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. The case is simply
this: the first settlers in the different colonies were left to shift
for themselves, unnoticed and unsupported by any European government;
but as the tyranny and persecution of the old world daily drove
numbers to the new, and as, by the favor of heaven on their industry
and perseverance, they grew into importance, so, in a like degree,
they became an object of profit to the greedy eyes of Europe. It was
impossible, in this state of infancy, however thriving and promising,
that they could resist the power of any armed invader that should
seek to bring them under his authority. In this situation, Britain
thought it worth her while to claim them, and the continent received