I read an article dated November 18, 1744, which purports from the outset to be written "To His Excellency Lewis Morris, Esq., Captain General and Governor in Chief, in and over his majesty's province of Nova Cafarea."  Thus, the subordination of author to reader struck me immediately, and, of course, I noted the year of the publication of the article as preceding the American Revolution.  Bearing this in mind, I subconsciously reasoned that I must needs take everything the article has to say with a grain of salt, as it could be either genuine or meant to please.  The further I got into the article, the more I grew suspicious of the latter.  The author's attempts at flattery in conjunction with his own humility are, frankly, beyond ridiculous.  It opens with the sentence "We his Majesty's dutiful and loyal Subjects, the Representatives of the Province of Nova Cafarea...beg leave to return your Excellency our hearty Thanks, for your favorable Speech to both Houses."  So here, we have the humble "dutiful and loyal subject" literally begging to be able to say thank you to their noble greater Lord and Ruler for blessing them with his wisdom and allowing them to bask in his awesomeness.  Such overcooked humility raises red flags of suspicion right away, and the article keeps on running with its virtual deification of the Lord Protectors of England and never looks back.  This really got me thinking in a unique sense about something I had never really considered before: the ambition and the authenticity of pre-revolution Americans, or our "Founding Fathers," as it were.  Looking at something like this article, which to me seemed to be pretty blatantly full of ass-kissing (pardon my french, but I've run out of synonyms for that word), I got to thinking about just when exactly it was that this idea of independence got itself into the minds of the pre-revolution American colonists.  This very article was written two decades before the revolution-could the notion of total independence have been already brewing then?  What did Benjamin Franklin and his founding cronies really think about British politics and political leaders?  To these questions I have no answers, but they are certainly interesting to think about nonetheless...and for that enlightenment I have this article to thank, even with its near-laughable hodgepodge of flattery.