he administration of it at such a distance, and over so
extensive a territory, must necessarily fail of putting the laws
into vigorous execution, removing private oppressions, and forming
plans for the advancement of agriculture and commerce, and
preserving the vast empire in any tolerable peace and security. If
our posterity retain any spark of patriotism, they can never tamely
submit to such burthens. This country will be made the field of
bloody contention till it gain that independence for which nature
formed it. It is, therefore, injustice and cruelty to our
offspring, and would stamp us with the character of baseness and
cowardice, to leave the salvation of this country to be worked out
by them with accumulated difficulty and danger.

Prejudice, I confess, may warp our judgments. Let us hear the
decision of Englishmen on this subject, who cannot be suspected of
partiality. "The Americans," they say, "are but little short of half
our number. To this number they have grown from a small body of
original settlers by a very rapid increase. The probability is that
they will go on to increase, and that in fifty or sixty years they
will be double our number, and form a mighty empire, consisting of a
variety of States, all equal or superior to ourselves in all the
arts and accomplishments which give dignity and happiness to human
life. In that period will they be still bound to acknowledge that
supremacy over them which we now claim? Can there be any person who
will assert this, or whose mind does not revolt at the idea of a
vast continent holding all that is valuable to it at the discretion
of a handful of people on the other side of the Atlantic? But if at
that period this would be unreasonable, what makes it otherwise now?
Draw the line if you can. But there is still a greater difficulty."

Britain is now, I will suppose, the seat of liberty and virtue, and
its legislature consists of a body of able and independent men, who
govern with wisdom and justice. The time may come when all will be
reversed; when its excellent constitution of government will be
subverted; when, pressed by debts and taxes, it will be greedy to
draw to itself an increase of revenue from every distant province,
in order to ease its own burdens; when the influence of the crown,
strengthened by luxury and a universal profligacy of manners, will
have tainted every heart, broken down every fence of liberty, and
rendered us a nation of tam