ed British subjects, cramped and restrained by the Little has been hitherto done towards completlimited views of dependence, each one of them ing the natural history of America, or for the imwould dwindle and decay, compared with the per- provement of agriculture, and the peaceful arts of fection and glory in which they will bloom and civil life; but who will be surprised at this, who flourish, under the enlivening sunshine of freedom considers that during the long past night of 150 and independence. years, our minds were depressed, and our activity

I appeal to the experience of all, whether they benumbed by the low prospects of subjection? do not feel an elevation of soul, growing out of the Future diligence will convince the candid world, emancipation of their country, while they recol. that pastinattention was the effect of our dependent lect that they are no longer subject to lawless will, form of government.

Every circumstance concurs to make it probable, but possess the powers of self-government, and are called upon to bear an active part in supporting that the arts and sciences will be cultivated, ex. and perpetuating the sovereignty of the United tended, and improved, in independent America. States; and in organizing them in such a manner, They require a fresh soil, and always flourish most as will produce the greatest portion of political in new countries. A large volume of the book of

happiness to the present and future generations. In this elevation of soul, consists true genius; which is cramped by kingly government, and can only flourish in free states.

The attention of thousands is now called forth from their ordinary employments to subjects connected with the sovereignty and happiness of a great continent. As no one can tell to what extent the human mind may be cultivated, so no one can foresee what great events may be brought into existence, by the exertions of so many minds expanded by close attention to subjects of such vast importance.

The royal society was founded immediately after the termination of the civil wars in England. In like manner, may we not hope, as soon as this contest is ended, that the exalted spirits of our politicians and warriors will engage in the enlarge. ment of public happiness, by cultivating the arts of peace, and promoting useful knowledge, with an ardor equal to that which first roused them to bleed in the cause of liberty and their country?

nature, yet unread, is open before us, and invites our attentive perusal. Many useful plants, unknown to the most industrious botanist, waste their virtues in our desert air. Various parts of our country, hitherto untrod by the foot of any chymist, abound with different minerals. We stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, with respect to the arts that depend on experiment and observation. The face of our country, intersected by rivers, or covered by woods and swamps, gives ample scope for the improvement of mechanics, mathematics, and natural philosophy. Our free governments are the proper nurseries of rhetoric, criticism, and the arts which are founded on the philosophy of the human mind. In monarchies, an extreme degree of politeness disguises the simplicity of nature, and "sets the looks at variance with the thoughts;" in republics, mankind appear as they really are, with. out any false coloring: In these governments, therefore, attentive observers have an opportunity of knowing all the avenues to the heart, and of thoroughly understanding human nature. The great inferiority of the moderns to the ancients in fine

Their genius, sharpened by their present glorious writing, is to be referred to this veil cast over exertions, will naturally seek for a continuance of mankind by the artificial refinements of modern suitable employment. Having, with well tried monarchies. From the operation of similar causes, swords and prudent counsels, secured liberty and it is hoped, that the free governments of America independence for themselves and posterity, their will produce poets, orators, critics and historians, great souls will stoop to nothing less than con- equal to the most celebrated of the ancient com. certing wise schemes of civil polity and happiness monwealths of Greece and Italy.

-instructing the world in useful arts-and extend. Large empires are less favorable to true philosoing the empire of science. I foresee societies phy, than small, independent states. The authority formed of our heroes and statesmen, released from of a great author is apt, in the former case, to their present cares; some of which will teach man- extinguish a free enquiry, and to give currency to kind to plough, sow, plant, build, and improve the falsehood unexamined. The doctrines of Confucius rough face of nature; while others critically examine were believed all over China, and the philosophy the various productions of the animal, vegetable of Descartes, in France: But neighboring nations, and mineral kingdoms, and teach their country. examining them without partiality or prepossession, men to "look through nature up to nature's God." exploded them both. For the same reason, our separate states, jealous of the literary reputation regulations of an avaricious step-dame, but follow of each other, and uninfluenced by any partial bias, wherever interest leads the way. Our great obwill critically pry into the merit of every new opinion and system, and naught but truth will stand the test, and finally prevail.

ject, as a trading people, should be to procure the best prices for our commodities, and foreign articles at the most reasonable rates: But all this

In monarchies, favor is the source of preferment; was cruelly reversed by acts of the British parliabut, in our new forms of government, no one can ment regulating our trade in a subserviency to command the suffrages of the people, unless by his their own emolument; our interest being entirely superior merit and capacity. out of the question. It requires but a moment's

The weight of each state, in the continental scale, recollection to convince us, that as we now have a will ever be proportioned to the abilities of its re free trade with all the world, we shall obtain a presentatives in congress: Hence, an emulation more generous price for our produce, and foreign will take place, each contending with the other, goods on easier terms, than we ever could, while which shall produce the most accomplished states. we were subject to a British monopoly. The men. From the joint influence of all these com- *That British merchants gave us a low price for

our commodities, appears from this single consideration-they made money by exporting them from England. If they found it profitable to export tobacco, rice, indigo, &c. from Britain, it must be

bined causes, it may strongly be presumed, that literature will flourish in America; and that our independence will be an illustrious epoch, remarkable for the spreading and improvement of science. in consequence of their allowing the American

A zeal for promoting learning, unknown in the colonists less for those articles, than they would have brought in European markets. In this mandays of our subjection, has already begun to over-ner, much of our produce was sold to the consumspread these United States. In the last session of ers, loaded with double freight, insurance, and

our assembly, three societies were incorporated for the laudable purpose of erecting seminaries of education. Nor is the noble spirit confined to us alone: Even now, amidst the tumults of war, literary institutions are forming all over the continent, which must light up such a blaze of knowledge, as cannot fail to burn, and catch, and spread, until it has finally illuminated, with the rays of science, the most distant retreats of ignorance and barbarity.

commissions, over and above the additional expense of unloading and reloading in Great Britain. The industrious American planter received no more for his produce than the pittance the British merchant, after reserving his own profit, was pleased to allow on the sale thereof, brought to market charged with this unnecessary expense. distance from America to those places of Europe which consumed our staples, is generally less than to the British ports. From all which premises, it appears undeniably evident, that American commodities, carried directly to the countries where they are consumed, will produce much more clear

The

Our change of government smiles upon our com- profit to the planter, than when they arrived there merce with an aspect peculiarly benign and favora by the circuitous way of Great Britain.

ble. In a few years, we may expect to see the colors of France, Spain, Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and those of every other maritime power, waving

The same reasoning holds good with respect to many articles imported from England, which were not of its own growth or manufacture; for they would come much cheaper from the countries where they were made, than they ever could, while we were obliged to receive them through the hands of British merchants, loaded with double freight, insurance, commissions, and sometimes

with duties. If interest had not silenced the voice

of justice, Great Britain, while she obliged us to buy at her market, would have considered herself as bound to supply our wants as cheap as they could be supplied elsewhere: But instead of this, she not only fixed exorbitant prices on articles of her own production, but refused us the liberty of buying from foreigners those articles which her own markets did not afford, and had also begun the fatal policy of super-adding additional duties. What a scene of oppression does this open to us! A great part of the price for which our commodities sold in Europe was lodged in British coffers; and

on our coasts; whilst Americans unfurl the thirteen stripes in the remotest harbors of the world. Our different climates and soils produce a great variety of useful commodities. The sea washes our coast along an extensive tract of two thousand miles; and no country abounds in a greater plenty of the materials for ship-building, or has a better prospect of a respectable navy. Our stately oaks, the greater part of which would probably have withered in their native spots, had we remained subjects, will now be converted into ships of war, to ride triumphant on the ocean, and to carry American thunder around the world. Whole forests will be we were obliged to buy manufactures of her protransformed into vessels of commerce, enriching duction, at prices of her own fixing, and were restrained from buying even those articles which this independent continent with the produce of she could not raise, where they could be got every clime and every soil. The wealth of Europe, Asia, and Africa, will flow in upon America: Our

trade will no longer be confined by the selfish

cheapest: Besides, as we durst not buy from any others, they had it in their power to fix any advance on the first cost that their avarice prescribed, and our necessities would perinit.

boasted act of navigation was not intended for our jus from supplying our wants by the improvement advantage, nor for the advantage of the whole em- of those articles which the bounty of Heaven had pire; but was a glaring monument of the all grasping bestowed on our country. So numerous were the nature of unlimited power. To enumerate all the inhabitants of some provinces, that they could not ungenerous restrictions imposed by the British go- all find employment in cultivating the earth; and vernment on American commerce, would be an yet a single hat, manufactured in one colony, and outrage on patience. Time only will unfold the exported for sale to another, forfeited both vessel whole of this mystery of iniquity. A few years and cargo. The same penalties were inflicted for experience will shew such an amazing difference transporting wool from one to another. Acts of par. between the fettered trade of the British colonies, liament have been made to prohibit the erection of and the extensive commerce of the free, inde. slitting mills in America. Thus did British tyranny pendent states of America, as will cause us to exert her power, to make us a needy and dependent stand amazed, that we so long and so patiently people, obliged to go to her market, and to buy at submitted to so many and such cruel restrictions. her prices; and all this at a time when, by her In one word, so long as we remained dependent, the commerce of this great continent would have been sacrificed to the interest of a selfish European island.

exclusive trade, she fixed her own prices on our commodities.

How widely different is our present situation? The glorious fourth of July, MDCCLXXVI, repealed all these cruel restrictions, and holds forth generous prices, and public premiums, for our encouragement in the erection of all kinds of manyfactures.

Carolina had particular reason to wish for the free trade of independence. The whole island of Great Britain did not annually consume more than 5000 barrels of her staple commodity, rice, and yet it was an enumerated article. The charge on We are the first people in the world who have unloading, reloading, and shifting every cask, owing had it in their power to choose their own form of to this enumeration, was immense, though it served government. Constitutions were forced on all no other purpose, but to procure jobs for British other nations, by the will of their conquerors; or, coopers and wharfingers. So little regard was had they were formed by accident, caprice, or the overto our interest, while dependent, that this enumera- bearing influence of prevailing parties or particular tion was obtained by the instigation of a captain persons: But, happily for us, the bands of British Cole: Several vessels coming from England be- government were dissolved at a time when no rank fore him, and purchasing rice for Portugal, pre- above that of freemen existed among us, and when vented the aforesaid captain of a loading; he re- we were in a capacity to choose for ourselves turned, and in resentment said, carrying rice to among the various forms of government, and to Portugal was a prejudice to the trade of England: adopt that which best suited our country and peoAnd on this single instance, so ill founded and sup. ple. Our deliberations, on this occasion, were not ported, rice became an enumerated article. How directed by the over-grown authority of a conquer. could our trade flourish, or our produce bring its full value, while restricted by a legislature so regardless of our interest, that a petty captain, to secure himself a cargo, could prevent our staple from being sent directly to a foreign market?

Union with Great Britain confined us to the consumption of her manufactures, and restrained

ing general, or the ambition of an aspiring nobility, but by the pole-star of public good, inducing us to prefer those forms that would most effectually secure the greatest portion of political happiness to the greatest number of people. We had the example of all ages for our instruction, and many among us were well acquainted with the causes of prosperity and misery in other governments.

In times of public tranquility, the mighty have

*The tobacco colonies were also great losers by the British monopoly of trade. The duties on their staple, amounted to more than half the first cost. been too apt to encroach on the rights of the many: Tobacco, exported from Britain, sold in European But it is the great happiness of America, that her markets for more than double the sum the Ameri- independent constitutions were agreed upon by can planter received for it. If it should become a custom in the United States, to celebrate the common consent, at a time when her leading men anniversary of independence with an annual oration, needed the utmost support of the multitude, and it is hoped that some citizen of Virginia or Mary- therefore could have no other object in view, but land, wiil place the selfish restrictions on the exportation of this valuable commodity, in a proper the formation of such constitutions as would best light. suit the people at large, and unite them most heartily in repelling common dangers.

Gee on Trade, page 21.

As the strength of a people consists in their num-dragged into every war, which her pride or ambi. bers, our separate states, sensible of their weak- tion might occasion. Besides, as she considered ness, were actually excited by self-interest to form the colonies as her property, what was to hinder such free governments, as would encourage the her from ceding any or all of them to the different greatest influx of inhabitants. In this manner, an European states. Thus, while we had no indeemulation has virtually taken place in all the pendent government of our own, we might have thirteen states, each contending with the others, been the sport of various contending powers, and who should form the freest constitution. Thus independence has been the fruitful parent of governments formed on equal principles, more favorable to the liberty and happiness of the governed, than any that have yet been recorded in the annals

of history.

While we were dependent on Britain, our freedom was out of the question; for what is a free state, but one that is governed by its own will? What shadow of liberty then could we possess,

tossed about, like a foot-ball, from one to the other.

Our independence will naturally tend to fill our country with inhabitants. Where life, liberty, and property, are well secured, and where land is easily and cheaply obtained, the natural increase of peofple will much exceed all European calculations. Add to this, the inhabitants of the old world, becom. ing acquainted with our excellent forms of government, will emigrate by thousands. In their native lands, the hard-earned fruits of uninterrupted labor

when the single NO of a king, 3000 miles distant, are scarcely equal to a scanty supply of their natural was sufficient to repeal any of our laws, however wants, and this pittance is held on a very precarious useful and salutary; and when we were to be bound tenure: while our soil may be cheaply purchased, in all cases whatsoever by men, in whose election and will abundantly repay the toil of the husbandwe had no vote, who had an interest opposed to man, whose property no rapacious landlord dare ours, and over whom we had no control? The invade. Happy America! whose extent of territory, wit of man could not possibly devise any mode westward, is sufficient to accommodate with land that would unite the freedom of America with thousands and millions of the virtuous peasants, Britain's claim of unlimited supremacy. We were who now groan beneath tyranny and oppression in therefore reduced to the alternative of liberty and three quarters of the globe. Who would remain independence, or slavery and union. We wisely in Europe, a dependent on the will of an imperious chose to cut the Gordian knot, which tied old landlord, wher a few years industry can make him Britain to the new, and to assume our independent an independent American freeholder?

station among the empires of the world. Britain, had she honestly intended it, was incapable of governing us for the great purposes of government. Our great distance, and other local circumstances, made it impossible for her to be sufficiently acquainted with our situation and wants: But, admitting it was in her power, we had no reason to expect that she would hold the reins of government for any other end but her own advantage. Human nature is too selfish, too ambitious, for us to expect, that one country will govern another, for any but interested purposes. To obtain the salutary ends of government, we must blend the interests of the people and their rulers; or else, the former will infallibly be sacri ficed to the latter. Hence, the absurdity of our expecting security, liberty and safety, while we were subjects of a state a thousand leagues distant.

Such will be the fruits of our glorious revolution, that in a little time gay fields, adorned with the yellow robes of ripening harvest, will smile in the remotest depths of our western frontiers, where impassable forests now frown over the uncultivated earth. The face of our interior country will be changed from a barren wilderness into the hospitable abodes of peace and plenty. Cities too will rise majestic to the view, on those very spots which are now howled over by savage beasts and more savage men.

The population of this country has been heretofore very rapid; but it is worthy of observation, that this has varied, more or less, in proportion to the degrees of liberty that were granted to the different provinces, by their respective charters. Pennsylvania and New England, though inferior in

soil, being blest originally with the most free forms of government, have outstripped others in the rela

Connection with Britain involved us in all her quarrels; and such is the fluctuating state of her tive increase of their inhabitants. Hence I infer, politics, that we could not long expect a political that as we are all now completely free and indecalm. In vain did the Atlantic ocean interpose; pendent, we shall populate much faster than we for, by our unnatural union, we were necessarily ever have done, or ever would, while we were controled by the jealous policy of an insignificant) The tyrants and landlords of the old world, who island. hold a great part of their fellow men in bondage, We possess thousands and millions of acres, because of their dependence for land, will be obligwhich we may sell out to new settlers, on terms led to relax of their arbitrary treatment, when they very easy to them, and yet sufficient to defray the find that America is an asylum for freemen from whole expense of the present war. When the quit- all quarters of the globe. They will be cautious rents, formerly paid to the king, shall be appro- of adding to the oppressions of their poor subjects priated to the benefit of the independent states, and tenants, lest they should force them to aban-. they will fill our treasuries to so great a degree, don their country, for the enjoyment of the sweets that foreign nations, knowing that we abound in of American liberty. In this view of the matter, I the sinews of war, will be afraid to provoke us. am confident that the cause of America is the cause In a few years, when our finances are properly of human nature, and that it will extend its influarranged, the stoppage of those sums which were ence to thousands who will never see it, and proformerly drained from us, to support the pride cure them a mitigation of the cruelties and oppresand extravagance of the British king, will be an sions imposed by their arbitrary task-masters.

ample provision, without taxes, for defraying the expense of our independent governments.

It is difficult to compute the number of advan

tages arising from our present glorious struggle; harder still, perhaps impossible, precisely to ascertain their extent. It has attracted the atten. tion of all Europe to the nature of civil liberty, and the rights of the people. Our constitutions,

If such be the glorious consequences of independence, who can be so lost to every generous sentiment, as to wish to return under royal domination? Who would not rather count it an honor to stand among the foremost, in doing and suffering in a cause so intimately connected with the happiness of human nature? Away with all the peevish complaints of the hardness of the times,

pregnant with the seeds of liberty and happiness, and the weight of the taxes. The prize for which have been translated into a variety of languages, we contend, would be cheaply purchased with and spread far and wide. Who can tell what great double the expense of blood, treasure, and diffievents, now concealed in the womb of time, may culty, it will ever cost us.

be brought into existence by the nations of the

old world emulating our successful efforts in the Our independent constitutions, formed on the cause of liberty? The thrones of tyranny and des justest principles, promise fair to give the most potism will totter, when their subjects shall learn perfect protection to life, liberty and property, and know, by our example, that the happiness of equally to the poor and the rich. As at the conof the people is the end and object of all govern-flagration of Corinth, the various melted metals ment. The wondering world has beheld the smiles running together, formed a new one, called Corinof Heaven on the numerous sons of America, re thian brass, which was superior to any of its com. solving to die or be free: Perhaps this noble ex- ponent parts; in like manner, perhaps it is the will ample, like a wide spreading conflagration, may of Heaven, that a new empire should be here formcatch from breast to breast, and extend from na ed, of the different nations of the old world, which tion to nation, till tyranny and oppression are ut terly extirpated from the face of the earth.* *Britain will eventually lose less by our independence, than is commonly supposed. The king and ministers may be cured of their lust of domi- fore expect great things from the patriots of this

will rise superior to all that have gone before it, and extend human happiness to its utmost possible limits. None can tell to what perfection the arts of government may be brought. May we not there. nation, and will be deprived of influence and the generation, jointly co-operating to make the new means of corruption. While she had a monopoly of our trade, it encouraged idleness and extrava born republic of America as complete as possible? gance in her manufacturers; because they were Is it not to be hoped, that human nature will here sure of a market for their goods, though dear and receive her most finished touches? That the arts ill made: But, as independence will bestow our

commerce on those who most deserve it, this will and sciences will be extended and improved? That be the means of introducing frugality and indus religion, learning, and liberty, will be diffused try among her laboring poor. Our population will be so much the more rapid for our free govern. over this continent? and in short, that the Ameriments, that, in my humble opinion, that part of our can editions of the human mind will be more per. trade which will fall to the share of Great Britain, fect than any that have yet appeared? Great things if she has the wisdom to conclude a speedy peace, have been achieved in the infancy of states; and will be more to her advantage than a monopoly of the whole of it, if we had remained subjects.

(the ardor of a new people, rising to empire and