Identifying Support and Evidence in the Passage - GRE Verbal

Card 1 of 14

0
Didn't Know
Knew It
0
1 of 1413 left
Question

Passage adapted from Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776).

It hath lately been asserted in parliament, that the colonies have no relation to each other but through the parent country, i. e. that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so on for the rest, are sister colonies by the way of England; this is certainly a very round-about way of proving relationship, but it is the nearest and only true way of proving enemyship, if I may so call it. France and Spain never were, nor perhaps ever will be our enemies as Americans, but as our being the subjects of Great-Britain.

But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase parent or mother country hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.

Which quote supports the idea that the American Colonies are not an extension of Great Britain?

Tap to reveal answer

Answer

While Paine gives many examples of his revulsion of British rule, his argument is that colonists come from all over Europe seeking asylum. With such a diverse founding based on flight from persecution rather than expansion, Britain cannot claim that it is the only parent of the American Colonies.

← Didn't Know|Knew It →