Men Should Not Petition For Rights, But

I Have As Little Superstition In Me As Any Man Living, But My Secret Opinion Has Ever Been, And Still Is, That God Almighty Will Not Give Up A People To Military Destruction, Or Leave Them Unsupportedly To Perish, Who Have So Earnestly And So Repeatedly Sought To Avoid The Calamities Of War, By Every Decent Method Which Wisdom Could Invent. Neither Have I So Much Of The Infidel In Me, As To Suppose That He Has Relinquished The Government Of The World, And Given Us Up To The Care Of Devils.

Europe, And Not England, Is The Parent Country Of America. This New World Hath Been The Asylum For The Persecuted Lovers Of Civil And Religious Liberty From Every Part Of Europe.

America Could Carry On A Two Years' War By The Confiscation Of The Property Of Disaffected Persons, And Be Made Happy By Their Expulsion. Say Not That This Is Revenge, Call It Rather The Soft Resentment Of A Suffering People, Who, Having No Object In View But The Good Of All, Have Staked Their Own All Upon A Seemingly Doubtful Event. Yet It Is Folly To Argue Against Determined Hardness; Eloquence May Strike The Ear, And The Language Of Sorrow Draw Forth The Tear Of Compassion, But Nothing Can Reach The Heart That Is Steeled With Prejudice.

A Long Habit Of Not Thinking A Thing Wrong Gives It A Superficial Appearance Of Being Right.

One Of The Strongest Natural Proofs Of The Folly Of Hereditary Right In Kings, Is, That Nature Disapproves It, Otherwise, She Would Not So Frequently Turn It Into Ridicule By Giving Mankind An Ass For A Lion.