.

The birthday of a new world is near. A race of people, perhaps as numerous as the whole population of Europe, will receive their share of freedom from the outcome of a few months. The thought is awe-inspiring. Seen this way, the petty quibbles of a few weak or self-interested men look trivial and ridiculous when weighed against the business of a world.

If we let this favorable and inviting moment pass, and independence later comes about by some other means, we will have only ourselves to blame. More precisely, the blame will fall on those narrow, prejudiced minds who habitually oppose the measure without inquiring into it or thinking it through.

Some reasons in favor of independence are better considered privately than declared publicly. We should no longer be debating whether to become independent. We should be anxious to achieve it on a firm, secure, and honorable basis, and uneasy that it has not yet begun. Every day convinces us more of its necessity.

Even the Tories, if any such beings remain among us, should be more eager than anyone to promote it. At first, the appointment of committees protected them from popular anger. In the same way, only a wise and well-established form of government can keep that protection secure for them. So if they lack the virtue to be Whigs, they should at least have the prudence to want independence.

In short, independence is the only bond that can tie us together and keep us together. Once we have it, we will see our goal clearly, and our ears will be lawfully closed to the schemes of an enemy who is both scheming and cruel.

We will also be in a proper position to negotiate with Britain. There is reason to think that the pride of the British court will be less wounded by negotiating peace terms with the American states than by negotiating terms of accommodation with people it calls “rebellious subjects.” Our delay is what encourages Britain to hope for conquest, and our hesitation only prolongs the war.

We have withheld our trade to win redress of our grievances, and it has done no good. Let us now try the alternative: redress those grievances ourselves, independently, and then offer to reopen trade. The commercial and reasonable part of England will still be with us, because peace with trade is better than war without it. And if the offer is refused, we can apply to other courts.

On these grounds I rest my case. No one has yet attempted to refute the argument of the earlier editions of this pamphlet. That silence is negative proof: either the argument cannot be refuted, or its supporters are too numerous to oppose.

So instead of eyeing one another with suspicion or uncertain curiosity, let each of us offer our neighbor the warm hand of friendship. Let us unite in drawing a line that buries every past disagreement in forgetfulness, the way an act of oblivion, a legal pardon, wipes past offenses from the record.

Let the names of Whig and Tory die out. Let no other names be heard among us than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the rights of mankind and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA.

To the Representatives of the Religious Society of the People called Quakers, or to as many of them as were involved in publishing the recent piece entitled “The Ancient Testimony and Principles of the People called Quakers renewed, with Respect to the King and Government, and touching the Commotions now prevailing in these and other parts of America addressed to the People in General.”

The writer of this letter is one of those few who never dishonor religion by ridiculing or quibbling with any denomination whatever. On matters of religion, all people answer to God, not to other people. This letter is therefore addressed to you less as a religious body than as a political one, dabbling in matters that the professed quietness of your principles tells you not to meddle with.

Without proper authority, you have put yourselves in the place of the whole body of Quakers. To stand on equal footing with you, the writer of this must therefore put himself in the place of all those who approve the very writings and principles your testimony attacks.

He has chosen this unusual position so that you might see in him the presumption that you cannot see in yourselves. For neither he nor you has any claim or title to political representation.

When people leave the right path, it is no wonder they stumble and fall. The way you have handled your testimony makes it plain that politics is not your proper sphere as a religious body. However well suited it may seem to you, your testimony is an unwise jumble of good and bad, and the conclusion you draw from it is both unnatural and unjust.

We give you credit for the first two pages (the whole thing does not run to four), and we expect the same courtesy from you. The love and desire of peace is not confined to Quakerism. It is the natural, as well as the religious, wish of people of every denomination.

On this ground, as men working to establish an independent constitution of our own, we surpass all others in our hope, goal, and aim. Our plan is peace forever. We are tired of conflict with Britain and see no real end to it except final separation. We act consistently, because we bear the evils and burdens of the present day for the sake of bringing in an endless, uninterrupted peace.

We are trying, and will steadily keep trying, to separate and dissolve a connection that has already filled our land with blood. As long as even the name of that connection remains, it will be the fatal cause of future harm to both countries.

We fight neither for revenge nor for conquest, neither from pride nor from passion. We are not insulting the world with our fleets and armies, or ravaging the globe for plunder. We are attacked beneath the shade of our own vines. The violence is committed against us in our own houses and on our own lands.

We regard our enemies as highwaymen and housebreakers. Because the civil law gives us no protection against them, we are forced to punish them under military law. We apply the sword in exactly the kind of case where you yourselves have, before now, applied the hangman’s rope.

Perhaps we feel for the ruined and insulted sufferers in every part of the continent with a tenderness that has not yet found its way into some of your hearts. But make sure you do not mistake the cause and basis of your testimony. Do not call coldness of soul religion, and do not put the bigot in the place of the Christian.

You partial ministers of your own professed principles! If bearing arms is sinful, then starting a war must be more sinful still, by the whole difference between deliberate attack and unavoidable defense. So if you truly preach from conscience, and do not mean to make your religion a political hobbyhorse, prove it to the world by preaching your doctrine to our enemies, for they bear arms too.

Prove your sincerity by proclaiming it at St. James’s, to the commanders in chief at Boston, to the admirals and captains who are ravaging our coasts like pirates, and to all the murdering villains acting under the authority of the king you claim to serve.

If you had the honest soul of Barclay, you would preach repentance to your king. You would tell the royal wretch his sins and warn him of eternal ruin. You would not aim your one-sided attacks only at the injured and insulted. Like faithful ministers, you would cry aloud and spare no one.

Do not claim that you are persecuted, and do not try to blame us for the disgrace you are bringing on yourselves. We declare to everyone that our complaint against you is not that you are Quakers, but that you pretend to be Quakers and are not.

“You have tasted both prosperity and adversity. You know what it is to be banished from your native country, to be ruled over as well as to rule, and to be set upon the throne. Having been oppressed, you have reason to know how hateful the oppressor is to both God and man. If, after all these warnings and admonitions, you do not turn to the Lord with all your heart, but forget him who remembered you in your distress, and give yourself up to lust and vanity, your condemnation will surely be great.

“Against that snare, and against the temptation of those who may or do indulge you and urge you toward evil, the best and most effective remedy is to turn to the light of Christ that shines in your conscience. That light neither can nor will flatter you, nor let you rest easy in your sins.”

—Barclay’s address to Charles II

Alas! Judging by the particular drift of part of your testimony, and of other parts of your conduct, it seems as if all sin had been reduced to, and contained in, the act of bearing arms, and only when the people do it.

You seem to us to have mistaken party for conscience, because your actions lack consistency. We find it very hard to believe many of your professed scruples. We see them raised by the same men who, in the very moment they denounce the mammon of this world, are chasing after it with a step as steady as Time and an appetite as keen as Death.

The verse you quote from Proverbs on the third page of your testimony, “when a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him,” was an unwise choice on your part. It amounts to proof that the ways of the king you want to support do not please the Lord. Otherwise his reign would be peaceful.

I now turn to the latter part of your testimony, the part for which everything before it seems only an introduction:

“It has always been our judgment and principle, from the time we were called to profess the light of Christ Jesus revealed in our consciences until today, that setting up and putting down kings and governments is God’s own special prerogative, for reasons best known to himself.

“It is not our business to have any hand or scheme in it, or to be busybodies above our station, much less to plot and contrive the ruin or overthrow of any of them. Our business is to pray for the king, for the safety of our nation, and for the good of all people, so that we may live a peaceable and quiet life, in all godliness and honesty, under the government God is pleased to set over us.”

If these really are your principles, why do you not keep to them? Why do you not leave what you call God’s work for him to manage? These very principles teach you to wait patiently and humbly for the outcome of all public measures, and to accept that outcome as God’s will toward you.

So what need is there for your political testimony, if you fully believe what it says? The very act of publishing it proves one of two things: either you do not believe what you profess, or you lack the virtue to practice what you believe.

The principles of Quakerism naturally make a person a quiet, inoffensive subject of any and every government placed over him. And if setting up and putting down kings and governments is God’s special right, we certainly cannot rob Him of it.

It follows that your own principle requires you to approve of everything that has ever happened, or may happen, to kings, since all of it must be His work. Oliver Cromwell thanks you. By your reasoning, Charles I did not die at the hands of men.

And should the present proud imitator of Charles come to the same untimely end, the writers and publishers of the Testimony are bound by their own doctrine to applaud it. Kings are not removed by miracles. Governments change only through ordinary human means, the same kind of means we are using now.

Even the scattering of the Jews, though our Savior foretold it, was carried out by force of arms. Since you refuse to be the instrument of change on one side, you ought not to meddle on the other. You should wait for the outcome in silence.

The Almighty created this new world and placed it as far as it could possibly stand, east and west, from every part of the old one. Unless you can produce divine authority proving that He nevertheless disapproves of its independence from the corrupt and abandoned court of Britain, your position cannot stand.

Unless you can show this, how can you justify, on the basis of your own principles, stirring up the people “firmly to unite in the abhorrence of all such writings, and measures, as evidence a desire and design to break off the happy connexion we have hitherto enjoyed, with the kingdom of Great-Britain, and our just and necessary subordination to the king, and those who are lawfully placed in authority under him”?

What a slap in the face this is! In the paragraph just before, these same men quietly and passively surrendered the ordering, altering, and disposal of kings and governments into the hands of God. Now they take back their principles and claim a share in the business themselves.

Can the conclusion I have just quoted possibly follow from the doctrine they laid down? The inconsistency is too glaring to miss and the absurdity too great not to laugh at. Only people whose understanding was darkened by the narrow, sour spirit of a despairing political party could have produced it.

For you are not to be considered the whole body of the Quakers, but only a factional and fractional part of it.

This ends my examination of your Testimony. I call on no one to abhor it, as you have called on people to abhor others’ writings. I ask only that people read it and judge it fairly. To this I add one remark.

“The setting up and putting down of kings” must mean making someone a king who is not yet one, and making someone no longer a king who already is one. What does this have to do with the present case? We intend neither to set up nor to put down, neither to make nor to unmake. We intend to have nothing to do with kings at all.

So however your Testimony is viewed, it only discredits your judgment. For several further reasons, it would have been better left unpublished than published:

• First, because making religion a party to political disputes weakens and brings reproach on all religion whatever, and is extremely dangerous to society.
• Second, because it presents a whole body of people as involved in and approving of this publication, when many of them reject the practice of publishing political testimonies.
• Third, because it tends to undo the harmony and friendship across the continent that you yourselves helped establish through your recent generous and charitable donations. Preserving that harmony matters greatly to all of us.

And here, without anger or resentment, I bid you farewell. I sincerely hope that, as men and as Christians, you may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right, and in turn help secure those rights for others.

But I also hope that the example you have unwisely set, of mixing religion with politics, may be rejected and condemned by every inhabitant of America.

FINIS.

End of Common Sense. Choose another edition.