It is proposed that the soldering form of general relativity be treated as a dynamical variable. This gives rise to the possibility of treating the linear connection on (n-dimensional) spacetime and an internal O(k)-Yang-Mills field as different components of the same O(N) gauge field (N=n+k). The distinction between gravitational and Yang-Mills interactions is due to a kind of Higgs mechanism driven by the vacuum expectation value of the soldering form
