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-1776] Appeal to arms. 207 Pamphlets poured forth in a constant stream from Whig and loyalist press ; newspapers were filled with articles on the one side and the other from a thousand sources. But a time came when there was an end of sober, or at least of mutual, discussion. The " force of argument " gave way to the "argument of force" at Lexington and Bunker Hill; the loyalists withdrew sullenly from the contest ; and now, true to the grim facts of history, patriots, from haters of persecution, turned persecutors ; they pillaged the houses of loyalists, and harried the inmates out of the land. Still, though the Whigs were trooping to war, it was not yet to win independence, but only to defend and maintain the colonial theory they had so long championed. They were still ready for concession and reconciliation; they would reject Lord North's great proposal of autonomy, only because it was not to be permanent. Another year was necessary to convince them that their cause, as colonists in the colonial relation they upheld, was hopeless. A young Englishman, somewhat discredited in his native land, whence he had lately arrived, must publish the news to America, far and wide, that kings were an abomination and a sin, and hereditary succession an evil even more than an absurdity. Paine could quote Scripture at such a time with telling effect. " Your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking for a king." At last the people in their distress cry unto Samuel, " Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not, for we have added unto our sins this evil, to ask a king." The notion too that hereditary succession had saved people from civil wars was the most barefaced falsehood ever imposed on mankind. Monarchy and succession had laid the world in blood and ashes. No pamphlet was so timely, none had such an effect, as Paine's Common Sense-, which was to sweep away, for the time, all the vain arguments about constitutional law and government. Amidst general doubt everything was ready, and Common Sense struck the note. The people were called upon to come out and separate themselves from kings. " O ye that love mankind ; ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth; every spot of the old world is overcome with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe... England hath given her warning to depart. O receive the fugitive, and prepare, in time, an asylum for mankind." A few months later, by midsummer, 1776, the Continental Congress was ready, and found the country ready, to declare independence. The Declaration of Independence is a short and somewhat rhetorical statement of the case of the colonies, and of their determination to separate from Great Britain. A virtual preamble recites that " a decent respect to the opinions of mankind " requires a declaration to the world of the causes of separation. Then comes a summing-up of Whig doctrine. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created