far distant from it to govern it at all.

IV. But what weigh most with all men of serious reflection are, the
moral advantages arising from independence: war and desolation have
become the trade of the old world; and America neither could nor can
be under the government of Britain without becoming a sharer of her
guilt, and a partner in all the dismal commerce of death. The spirit
of duelling, extended on a national scale, is a proper character for
European wars. They have seldom any other motive than pride, or any
other object than fame. The conquerors and the conquered are
generally ruined alike, and the chief difference at last is, that the
one marches home with his honors, and the other without them. 'Tis
the natural temper of the English to fight for a feather, if they
suppose that feather to be an affront; and America, without the right
of asking why, must have abetted in every quarrel, and abided by its
fate. It is a shocking situation to live in, that one country must be
brought into all the wars of another, whether the measure be right or
wrong, or whether she will or not; yet this, in the fullest extent,
was, and ever would be, the unavoidable consequence of the
connection. Surely the Quakers forgot their own principles when, in
their late Testimony, they called this connection, with these
military and miserable appendages hanging to it- "the happy
constitution."

Britain, for centuries past, has been nearly fifty years out of every
hundred at war with some power or other. It certainly ought to be a
conscientious as well political consideration with America, not to
dip her hands in the bloody work of Europe. Our situation affords us
a retreat from their cabals, and the present happy union of the
states bids fair for extirpating the future use of arms from one