to look up for effectual relief from the event of measures to be concerted by the united wisdom of many sage, discreet, and intelligent counsellors. The gentlemen appointed our Delegates will prepare to set out in three weeks time; and as they carry with them ample abilities to describe our situation, and to rouse the attention of all America to our sufferings, we doubt not their complaints will be heard, and their proposals to that Assembly supported with all the sensibility and fervour which will doubtless prevail at that solemn Assembly.

TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF VIRGINIA.

Williamsburg, July 28, 1774.

You are now to meet on one of the most important matters that ever engaged the Councils of America; you are all well acquainted with the natural and constitutional rights of your country. The resolves from your different counties would reflect honour on the ancient Grecian or Roman states. But in what manner to oppose the growing system of oppression which hangs over you, and to secure your rights for the future, is the important question to come before you. Permit a fellow-subject to offer you his sentiments.

It is proposed that you shall immediately put a stop to all exports and imports to and from Great Britain. We will consider those two points separately.

By stopping your exports you will distress yourselves without one good consequence attending it. You will lessen the revenue it is true; but as that revenue arises from the duty which is paid by the consumer in Britain, the Ministry will alter the mode of taxation and laugh at your folly. It is alleged too, that you are considerably in debt to the British Nation. If that is the case, let us not meanly take advantage of the times, and give room for our enemies to declare that we are a set of men void of publick faith, who do not deserve the freedom we are contending for. Policy, justice, and proper regard for our national character, all forbid you to adopt this plan. If we are obliged at last to struggle for our liberties, with arms in our hands, let us not stain the purity of our cause with the least tincture of injustice. Let us excite the prayers of the righteous for our success; and if we do fall let us fall revered and lamented.

The other position is, that you should immediately stop all imports from Great Britain; let us examine into the consequence of this step.

We will suppose that all America will unite in this measure. You must then depend on your own manufactures for the mere necessaries of life. But this you will be prevented from carrying into execution, for, as soon as you have openly avowed your design of purchasing no more of the British manufactures, the Ministry will immediately enforce that right which they claim from regulating the trade, of restraining you from making any of your own. It will be made treason and rebellion for any man to manufacture the produce of his own estate; it will be made treason and rebellion not to import from Great Britain; nay, it has already been done by Governour Gage's tyrannical Proclamation, which you have all seen. This measure will only protract the evil a little while, and increase the weight of your calamities; such are the fruits of allowing a supremacy for regulating the trade.

Let us then, my countrymen, throw aside all temporizing methods; let us assert our liberties with a spirit becoming men who are deserving of them; let us authorize the general Congress of America to lay our claims before the Nation, and demand a ratification of them from the King in his British Parliament—claims so just and so similar to their own, that a brave and generous Nation cannot with hold their consent. But if this, through the corrupt influence of the Ministry, should be denied us, we shall be prepared for the alternative. Let us then protest against the authority of Parliament in every case whatever; let us forbid our magistrates to be governed by their Acts, on pain of incurring the just indignation of an injured people; and, above all, let us remember, in times of necessity that with the sword our forefathers obtained their constitutional rights, and by the sword it is our duty to defend them.

THE BRITISH AMERICAN, NO. IX.

Williamsburg, Va., July 28, 1774.

Friends, Fellow-citizens, and Countrymen:

I have observed in quarrels between two men, where each has been satisfied of the others' bravery, they have generally compromised their difference upon honourable terms; but where the person injured, under pretence of trying moderate measures, hath by this method of asking satisfaction, given his adversary reason to suspect his courage, a scandalous submission, or the duel, he wished to avoid, has been the consequence. The same passions which produce this effect between two men will operate equally upon two states, who are but a collection of individuals. It is my firm opinion, that if the British aristocracy were once convinced that you were determined to risk your lives and fortunes rather than submit to the legislation of a British Parliament, they would relinquish so despotick a measure rather than force you to draw the sword; if you convince them that you are determined to go even those lengths rather than submit, and nothing but a persuasion that you dare not do so hath induced them to proceed so far as they have done. But supposing it was otherwise, it is high time that the dispute between Britain and America should be brought to some fixed point, which being once determined, either one way or the other, may remove all future contests; for if you look no farther than the present moment, and only endeavour to obtain a repeal of any particular Act of Parliament you complain of, you will no sooner baffle oppression in one shape, than, Proteus like, it will attack you in another equally formidable. Jealousies, complaints, murmurs, and dissensions will eternally subsist; reciprocal provocations will totally destroy all harmony be twixt the inhabitants of the two countries; and implacable resentment end in mutual attempts to ruin, if not to extirpate, each other. What then, my countrymen, is it you demand? The answer is obvious. A right of exemption from the legislation of the British Parliament. If you are determined to enforce this right lay the axe at the root of the evil, boldly avow those intentions to the world, and pursue the proper measures to transmit that right to your posterity.

Of the three plans proposed the first appears too weak and timid; the second too violent, rash, and dishonourable to be adopted; then consider coolly the third plan proposed: that you shall absolutely determine at once that you will not in future suffer any Act of the British Parliament, made since the fourth of James the First, to be executed in the Colonies; that if any judge of any court whatever shall presume to pronounce any judgment to enforce such Act of Parliament, he shall incur the resentment of an injured people, and be treated as an enemy to America; that the judgment so pronounced by him shall be absolutely void; and that you will, at the risk of your lives and fortunes, support every person injured by such judgments in repelling the execution of them by force. It is objected that this measure strikes at the Navigation Acts, which we have long submitted to. The very objection evinces the folly of trusting the decision of this dispute to posterity, who, familiarized to oppression, will never resist it, and who, by long use, will be accustomed to look upon every badge of slavery with as little horrour as we do upon the Navigation Acts, which ought certainly to be considered as impositions of the strong upon the weak, and as such ought to be resisted as much as any of the other Acts we complain of; nor will this dispute ever be ended till, by refusing submission to them, we remove so dangerous a precedent. But it is said to be reasonable that your trade should be secured to Great British: I own I cannot see the force of this argument; for why should not Britons on this have as good a right to extend their trade to every corner of the globe as those on the other side of the Atlantic? Is it material to the Empire of Great Britain in what part of her Dominions the wealth of her subjects lie, since it will finally centre in her happy Island? Bristol, Liverpool, and Whitehaven would esteem it an intolerable hardship to be obliged to lade or unlade all their ships at the port of London, and though they are not obliged to do this, their wealth finally centres in that city as the metropolis of the Kingdom; so if America was indulged in an unlimited trade it would be highly advantageous to Britain, as all the profits of such a trade must finally