AMERICA- The Critical Period-1783-1803

THE AMERICAN PEACE COMMISSION; JAY, ADAMS, FRANKLIN,

LAURENS AND FRANKLIN'S GRANDSON, WILLIAM FRANKLIN (From the unfinished painting by Benjamin West)

AMERICA

Great Crises In Our History As Told by Its Makers A LIBRARY OF ORIGINAL SOURCES Volume IV

ISSUED BY

AMERICANIZATION DEPARTMENT

VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE

UNITED STATES CHICAGO, U. S. A.

THE CRITICAL PERIOD 1783-1803

A NEW WORLD POWER

By Thomas Pownall.

AT THE time Pownall wrote this article, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he was a Member of Parliament and introduced a bill for making peace with the United States, which he previously had declared were lost forever as English colonies. The bill was defeated, largely because Pownall, although he had attended the Albany Congress in 1754, and had been governor of Massachusetts from 1757 to 1760, was regarded as a visionary. This is the first published prophecy of the future greatness of the United States as a sovereign nation.

Posterity credits Pownall with Possessing deep insight in foreseeing, among other things, the future preponderance of the English race in America. He had an instinctive grasp of American political tendencies, and was a supporter of the rights of the colonies.

NORTH AMERICA is become a new primary planet in the system of the world, which while it takes its own course, in its own orbit, must have effect on the orbit of every other planet, and shift the common center of gravity of the whole system of the European world.

North America is de facto an independent power which has taken its equal station with other powers, and must be so de jure. The politicians of the Governments of Europe may reason or negotiate upon this idea, as a matter sub lite. The powers of those Governments may fight about it as a new power coming into establishment; such negotiations, and such wars, are of no consequence either to the right or the fact. It would be just as wise, and just as effectual, if they were to go to war to decide, or set on foot negotiations to settle, to whom for the future the sovereignty of the moon should belong. The moon has been long common to them all, and they may all in their turns profit of her reflected light. The independence of America is fixed as fate; she is mistress of her own fortune; knows that she is so, and will actuate that power which she feels she has, so as to establish her own system, and to change the system of Europe.

If the powers of Europe will view the state of things as they do really exist, and will treat them as being what they are, the lives of thousands may be spared; the happiness of millions may be secured; and the peace of the whole world preserved. If they will not, they will be plunged into a sea of troubles, a sea of blood, fathomless and boundless. The war that has begun to rage betwixt Britain, France and Spain, which is almost gorged betwixt Britain and America, will extend itself to all the maritime, and most likely, afterwards, to all the inland powers of Europe ; and like the Thirty Years' War of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, will not end, but as that did, by a new and general resettlement of powers and interests, according to the new spirit of the new system which has taken place.

There is nowhere in the European part of the old world such a greatness of interwoven and combined interest, communicating through such largeness of territory, as that in North America, possessed and actuated by the English nation. The northern and southern parts of Europe, are possessed by different nations, actuated by different spirits, and conducted under very different systems.

On the contrary, when the site and circumstances of the large extended territories of North America are examined, one finds everything united in it which forms greatness of dominions, amplitude and growth of state.