business; if the support or fall of millions of currency can affect
our interests; if the entire possession of estates, by cutting off
the lordly claims of Britain over the soil, deserves the regard of
landed property; and if the right of making our own laws,
uncontrolled by royal or ministerial spies or mandates, be worthy our
care as freemen;- then are all men interested in the support of
independence; and may he that supports it not, be driven from the
blessing, and live unpitied beneath the servile sufferings of
scandalous subjection!

We have been amused with the tales of ancient wonders; we have read,
and wept over the histories of other nations: applauded, censured, or
pitied, as their cases affected us. The fortitude and patience of the
sufferers- the justness of their cause- the weight of their
oppressions and oppressors- the object to be saved or lost- with all
the consequences of a defeat or a conquest- have, in the hour of
sympathy, bewitched our hearts, and chained it to their fate: but
where is the power that ever made war upon petitioners? Or where is
the war on which a world was staked till now?

We may not, perhaps, be wise enough to make all the advantages we
ought of our independence; but they are, nevertheless, marked and
presented to us with every character of great and good, and worthy
the hand of him who sent them. I look through the present trouble to
a time of tranquillity, when we shall have it in our power to set an
example of peace to all the world. Were the Quakers really impressed
and influenced by the quiet principles they profess to hold, they
would, however they might disapprove the means, be the first of all
men to approve of independence, because, by separating ourselves from
the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, it affords an opportunity never