3d, The necessity,- and
4th, The moral advantages arising therefrom.
I. The natural right of the continent to independence, is a point
which never yet was called in question. It will not even admit of a
debate. To deny such a right, would be a kind of atheism against
nature: and the best answer to such an objection would be, "The fool
hath said in his heart there is no God."
II. The interest of the continent in being independent is a point as
clearly right as the former. America, by her own internal industry,
and unknown to all the powers of Europe, was, at the beginning of
the dispute, arrived at a pitch of greatness, trade and population,
beyond which it was the interest of Britain not to suffer her to pass,
lest she should grow too powerful to be kept subordinate. She began to
view this country with the same uneasy malicious eye, with which a
covetous guardian would view his ward, whose estate he had been
enriching himself by for twenty years, and saw him just arriving at
manhood. And America owes no more to Britain for her present maturity,
than the ward would to the guardian for being twenty-one years of age.
That America hath flourished at the time she was under the
government of Britain, is true; but there is every natural reason to
believe, that had she been an independent country from the first
settlement thereof, uncontrolled by any foreign power, free to make
her own laws, regulate and encourage her own commerce, she had by this
time been of much greater worth than now.
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