"When I reflect on the horrid cruelties exercised by Britain in the East Indies--How thousands perished by artificial famine--How religion and every manly principle of honor and honesty were sacrificed to luxury and pride--When I read of the wretched natives being blown away, for no other crime than because, sickened with the miserable scene, they refused to fight--When I reflect on these and a thousand instances of similar barbarity, I firmly believe that the Almighty, in compassion to mankind, will curtail the power of Britain. "And when I reflect on the use she hath made of the discovery of this new world--that the little paltry dignity of earthly kings hath been set up in preference to the great cause of the King of kings--That instead of Christian examples to the Indians, she hath basely tampered with their passions, imposed on their ignorance, and made them the tools of treachery and murder--And when to these and many other melancholy reflections I add this sad remark, that ever since the discovery of America she hath employed herself in the most horrid of all traffics, that of human flesh, unknown to the most savage nations, hath yearly (without provocation and in cold blood) ravaged the hapless shores of Africa, robbing it of its unoffending inhabitants to cultivate her stolen dominions in the West--When I reflect on these, I hesitate not for a moment to believe that the Almighty will finally separate America from Britain. Call it Independancy or what you will, if it is the cause of God and humanity it will go on. "And when the Almighty shall have blest us, and made us a people _dependent only upon him_, then may our first gratitude be shown by an act of continental legislation, which shall put a stop to the importation of Negroes for sale, soften the hard fate of those already here, and in time procure their freedom. "Humanus." {1776} CHAPTER VI. "COMMON SENSE" In furrows ploughed deep by lawless despotism, watered with blood of patriots, the Thetford Quaker sowed his seed--true English seed. Even while he did so he was suspected of being a British spy, and might have been roughly handled in Philadelphia had it not been for Franklin. Possibly this suspicion may have arisen from his having, in the antislavery letter, asked the Americans "to consider with what consistency or decency they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many thousands in slavery." Perfectly indifferent to this, Paine devoted the autumn of 1775 to his pamphlet "Common Sense," which with the new year "burst from the press with an effect which has rarely been produced by types and paper in any age or country." So says Dr. Benjamin Rush, and his assertion, often quoted, has as often been confirmed.