They were in no mood to be called erring children who must implore undeserved mercy and not force a loving parent to take unwilling vengeance.

"Our plantations" and "our subjects in the colonies" would simply not learn obedience.

If George III would not reply to their petitions until they laid down their arms, they could manage to get on without a king.

If England, as Horace Walpole admitted, would not take them seriously and speakers in Parliament called them obscure ruffians and cowards, so much the worse for England.
It was an Englishman, Thomas Paine, who fanned the fire into unquenchable flames.

He had recently been dismissed from a post in the excise in England and was at this time earning in Philadelphia a precarious living by his pen.