however, she cannot be so ignorant of the real springs of war or peace, as to persuade herself that your numerous, embattled Legions, under triumphant Fleets sent to her Coasts, were supplied purely from motives of parental affection or sympathetick benevolence. Had, sir, that vast territory been planted with Portuguese scions, instead of those from your own stock, ponderating as the political scales of Europe then were, would you not have afforded to a people, in their natural and moral character, as far from unison with yourselves as discord is from harmony, an equal supply of men and treasure? Remember, sir, your prowess at the eve of that same war, near the banks of the Tagus.

The love or enmity of one people to another cannot be estimated by their occasional alliances, compacts, or guarantees, as a body politick. It is but a century ago that our English Brigades served with unparalleled ardour in the Army of that arch enemy to civil and religious liberty, Lewis the Fourteenth of France; the execrated revocator of the edict of Nantz; the aspirer to universal despotism. We served, sir, against a people whose tolerance and charity of religion, whose whole system and freedom of government we at that very time held in emulative veneration; a people whose assistance we supplicated and obtained scarce twenty years after, to deliver us from monarchical tyranny.

Such coercion was highly impolitick, because it is from the prosperity, peace, and contentment of her Colonies, that resources of wealth and laurels of honour are won to a mother country. History teaches us that populousness and affluence are the product of that clime alone where the people may reap in security a full harvest of their labour; where they have affluence in their leaders and governours; where no exactions are inflicted by an alien hand; where the municipal, if not the imperial jurisdiction, together with the power of levying taxes, are vested in substitutes of their own free choice or approbation.

That saying of a despot, "Oderint dum metuant," may be applicable to the swarthy sons of the opposite division of the globe; but, sir, it will never accord with the sentiments of our brethren in America. Threats and violence used against hearts of the same sturdy temper with your own, must induce the most calamitous events to both parties. There will be seeds of equal courage and perseverance found in the one battle as in the other, with this difference at the onset, that the arm of the aggrieved is usually braced to bolder, more decisive efforts of rage and despair, than that of the aggressor: "Aquilæ non generant Columbus." Let us, sir, rather rejoice that our breed has not degenerated; that these Colonists have a sense of rational freedom becoming the sons of such high-minded progenitors. Ill would it answer your purpose to bring their bodies under a short-lived subjection, and to leave impressed upon their minds an unabated rancour and aptness for revolt. Revenge is an unchristian passion; yet how rarely do we find the human soul possessed of a sublimer heroism, without this alloy.

Neither, sir, am I altogether unacquainted with the people of whom I am now speaking. Curiosity once led me to travel many hundreds of miles along their nourishing and hospitable Provinces. I found inmost of them the Spartan temperance, in many the urbanity of Athens; and, notwithstanding the base and groundless imputations on their spirit, which the cankered tongue of prejudice and slander has with so licentious a virulence here poured forth against them, they will, I am confident, if set to the proof, evince the Roman magnanimity, ere Rome fell under sceptered usurpation. But, sir, if a foreign enemy should appear at your gates, and you need their assistance, will there then be found among them many a Coriolanus? He stands single as the prodigy of forgiveness, in the annals of a people whose attachment to their native land was carried to the utmost height of enthusiasm. How soon that foreign enemy may appear at your gates, I know not. According to the horological predictions of a most enlightensed state soothsayer, we have about seven years more of profound tranquillity with the House of Bourbon to trust to; but,, from the symptoms of our domestick distraction, and the improved state of the government and finances of our neighbours, I should judge it prudent to be somewhat better provided than we are at present for an early rupture; not entirely to dismantle our Ports and our Coasts of soldiers and seamen, sent to immolate the martyrs to liberty of their own flesh and blood, on the distant Continent of America.

It has been made evident to you that a defection of the Northern Colonies will soon bring on the complete ruin of your West India settlements, which cannot elsewhere affordably provide themselves with Cattle, Lumber, and divers other articles requisite for the support of a Plantation.

Let us turn our eyes to the inland trading Towns here at home; those large iron foundries which used to supply the anchors of commerce and implements for husbandry and the ingenious arts, are now set at work in moulding the sword and the bayonet to enslave America. From the former commissions there accrued constant returns of profit, and numberless comforts; from the latter, what can be expected but poverty, dejection, and mourning? Peace with America will make your thousands of Manufacturers and Artisans a thriving, obedient people; war with America will make them idle, profligate, and tumultuary. In short, the first open hostilities committed by your Troops on that Continent, will realize to the race of man, from one extremity of the earth to the other, more fatal evils than were even contained in the fabled box of Pandora.

It is well known, through melancholy observation drawn from the fate of the Assyrian, Persian, and Roman Empires, that, national societies, as well as the individual mortals of whom those societies are composed, have their nonage, their adult vigour, and their decline. Whatsoever share of indulgence and independency Great Britain shall, in this her florid and athletick stage, generously bestow on her rising Colonies, they will, no doubt, amply repay to her in some future generation, when she is verging towards that awful goal which must close her race of glory.

The military coercion of America will be impracticable. What has been the fate of your famous Bills passed in the last session of the deceased Parliament? I mean, sir, the Boston Port Bill, and the Bill for altering the Charter of Massachusetts Bay. America, as an earnest of her triumph over the future labours for which envy and malice may reserve her, has, like another Hercules in the cradle, already grappled with those two serpents sent for her destruction. Neither shall we be long able to sustain the unhallowed war at so remote a distance; unexplored deserts, wood-land ambuscades, latitudes to which few of our soldiery have been seasoned;—the Southern Provinces scarce to be endured in the summer months, the Northern Provinces not approachable in the winter season;—ship-wrecks, pestilence, famine. The unrelenting inveteracy and carnage of York and Lancaster, will here be joined to all the elementary hardships and maladies of a bigot crusade. Shall not such dreadful eras in our earlier chronicle, serve us for beacons at this perilous crisis? Those rash expeditions, indeed, undertaken by a few martial zealots on misconceived piety, began to decline at the death of the hot-brained, savage-hearted King, under whom they were first enterprised; and the sluices of kindred blood which had long inundated the land in the red and white roses, were at length happily put a stop to, by a single matrimonial contract. Now, sir, who can look forward to a probable epoch in the red volume of time, when the sword drawn in this quarrel shall be sheathed in peace! I can see no end, till slaughter, proscription, extirpation, shall totally have annihilated either one or the other people.

Far be it from me to anticipate by conjecture to either country so dreadful a sentence; but, sir, without a gift of preternatural foresight, I may remark, that there are features in the aspect of infant America which denote, at maturer years, a most colossal force. The Helvetick and Flemish Confederacies have demonstrated what extraordinary obstacles a small band of insurgents may surmount in the cause of liberty. The Helvetick Confederacy consisted of a few straggling peasants, bannered against a mighty Prince; yet, firmness and desperation supplied that energy, which the best disciplined numbers could not resist. The tragick scenes of Numantia, and of Saguntum, shew to how dire a catastrophe a spirited people will devote themselves, sooner than submit to an unjust dominion. It appears from one of the American letters of a late date, brought to your table, that the inhabitants of Boston were inclined to copy, in part, these dire examples; that they