Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages,
are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor;
a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial
appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry
in defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts
than reason.
As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the
means of calling the right of it in question, (and in matters too
which might never have been thought of, had not the sufferers been
aggravated into the inquiry,) and as the king of England hath undertaken
in his own right, to support the parliament in what he calls theirs,
and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by
the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into
the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of
either.
In the following sheets, the author hath studiously
avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments
as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise and
the worthy need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments
are injudicious or unfriendly, will cease of themselves, unless too
much pains is bestowed upon their conversion.
The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause
of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are
not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all
lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections
are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword,
declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating
the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of
every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which
, regardless of party censure, is.
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