Thoughts of the Present State of American Affairs

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Thoughts of the Present State of American Affairs
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• Payne asks men to look at the big picture
• enlarge his views beyond the present day

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• Arms as the last resource decide the contest
  the appeal was the choice of the King, and the
  Continent has accepted the challenge.
• The King decided that there would be a war for
  independence.

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• All arguments, compromises, etc. are now moot
  since the commencement of hostilities.
• The colonies have sustained numerous material
  injuries by being connected with and dependent
  on Great Britain.
• What are these material injuries?

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• Many would say that Americas happiness depends
  on Great Britain.
• Payne responds, America would have flourished as
  much, and probably much more, had no European
  power taken any notice of her.
• Payne acknowledges that Britain has protected
  America. Why, in his view, have they done so?
• What would happen to American international
  relations if they severed ties with Britain?
• Why were France and Spain ever enemies of America
  in the first place?

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• America has always been an asylum for the
  persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty
  from EVERY PART of Europe.
• They came to America, not from the tender
  embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of
  the monster.
• The same tyranny that drove people out of Europe
  is still pursuing their descendents in America.

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• It is selfish and disingenius to call Britain the
  motherland because, not one third of the
  inhabitants, even of this province
  (Pennsylvania), are of English descent.
• How else could England be the mother country if
  not for the ancestry of Americans?

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• If all Americans were of English descent,
  according to Payne, it still wouldnt matter.
• He justifies this by pointing out that the King
  is of French descent.
• If ancestry determines which country rules which,
  the French should, by all rights, be ruling over
  England.

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• America has enough commerce that the rest of the
  civilized world will be interested in trading
  with her.
• America will secure peace and friendship from all
  of Europe, after independence, by offering
  abundant trade and commerce.

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• Submission to and dependence on Great Britain,
  directly involve this Continent in European wars
  and quarrels, and set us at variance with nations
  who would otherwise seek our friendship, and
  against whom we have neither anger nor complaint.

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Natural Proof

• The distance at which the Almighty hath placed
  England and America is a strong and natural proof
  that the authority of the one over the other was
  never the design of Heaven.
• i.e. If God wanted England to rule America, he
  would have put them closer together.

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• Payne exhibits horror not to provoke revenge
  against Great Britain.
• He exhibits it to awaken us from fatal and
  unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinedly
  some fixed object.
• What other stylistic devices could he have used
  in his writing? What other ones does he use?

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The Result of Petitioning the King

• Nothing flatters vanity, or confirms obstinacy
  in Kings more than repeated petitioning
• There is something relatively absurd in
  supposing a continent to be perpetually governed
  by an island.

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Kings Negative Effect

• The kings negative here is ten times more
  dangerous and fatal than it can be in England,
  for there he will scarcely refuse his consent to
  a bill for putting England into as strong a state
  of defense as possible, and in America he would
  never suffer such a bill to be passed.
• What does this mean?

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The Kings Ways

• The king uses violence and force to accomplish
  his goals in the short run.
• He uses craft and subtlety to accomplish, in the
  long run, what he cant in the short term.

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The Most Powerful Argument

• The most powerful of all arguments, is that
  nothing but independence can keep the peace of
  the continent and preserve it inviolate from
  civil wars.
• Knowing what you know now, was Thomas Payne right
  about this?