The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete: With Index to Volumes I - IVPaine, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete: With Index to Volumes I - IV
Paine, Thomas
Political science
What sort of men or Christians must you suppose the Americans to be,
who, after seeing their most humble petitions insultingly rejected;
the most grievous laws passed to distress them in every quarter; an
undeclared war let loose upon them, and Indians and negroes invited to
the slaughter; who, after seeing their kinsmen murdered, their fellow
citizens starved to death in prisons, and their houses and property
destroyed and burned; who, after the most serious appeals to heaven, the
most solemn abjuration by oath of all government connected with you, and
the most heart-felt pledges and protestations of faith to each other;
and who, after soliciting the friendship, and entering into alliances
with other nations, should at last break through all these obligations,
civil and divine, by complying with your horrid and infernal proposal.
Ought we ever after to be considered as a part of the human race? Or
ought we not rather to be blotted from the society of mankind, and
become a spectacle of misery to the world? But there is something in
corruption, which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself
to the object it looks upon, and sees every thing stained and impure;
for unless you were capable of such conduct yourselves, you would never
have supposed such a character in us. The offer fixes your infamy. It
exhibits you as a nation without faith; with whom oaths and treaties
are considered as trifles, and the breaking them as the breaking of a
bubble. Regard to decency, or to rank, might have taught you better; or
pride inspired you, though virtue could not. There is not left a step in
the degradation of character to which you can now descend; you have put
your foot on the ground floor, and the key of the dungeon is turned upon
you.
That the invitation may want nothing of being a complete monster,
you have thought proper to finish it with an assertion which has no
foundation, either in fact or philosophy; and as Mr. Ferguson, your
secretary, is a man of letters, and has made civil society his study,
and published a treatise on that subject, I address this part to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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