I look through the present trouble to a
time of tranquillity, when we shall have it in our power to set an
example of peace to all the world. Were the Quakers really impressed
and influenced by the quiet principles they profess to hold, they
would, however they might disapprove the means, be the first of all
men to approve of independence, because, by separating ourselves
from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, it affords an opportunity never
given to man before of carrying their favourite principle of peace
into general practice, by establishing governments that shall
hereafter exist without wars. O! ye fallen, cringing,
priest-and-Pemberton-ridden people! What more can we say of ye than
that a religious Quaker is a valuable character, and a political
Quaker a real Jesuit.
Having thus gone over some of the principal points in support of
independence, I must now request the reader to return back with me
to the period when it first began to be a public doctrine, and to
examine the progress it has made among the various classes of men. The
area I mean to begin at, is the breaking out of hostilities, April
19th, 1775. Until this event happened, the continent seemed to view
the dispute as a kind of law-suit for a matter of right, litigating
between the old country and the new; and she felt the same kind and
degree of horror, as if she had seen an oppressive plaintiff, at the
head of a band of ruffians, enter the court, while the cause was
before it, and put the judge, the jury, the defendant and his counsel,
to the sword.
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