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 dependence, 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 has 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 round-about way of proving relationship, 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