independence to have any share in our legislation, either as electors
or representatives; because the support of our independence rests, in
a great measure, on the vigor and purity of our public bodies. Would
Britain, even in time of peace, much less in war, suffer an election
to be carried by men who professed themselves to be not her subjects,
or allow such to sit in Parliament? Certainly not.

But there are a certain species of Tories with whom conscience or
principle has nothing to do, and who are so from avarice only. Some
of the first fortunes on the continent, on the part of the Whigs, are
staked on the issue of our present measures. And shall disaffection
only be rewarded with security? Can any thing be a greater inducement
to a miserly man, than the hope of making his Mammon safe? And though
the scheme be fraught with every character of folly, yet, so long as
he supposes, that by doing nothing materially criminal against
America on one part, and by expressing his private disapprobation
against independence, as palliative with the enemy, on the other
part, he stands in a safe line between both; while, I say, this
ground be suffered to remain, craft, and the spirit of avarice, will
point it out, and men will not be wanting to fill up this most
contemptible of all characters.

These men, ashamed to own the sordid cause from whence their
disaffection springs, add thereby meanness to meanness, by
endeavoring to shelter themselves under the mask of hypocrisy; that
is, they had rather be thought to be Tories from some kind of
principle, than Tories by having no principle at all. But till such
time as they can show some real reason, natural, political, or
conscientious, on which their objections to independence are founded,
we are not obliged to give them credit for being Tories of the first