That in this distressed situation of our affairs, all luxury, dissipation, and extravagance, ought to be banished from among us, and every kind of manufacture, industry, and economy encouraged.

That the African trade is injurious to this Colony, obstructs our population by freemen, manufacturers, and others, who would emigrate from Europe and settle here, and occasions an annual balance of trade against the country, and therefore that the purchase of all imported slaves ought to be associated against.

Though we are happily allowed to proceed to the choice of new Representatives, yet as the return of the writs is made to the 11th of August, and there is reason to doubt the Assembly may not be held at that time, we think it highly expedient there should be a meeting at Williamsburg on the first of August, as appointed, to consider fully of the several matters herein before mentioned, and appoint Edmund Pendleton and James Taylor. Esquires, Deputies on our parts, to meet such as shall be named for other Counties and Corporations, at Williamsburg, or such other place as may be agreed on, on the day aforesaid, or any other time, to deliberate freely, and agree to the above Resolutions, or any other that may be judged more expedient for the general purpose intended.

WILLIAM NELSON, Clerk.

THE BRITISH AMERICAN, NO VII.

Williamsburg, Va., July 14, 1774.

Friends, Fellow-citizens, and Countrymen:

The true state of your case is now fully before you, and the questions naturally resulting from it, for your determination are:

1st. Question, Will you acknowledge that the British Parliament have a right to make laws to bind you? Or will you, from a dread of the consequences of an opposition, submit to those laws?

2d. Question, If you are determined not to submit, what mode of opposition, will you adopt as the most rational and effectual to shake off the jurisdiction usurped over you?

These questions require the coolest attention, and the most deliberate wisdom to determine on, a steady and unshaken intrepidity to carry the resolutions you form on them into execution—resolutions which will, in all human probability, preserve or sink the greatest Empire in the world, and extend happiness or misery to myriads of millions yet unborn. With regard to the first question, if you really think that the British Parliament have a right to make any laws whatsoever to bind you, give up the matter, and submit to slavery at once; for the distinction between the right of taxation and that of regulating trade is merely nominal and not worth contending for, since a regulation of trade can as easily restrain you from manufacturing the smallest article for your own use, as it hath already prevented you from erecting slitting mills; can as easily strip you of every shilling of your property as it hath already rendered useless the whole property of the town of Boston; can deprive you of your liberty by subjecting you to new modes of trial, and erecting Courts of Admiralty, invested with powers unknown to the Constitution, and can sacrifice your lives, by marking you out for slaughter to a licentious soldiery, who are to be rescued from the justice of the country offended, and to be carried to England, with a certainty of being screened, and with a hope, if not with a promise, of being rewarded for the murthers they are to commit in America.

But still if your ancestors unthinkingly placed you in this deplorable situation, and by settling in America have debased you so low as that you are become the slaves of your brethren in Britain; if the King, at the head of his respective American Assemblies, no longer constitutes the Supreme Legislature of the Colonies; if you are subject to two Supreme Legislatures; if the King may, at the head of the British Parliament, abrogate laws, which, as the head of his American Parliament, he hath assented to; revoke Charters more solemnly granted than those of Magna Charter to Britain; deprive his American subjects of that property, which, under the faith of those Charters, they have expended their best blood and treasure in acquiring; and if, to conclude all, you are to consider yourselves as dependent upon the British Parliament, and have hitherto only dreamed of liberties which you had no right to enjoy; why then, my countrymen, let us patiently acquiesce in our unhappy lot, let us deprecate the wrath of the British aristocracy by instant submission, and seriously and solemnly implore the God of all Mercies to inspire the minds of our lords and masters with some slight sentiments of moderation, some little degree of tenderness and compassion, towards those who were once their equals, are still their brethren, and are not conscious of having merited the base, the abject, the humiliating state, they are reduced to, or the rigorous treatment they are now suffering.

But it may be said, that though convinced that you have justice on your side, and though sensible that the jurisdiction claimed by the British Parliament over you is an unjust and arbitrary usurpation of the strong over the weak, yet you are not ripe for opposition; that, too feeble to resist the power of Britain, and to assert your title to freedom, you can at present only protest against the oppression, but must leave it to your growing prosperity to enforce those rights, which you can only claim. If these sentiments, my countrymen, prevail amongst you, if in order to avoid slight, temporary evils, and imaginary consequences, you are determined only to make an imaginary shew of resistance, and if that will not induce the British Parliament to withdraw her claim, to submit to that claim, and acknowledge the supremacy they contend for, let your submission be made immediately. With a good grace express contrition for your former obstinacy, humbly entreat forgiveness for what you have already done, promise implicit obedience for the future, and, if determined to submit to slavery at last, be careful how you exasperate your masters with the semblance of an opposition you do not intend to persist in; for I will venture to prophecy, that if America is not now ripe for asserting her just rights, she will be rotten before she is so.

The arbitrary laws which will be imposed upon you immediately upon your submission, the swarms of placemen and pensioners which you will be obliged to pay to enforce those laws, and the rigour with which they will be executed, by suppressing every idea of patriotism, before it can shoot up to maturity, and by stifling it in its cradle, every dawn of virtue will effectually restrain posterity from even wishing to emerge from that state of slavery which, by being habituated to from their infancy, will at length become familiar to them.

Be not deceived by imagining, that the submission of Boston to the three Acts of Parliament lately passed, arbitrary and humiliating as they are, is the ultimate end of the British aristocracy. No, it is only a part of the general plan they have formed for enslaving all America, by attacking each Colony singly; for as every Colony have refused to submit to the duty imposed upon tea, they will all, one after another, feel the resentment of, and be called upon for, the same submission to Parliament, if you do not cordially unite in supporting the first sufferer. And here permit me to address myself in a particular manner to such of my countrymen whose own industry, or the frugality of their ancestors, have blessed them with immense wealth. I confess your situations are truly alarming, for as you have more to lose, so you have more to fear than those of your fellow-subjects to whom Providence hath been less liberal of the goods of fortune. In as happy a state as your most sanguine wishes could have placed you, with a reasonable expectation of providing for a family deservedly dear to you, and of transmitting to your posterity those blessings of fortune, which, by tasting yourselves, you have experienced the value of, you wish not for a change. Satisfied that with your ample estates, you can ward off the evils of the most arbitrary Government, and, that though much may be taken from you unjustly, still there will remain abundantly sufficient to supply you with all the necessaries, with all the elegancies of life; whereas, on the other hand, even a slight commotion may expose part of your wealth to the ravages of the populace, or the plunder of a licentious army, and if you are unfortunate enough to choose the weaker party, however innate virtue may have directed your choice, you are sure to lose the whole, and, in your old age perhaps, be reduced