Here ya go, LH:

"The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent -- of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters."
-Thomas Paine
from Common Sense (Chapter III)
Published Philadelphia, 17 February 1776

(...a seditious little pamphlet which ought to be required reading everywhere, IMHO.)

Sarah