sense, or common nonsense? Surely peace * with Great Britain cannot be the object of this writer, after the horrible character he has given of the people of that country, and telling us that reconciliation with them would be our ruin. The latter part of the paragraph seems to cast some light upon the former, although it contradicts it; for these mediators are not to interfere for making up the quarrel, but to widen it, by supporting us in a declaration, that we are not the subjects of Great Britain; a new sort of business truly for mediators! But this, (continues Cato,) leads us directly to the main inquiry, what foreign Power is able to give us this support?” What support, Cato? The passage you have quoted neither says a syllable, nor insinuates a hint about support. It speaks only of neutral Powers in the neighbourly character of mediators between those who are at war; and says it is the custom of European Courts to do so. Cato hath already raised Commissioners into Ambassadors; but how he could transform mediators into men in arms, and mediation into military alliance, is surpassingly strange. Read the part over again, Cato; if you find I have charged you wrongfully, and will point it out, I will engage that the author of Common Sense shall ask you pardon in the publick papers with his name to it; but if the error be yours, the concession on your part follows as a duty.

Though I am fully persuaded that Cato does not believe one half of what himself has written, he, nevertheless, takes amazing pains to frighten his readers into a belief of the whole; tells them of foreign troops (which he supposes we are going to send for) ravaging up and down the country; of their “bloody massacres, and unrelenting persecutions, which would harrow up (says he) the very souls of Protestants and freemen.” Were they coming, Cato, (which no one ever dreamed of but yourself; for, thank God, we want them not,) it would be impossible for them to exceed, or even to equal the cruelties practised by the British Army in the East-Indies; the tying men to the mouths of cannon and “blowing them away,” was never acted by any but an English General, or approved by any but a British Court. Read the proceedings of the Select Committee on Indian affairs.

From temporal fears Cato proceeds to spiritual ones; and in a hypocritical panick, asks, “To whose share will Pennsylvania fall—that of his most Catholick, or his most Christian King? I confess, (continues he,) that these questions stagger me.” I don’t wonder at it, Cato —I am glad to hear that some kind of remorse hath overtaken you—that you begin to feel that you are “heavy laden”—you have had a long run; and the stoutest heart must fail at last.

* It is a strange thing that Cato cannot be taught to distinguish between peace and union.

†Lord Clive, the chief of Eastern plunderers, received the thanks of the Parliament for.” his honourable conduct in the East-Indies.”

Cato, perceiving that the falsehoods in his fourth letter passed unreproved, ventured boldly on a fifth; in which he continues enlarging on the same convenient bugbear. “In my last, (says he,) some notice was taken of the dangerous proposition held up by the author of Common Sense for having recourse to foreign assistance.” When will Cato learn to speak the truth! The assistance which we hope for from France, is not armies, (we want them not,) but arms and ammunition. We have already received into this Province only, near two hundred tons of saltpetre and gunpowder, besides muskets. Surely we may continue to cultivate a useful acquaintance, without such malevolent beings as Cato raising his barbarous slander thereon. At this time, it is not only illiberal, but impolitick, and perhaps dangerous, to be pouring forth such torrents of abuse as his fourth and fifth letters contain against the only Power that, in articles of defence, hath supplied our hasty wants. Cato, after expending near two letters in beating down an idol which himself only had set up, proudly congratulates himself on the defeat, and marches off to new exploits, leaving behind him the following Proclamation: “Having thus (says Cato) despatched his (the author of Common Sense’s) main argument for Independence, which he founds on the necessity of calling in foreign assistance, I proceed to examine some other parts of his work.” Not a syllable, Cato, doth any part of the pamphlet in question say of calling in foreign assistance, or even forming military alliances. The dream is wholly your own; and is directly repugnant both to the letter and spirit of every page in the piece. The idea which Common Sense constantly holds up is, to have nothing to do with the political affairs of Europe. “As Europe, (says the pamphlet,) is our market for trade, we ought to form no political connections with any part of it. It is the true interest of America to steer clear of all European contentions.” And where it proposes sending a manifesto to foreign Courts, (which it is high time to do,) it recommends it only for the purpose of announcing to them the impossibility of our living any longer under the British Government, and of “assuring such Courts of our peaceable disposition towards them, and of our desire of entering into trade with them.” Learn to be an honest man, Cato, and then thou wilt not be thus exposed. I have been the more particular in detecting Cato here, because it is on this bubble that his air-built battery against Independence is raised. A poor foundation indeed] which even the point of a pin, or a pen if you please, can demolish with a touch, and bury the formidable Cato beneath the ruins of a vapour!

From this part of his fifth letter to the end of his seventh, he entirely deserts the subject of Independence, and sets up the proud standard of Kings, in preference to a Republican form of Government. My remarks on this part of the subject will be general and concise.

In this part of the debate, Cato shelters himself chiefly in quotations from other authors, without reasoning much on the matter himself.* In answer to which, I present him with a string of maxims and reflections, drawn from the nature of things, without borrowing from any one. Cato may observe that I scarcely ever quote; the reason is I always think. But to return.

Government should always be considered as a matter of convenience, not of right. The Scripture institutes no particular form of Government, but it enters a protest against the Monarchal form; and a negation on one thing, where two only are offered, and one must be chosen, amounts to an affirmative on the other. Monarchal Government was first set up by the Heathens, and the Almighty permitted it to the Jews as a punishment. “I gave them a King in mine anger.”— Hosea xiii, 11. A Republican form of Government is pointed out by nature—Kingly Governments by an inequality of power. In Republican Governments, the leaders of the people, if improper, are removeable by vote—Kings only by arms. An unsuccessful vote in the first case leaves the voter safe; but an unsuccessful attempt in the latter, is death. Strange that that which is our right in the one should be our ruin in the other—from which reflection follows this maxim: That that mode of Government in which our right becomes our ruin, cannot be the right one. If all human nature be corrupt, it is needless to strengthen the corruption, by establishing a succession of Kings, who, be they ever so base, are still to be obeyed; for the manners of a Court will always have an influence over the morals of a People.

A Republican Government hath more true grandeur in it than a Kingly one. On the part of the publick, it is more consistent with freemen to appoint their rulers than to have them born; and on the part of those who preside, it is far nobler to be a ruler by the choice of a People, than a King by the chance of birth. Every honest Delegate is more than a Monarch. Disorders will unavoidably happen in all States; but Monarchal Governments are the most subject thereto, because the balance hangs uneven. “Nineteen rebellions and eight civil wars in England since the conquest.” Whatever commotions are produced in Republican States are not produced by a Republican spirit, but by those who seek to extinguish it. A Republican State cannot produce its own destruction; it can only suffer it. No nation of people, in their true senses, when seriously reflecting on the rank which God hath given them, and the reasoning faculties he hath blessed them with, would ever, of their own consent, give any one man a negative power over the whole. No man since the fall hath ever been equal to the trust; wherefore it

* The following is an instance of Cato’s method of conducting an argument: “‘If hereditary succession, ’ says Common Sense, (meaning succession of Monarchal Governments,) ‘did ensure a race of good and wise men, it would have the seal of Divine authority.’ Thus we find him, (says Cato) with his own hand affixing the seal of Heaven to what he before told us the Devil invented, and the Almighty entered his protest against,” — Cato’s seventh Letter. This is a strange argument indeed, Cato, or rather, it is no argument at all; for hereditary succession does not ensure a race of good and wise men; consequently has not the seal of Divine authority.