independent as they are now weak and dependent, and should they in their greatness and glory remember a word of the humblest and the meanest, but not of the least sincere or the least disinterested of their friends and advocates, it will be never to employ force and power against reason and argument; to leave those instruments to Cabinets, and to such as may want them, but to believe Truth to be ever the real interest of the people and the publick, and that no other incense or sacrifice should ever be offered at the altars of that Goddess, but the pure oblation of a freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. But here it cannot well fail to be observed, that should these people, whose distresses are now pleaded, ever come to be masters both of themselves and of others, and to be glutted with power and riches, that they will certainly run the race of the rest of mankind, and learn in their turn tyranny and injustice, as their betters and their predecessors have done before them, I answer, no man perhaps believes this more than myself; however, that is not now the case. They are at present the injured and the oppressed party, and have, as such, a claim to the wishes or to the assistance of every generous and unprejudiced person. But whenever the other supposition shall obtain, it is to be hoped that neither may there, in that day, be wanting some honest man among them who will endeavour to make them blush at such a conduct, if he shall not be able to dissuade and divert them from it. However, I would willingly in my turn now ask, whether this last observation is also local and confined to America, or whether it extends itself likewise to the meridian of Great Britain?

It is not reason and argument, it is this locality, which operates on the present occasion. It is this only that makes many men easy and indifferent in the case about right and wrong, justice and injustice. Were my countrymen now in England dipped once in the River Delaware, 1 dare say that it would make an almost miraculous change in their opinions. If some, who might be named, were transposed into Assemblymen, they would perhaps be as ready to repeal certain late laws as ever they were to pass them. However I will not go back again to topicks which seem sufficient to awaken the most lethargick Englishman out of his soundest sleep, but I desire to put a case relating to this locality itself, and its power and effects, when it is to be hoped that we shall not find in the mirror any similitude or representation of ourselves.

At the beginning of the last century, there lived a gentleman of the name of Fawkes. He hired a house and some cellars and other apartments in Westminster. We will suppose that he had a lease of them. A lease is for the time as good as a purchase. It might not indeed be stamped; but stamps were not then in fashion, it was good without. He bought some Gunpowder; it is to be believed that he paid honestly for it. He could perhaps have produced for it a receipt; he placed it in the cellars or other apartment hired by him. He had, indeed, a mind to amuse himself with blowing up the Legislature of England, no doubt with the good intention of introducing a better. However, he and his trains were discovered, and the Nation not relishing his projects, he met with another reward than he desired. But suppose that he and Garnet, and the rest of their associates, instead of falling into the hands of an English Jury, had been tried at Rome before the Consistory Court, or any other Court there, they would no doubt have found an advocate; that is no other than the duty of the profession. I won't take upon me to say whether he would, in this case, have flourished about private property, trespass, or forcible entry; but whatever turn the Italian Counsel had thought proper to give the cause of his clients, has any one seriously the least doubt but that they would have been cleared and acquitted, and probably by the Court of Rome itself in good time, preferred and promoted. So much can a difference of climate do. But Fawkes and Garnet and their friends were fools, Jesuits as some of them were. They did not understand their trade. They might have been told better ways of blowing up Legislatures than with Gunpowder; that don't make a quarter of the crack and combustion, but which are ten times more effectual.

But our Colonies might be well enough, were it not for Doctor Franklin, who has, with a brand lighted from the clouds, set fire to all America. No Governments care ever to acknowledge the people to be fairly against them: for whatever may be the case with the opinions of the multitude in abstruse and refined matters, which but little concern them, nor do they much trouble themselves about; yet the end, and therefore the touchstone and trial of all Government being their welfare and happiness, there is not common modesty in affecting to despise and refuse their sense concerning their own good and evil, their own feelings, benefits, or sufferings. It is in these things that the voice of the people is said to approach that of their Maker. The sycophants of Ministers endeavour, therefore, to throw on the artifice and influence of individuals all discontent or dissatisfaction of the publick. Mr. Wilkes moves England, and Doctor Franklin America; as if we had here no feeling but through the first, and they had there neither eyes or ears, but by the latter. It were happy for mankind, if Administrations procured their own votes and majorities with as much fairness as the voice of the people is commonly obtained. I wonder whether we should then have ever heard of any Government in Europe indebted in the sum of a hundred and forty millions sterling, or be at this moment under the alarm of a parent state attacking its own Colonies, or of a great Empire setting at work its Fleets and Armies only to throw the parts of itself into mischief and confusion. It is idle and childish to be crying out against this or that private person. The truth is, that whenever Governments heap up combustibles, there will always be found a hand to put the match to them, or these would heat and take fire of themselves if there were not.

But it seems that Doctor Franklin recommended to his constituents for the rule of their conduct, to refrain from all force and violence, but to preserve and keep alive in the mean time their claims by votes and resolves.—(Wedderburn's Speech, page 110 and 111.) I have nothing to do with the defence of any individual. However, what more prudent or honest advice could, on the occasion, have been conceived or offered? Is the hour very far off when every man in Britain, and among the rest the Minister himself, and perhaps even his royal and illustrious Master, may most earnestly wish, that the same spirit of peace had inspired, the same caution and consideration guided the publick councils here at home on the subject, as appear to have dictated this advice attributed to Doctor Franklin, for the direction of our countrymen beyond the Atlantic. This may, I say, indeed happen soon, but with this most wide and infinite difference, that the time may then be too late; that the circumstances of things can no more be recalled, but that the lot of our good or our evil, of our peace or our confusion, and possibly even of our existence or our dissolution, as a state, shall before have fatally and irrecoverably been cast.

However, is not Mr. W's philipick against the Doctor a capital performance? I am sure that I have not the least inclination to depreciate the ingenuity of that learned gentleman, whose argument I have been making so free with. But the being charmed with spruce expressions or a smartness of invective, where the subject makes against the privileges or the liberties of a people, what is it better than if a parcel of prisoners or of galley-slaves were so abject as to take a pleasure in the noise and the rattling, or as it were, in the musick of their own chains?

I am drawing towards an end of my career. However, I will first say something to the Americans themselves. I observe them to charge sometimes on the British subjects in general, the measures with which they are aggrieved. Herein they do us wrong. I may venture to affirm, that there would not be hurt the hair of the head of an American, were it to be voted by all our country. Every one must remember the universal satisfaction produced by the repeal of the Stamp Act, and it would no doubt be the same again were the present measures discharged and remitted. But it often happens, that Representatives and their constituents are, in the most essential and the most important points, directly and diametrically opposite to one another. I don't pretend to account for this. It is a fatality, or perhaps it is a new kind of representation. But the Americans should consider, that two different parts of a country may be oppressed by one and the same