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Introduction
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 defense of custom. But the
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 class, regardless of party censure, is
THE AUTHOR.
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 14, 1776.
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