How can Chalmers’ work be considered an attempt to defend the continued relationship between Britain and the colonists? article- Document 4
NOTE: James Chalmers was a Scottish-born British loyalist living in Maryland at the onset of the American Revolution. He wrote Plain Truth as a defense of British rule in the American colonies and in response to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which had been published just months earlier. Chalmers served as a loyalist officer in the American Revolution. Some historians have estimated that roughly one-third of colonists were loyalists.

Can a reasonable being for a moment believe that Great Britain, whose political existence depends on our constitutional obedience, who but yesterday made such prodigious efforts to save us from France, will not exert herself as powerfully to preserve us from our frantic schemes of independency? Can we a moment doubt, that the Sovereign of Great Britain and his ministers, whose glory as well as personal safety depends on our obedience, will not exert every nerve of the British power, to save themselves and us from ruin.…

Until the present unhappy period, Great Britain has afforded to all mankind, the most perfect proof of her wise, lenient, and magnanimous government of the Colonies.…

Volumes were insufficient to describe the horror, misery and desolation, awaiting the people at large in the Syren form of American independence. In short, I affirm that it would be most excellent policy in those who wish for TRUE LIBERTY to submit by an advantageous reconciliation to the authority of Great Britain; “to accomplish in the long run, what they cannot do by hypocrisy, fraud and force in the short one.”