Another argument, he says, much relied on by the advocates for American independence is, "that a similarity of laws, religion, and manners, has formed an attachment between the people of Great Britain and America, which will ensure to Great Britain a preference in the commerce of America." He agrees, "that a uniformity of laws and religion, united with a subordination to the same supreme authority, in a great measure forms and fixes the national attachment. But when the laws and the supreme authority are abolished, the manners, habits, and customs derived from them will soon be effaced. When different systems of laws and governments shall be established, other habits and manners must take place. The fact is, that the Americans have already instituted governments, as opposite to the principles upon which the British government is established as human invention could possibly devise. New laws are made, and will be made in conformity to, and in support of their new political systems, and of course destructive to this national attachment. Their new States being altogether popular, their essential laws do already, and will continue to bear a greater resemblance to those of the democratical Cantons of Switzerland, than to the laws and policy of Great Britain. Thus we find, in their first acts, the strongest of all proofs of an aversion in their rulers to our national policy, and a sure foundation laid to obliterate all affection and attachment to this country among the people. How long then can we expect that their attachment, arising from a similarity of laws, habits, and manners, if any such should remain, will continue? No longer than between the United Provinces and Spain, or the Corsicans and the Genoese, which was changed, from the moment of their separation, into an enmity, which is not worn out to this day." How it is possible for these rulers, who are the creatures of the people, and constantly dependent upon them for their political existence, to have the strongest aversion to the national policy of Great Britain, and at the same time the far greater part of the people wish and hope for a union with that country, and are ready to unite in reducing the powers of those rulers, as this author asserts, I know not. I leave him to reconcile it. If he had been candid, and confessed that the attachment in American minds in general is not very strong to the laws and government of England, and that they rather prefer a different form of government, I should have agreed with him, as I certainly shall agree, that no attachment between nations arising merely from a similarity of laws and government, is ever very strong, or sufficient to bind nations together, who have opposite or even different interests.