Source: Common Sense,
Thomas Paine, January 1775
. . . I have heard it
asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connection
with Great Britain, that the same connection is necessary towards her future
happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious
than this kind of argument. We may as well assert, that because a child has
thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat; or that the first twenty
years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this
is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly, that America would have
flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power had any thing to do with her. The commerce by which she hath
enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will
always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe. . . .
. . . But she has
protected us, say some. That she hath engrossed us is true, and defended the
continent at our expense as well as her own is admitted, and she would have
defended Turkey from the same motive, viz. the sake of trade and dominion.
. . . Alas, we have been
long led away by ancient prejudices and made large sacrifices to superstition.
We have boasted the protection of Great Britain, without considering, that her
motive was interest not attachment; that she did not protect us from our
enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account, from those who
had no quarrel with us on any other account, and who will always be our enemies
on the same account. Let Britain wave her pretensions to the continent, or the
continent throw off the dependance, and we should be
at peace with France and Spain were they at war with Britain. The miseries of
Hanover last war Ought to warn us against connections
. . .
. . . It hath lately
been asserted in parliament, that the colonies have no relation to each other
but through the parent country, i. e. that
Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so on for the rest, are sister colonies by
the way of England; this is certainly a very roundabout way of proving relation ship, but it is the nearest and only true way of
proving enemyship, if I may so call it. France and
Spain never were, nor perhaps ever will be our enemies as Americans, but as our
being the subjects of Great Britain. . . .
. . . But Britain is the
parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her
conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young; nor savages make war
upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach;
but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase Parent or
mother country hath been jesuitically adopted by the
king and his parasites, with a low papistical design
of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and
not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the
asylum for the persecuted lovers off civil and religious liberty from every
Part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the
mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England,
that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home pursues their
descendants still . . .
. . . Every thing that is right or
natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the
weeping voice of nature cries, 'tis time to part. Even the distance at
which the Almighty hath placed England and America, is a strong and natural
proof, that the authority of the one, over the other, was never the design of
Heaven. . . .
. . .Small
islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for
kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in
supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance
hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England
and America, with respect to each Other, reverses the common order of nature,
it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to
itself. . . .
But where, say some, is the King of America . . . in America the law is
king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the
law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use
should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be
demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is . . .