Select the correct text in the passage. Which sentence in this excerpt from Common Sense by Thomas Paine supports the claim that the American colonies cquld thrive independently
from Britain?
Ihave heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connection with Great Britain that the same connection is
necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We
may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk that it is never to have meat. or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become
a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting morethan is true, for l answer roundly, that America wouid have flourished as much.
and probably much more, had no European power had any thing to do with her. The commerce, by which she hath enriched herself, are the
necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.