tain as another; and it might have been as well to have been
under the states of Holland as any. The same hopes of engrossing and
profiting by her trade, by not oppressing it too much, would have
operated alike with any master, and produced to the colonies the same
effects. The clamor of protection, likewise, was all a farce; because,
in order to make that protection necessary, she must first, by her own
quarrels, create us enemies. Hard terms indeed!

To know whether it be the interest of the continent to be independent,
we need only ask this easy, simple question: Is it the interest of a man
to be a boy all his life? The answer to one will be the answer to both.
America hath been one continued scene of legislative contention from
the first king's representative to the last; and this was unavoidably
founded in the natural opposition of interest between the old country
and the new. A governor sent from England, or receiving his authority
therefrom, ought never to have been considered in any other light
than that of a genteel commissioned spy, whose private business was
information, and his public business a kind of civilized oppression. In
the first of these characters he was to watch the tempers, sentiments,
and disposition of the people, the growth of trade, and the increase of
private fortunes; and, in the latter, to suppress all such acts of the
assemblies, however beneficial to the people, which did not directly
or indirectly throw some increase of power or profit into the hands of
those that sent him.

America, till now, could never be called a free country, because her
legislation depended on the will of a man three thousand miles distant,
whose interest was in opposition to ours, and who, by a single "no,"
could forbid what law he pleased.

The freedom of trade, likewise, is, to a trading country, an article of
such importance, that the principal source of wealth depends upon it;
and it is impossible that any country can flourish, as it otherwise
might do, whose commerce is engrossed, cramped and fettered by the
laws and mandates of another--yet these evils, and more than I can here
enumerate, the continent has suffered by being under the government of
England. By an independence we clear the whole at once--put
an end to the business of unanswered petitions and fruitless
remonstrances--exchange Britain for Europe--shake hands with the
world--live at peace with the world--and trade to any market where we
can b