INTRODUCTION
PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
 As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of |
| calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might |
| never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated |
| into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his |
| OWN RIGHT, to support the Parliament in what he calls THEIRS, and |
| as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the |
| combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the |
| pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of either. |
| In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every |
| thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as |
| censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the |
| worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose |
| sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves |
| unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion. |
| The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all |
| mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not |
| local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers |
| of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections |
| are interested. The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, |
| declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and |
| extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the |
| Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; |
| of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is |
| THE AUTHOR |
