ticulars, would operate strongly; it would reduce the employment of many thousands of people; would lessen the sales of the East India Company, and would diminish the publick revenue near a million sterling per annum, about half of which sum arises yearly from the single article of tobacco.

These are effects which no wisdom can prevent or avoid; they will leave the British Parliament time to deliberate, however mortifying it may be to them to apply the only remedy which can relieve their distress; but should they be disposed to spin out delays, in full sight of the ghastly irresistible approaches of such ruinous and complicated misery, we should at least have the advantage of being on a footing with them, they would be in pain as well as we, and would at least have equal inducement to put a speedy end to it. Their interest would soon conquer their pride, and their revenge must be speedily sacrificed to their ease.

I look on the dignity of the American Congress equal to any Assembly on earth, and their deliberations and resolutions more important in their nature and consequences than any which were ever before agitated in council. The value and character of America will be fixed, merely as the Congress shall estimate them, and if they assert the rights and liberties of America with that precision and effect, which is universally expected from them, there can be no doubt but their resolves and advices will be honoured with universal approbation and obedience, and I hope and trust they will think it below their dignity, as well as inconsistent with their prudence, to degrade their importance and waste their time in humiliating and fruitless measures, when they have if in their power to assert the rights of their country with a force and effect which the united wisdom and strength of all their enemies can by no means withstand.

I don't apprehend that all we can do will be too much. Our all is at stake; our enemies are powerful and determined; trifling expedients will be ridiculous; delays will ruin us; every moment is a moment of the utmost importance; all the world are now viewing, and all posterity will look back, on the doings of this Congress.

A LETTER FROM A VIRGINIAN TO THE MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESS, TO BE HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, ON THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER, 1774.

Let us no longer deceive ourselves with the vain hopes of a speedy repeal of the Tea Act, because we triumphed in the repeal of the Stamp Act; the Acts themselves are totally different in their principles and their operations; the occasion by no means similar. We have advanced from one extravagant claim to another, made such sudden turnings and windings, taken such wild and rapid flights, that the boldest of our followers can follow us no longer; our most zealous advocates are ashamed to plead a cause which all men, but ourselves, condemn. Can we any longer doubt that our friends, on the other side of the Atlantic, as well as our enemies, although they differ in the mode of exercising the authority of Parliament over us, are almost universally agreed in the principle? Are we not convinced from a thousand testimonies, that the clamour against us is universal and loud? Is this, gentlemen, a season to frighten the parent country into a repeal? No man of spirit in private life, even on the slightest quarrel, will submit to be bullied and exposed to the scorn and derision of the little circle he lives in. Can we seriously hope that a great Nation, a proud Nation, will be insulted and degraded with impunity by her Colonies, in the face of every rival Kingdom in Europe? Let us then, gentlemen, relinquish forever a project fraught with absurdity and ruin. Let your constituents hope that the occasion of such an important Assembly will not be wantonly squandered in opprobrious reproaches, in bidding defiance to the mother country, but in digesting and proposing some new plan of accommodation worthy her notice and exceptance. Disputes are generally vain and endless where there are no arbitrators to award, no judges to decree. Where arguments, suspected to be drawn from interest and passion are addressed to interest and passion, they produce no conviction. We may ring eternal changes on taxation and representation, upon actual, virtual, and non-representation. We may end as we began, and disagree eternally; but there is one proposition, a self-evident proposition, to which all the world give their assent, and from which we cannot withold ours: that whatever taxation and representation may be, taxation and Government are inseparable.

On the subject of taxation the authority of Mr. Locke is generally quoted by our advocates, as paramount to all other authority whatever. His Treatise on Government, as far as his ideas are practicable with the corrupt materials of all Governments, is undoubtedly a most beautiful theory, the noblest assertion of the unalienable rights of mankind. Let us respect it as the opinion of a wise and virtuous philosopher and patriot, but let us likewise, as good subjects, revere the laws of the land, the collected wisdom of ages, and make them the sole rule of our political conduct. Let not Mr. Locke be quoted partially by those who have read him, to mislead thousands who never read him. When he is brought as an authority that no subject can be justly taxed without his own consent, why do not they add his own explanation of that consent? i.e. "the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves or their Representatives chosen by them." Do we compose the majority of the British community? Are we, or are we not, of that community? If we are of that community, but are not represented, are we not in the same situation with the numerous body of copy-holders, with the inhabitants of many wealthy and populous towns; in short, with a very great number of our fellow-subjects, who have no votes in elections? Shall we affirm that these are all virtually represented, but deny that we are so; and at the same time be too proud to solicit a representation? Or, under the trite and popular pretences of venality and corruption, laugh at it as impracticable? Shall we plunge at once into anarchy, and reject all accommodation with a Government (by the confession of the wisest men in Europe, the freest and the noblest Government on the records of history,) because there are imperfections in it, as there are in all things, and in all men? Are we confederates, or allies, or subjects of Great Britain? In what code of laws are we to search for taxation, under the title and condition of requisition, as we understand the word? In what theory of Government, ancient, or modern? Is it to be found any where on earth, but in modern harangues, modern pamphlets? And in these only as temporary expedients. The supply of Government must be constant, certain, and proportioned to the protection it affords; the moment the one is precarious, the other is so too; the moment it fails, civil society expires. We boast much of our bountiful compliance with the requisitions made during the last war, and in many instances with reason; but let us remember and acknowledge that there was even then more than one rich Province that refused to comply, although the war was in the very bowels of the country. Can Great Britain then depend upon her requisitions in some future war a thousand leagues distant from North America, on which, as we may have no immediate local interest, we may look perhaps with little concern.

From the infancy of our Colonies to this very hour we have grown up and flourished under the mildness and wisdom of her excellent laws; our trade, our possessions, our persons, have been constantly defended against the whole world, by the fame of her power, or by the exertion of it. We have been very lately rescued by her from enemies who threatened us with slavery and destruction, at the expense of much blood and treasure, and established after a long war (waged on our accounts, at our most earnest prayers) in a state of security, of which there is scarce an example in history. She is ever ready to avenge the cause of the meanest individual among us, with a power respected by the whole world. Let us then no longer disgrace ourselves by illiberal, ungrateful reproaches, by meanly ascribing the most generous conduct to the most sordid motives; we owe our birth, our progress, our delivery, to her; we still depend on her for protection; we are surely able to bear some part of the expense of it; let us be willing to bear it. Employ then, gentlemen, your united zeal and abilities in substituting some adequate, permanent, and effectual supply (by some mode of actual representation,) in the place of uncertain, ineffectual requisitions, or in devising some means of reconciling taxation, the indispensable obligation of every subject, with your ideas of the peculiar and inestimable rights of an Englishman.