Essays of Benjamin Franklin

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Identifikator:: 1752429486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-127700

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Franklin, Benjamin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118534912

Title:: Essays of Benjamin Franklin

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: xi, 273 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Title:: II. The interest of Great Britain considered, with regard to her colonies and the acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe

Collection:: Economics Books

1760] Essays ; the whole is impossible, the attempt of a part must be madness, as those colonies that did not join the rebellion would join the mother country in suppress- ing it. When I say such a union is impossible, I mean without the most grievous tyranny and oppres- sion. People who have property in a country which they may lose, and privileges which they may en- danger, are generally disposed to be quiet, and even to bear much, rather than hazard all. While the government is mild and just, while important civil and religious rights are secure, such subjects will be dutiful and obedient. The waves do not rise but when the winds blow. What such an administration as the Duke of Alva’s in the Netherlands might produce, I know not; but this, I think, I have a right to deem impos- sible. And yet there were two very manifest differ- ences between that case and ours; and both are in our favor. The first, that Spain had already united the seventeen provinces under one visible govern- ment, though the States continued independent; the second, that the inhabitants of those provinces were of a nation, not only different from, but utterly unlike the Spaniards. Had the Netherlands been peopled from Spain, the worst of oppression had probably not provoked them to wish a separation of government. It might, and probably would, have ruined the country; but never would have produced an independent sovereignty. In fact, neither the very worst of governments, the worst of politics in the last century, nor the total abolition of their re- maining liberty, in the provinces of Spain itself, in ) 57

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