_Edmund Burke, Works, volume 2._ ALSO IN: _T. MacKnight, Life and Times of Edmund Burke, chapter 21 (volume 2)._ _J. Adolphus, History of England, Reign of George III., chapter 25 (volume 2)._ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (January-April). Aims at independence disclaimed. "The denial that independence was the final object, was constant and general. To obtain concessions and to preserve the connection with England was affirmed everywhere; and John Adams, after the peace, went farther than this, for he said:—'There was not a moment during the Revolution, when I would not have given everything I possessed for a restoration to the state of things before the contest began, provided we could have had a sufficient security for its continuance.' If Mr. Adams be regarded as expressing the sentiments of the Whigs, they were willing to remain Colonists, provided they could have had their rights secured to them; while the Tories were contented thus to continue, without such security. Such, as it appears to me, was the only difference between the two parties prior to hostilities. … Franklin's testimony, a few days before the affair at Lexington, was, that he had 'more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to the other, and kept a variety of company, eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely, [and] never had heard from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America.' Mr. Jay is quite as explicit. 'During the course of my life,' said he, 'and until the second petition of Congress in 1775, I never did hear an American of any class, or of any description, express a wish for the independence of the Colonies.' 'It has always been, and still is, my opinion and belief, that our country was prompted and impelled to independence by necessity, and not by choice.' {3222} Mr. Jefferson affirmed, 'What, eastward of New York, might have been the dispositions towards England before the commencement of hostilities, I know not; but before that I never heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain; and after that its possibility was contemplated with affliction by all.' Washington, in 1774, fully sustains these declarations, and, in the 'Fairfax County Resolves,' it was complained that 'malevolent falsehoods' were propagated by the ministry to prejudice the mind of the king: 'particularly that there is an intention in the American Colonies to set up for independent States.' Mr. Madison was not in public life until May, 1776, but he says, 'It has always been my impression, that a reëstablishment of the Colonial relations to the parent country, as they were previous to the controversy, was the