us our safety consists, and which the experience of one hundred years has confirmed, as the most beneficial for both countries.

For this long course of years, America, with a most unsuspecting confidence, resigned herself to the wisdom and virtue of the Parent State, whose wisest Ministers and ablest men were content with the benefits of Commerce, and sought no power but such as tended to its increase and security. After a long and expensive war, in which the Americans were repeatedly acknowledged the most loyal subjects and affectionate Colonists, a system was formed, which proceeded step by step in dreadful progression, till it has swallowed up every privilege and right which ought to distinguish an English Colonist from those of arbitrary States. Of what importance is it to us, that our fellow-subjects, three thousand miles off, should be distinguished from the other Nations of the earth, as free and happy, while we have no share in the distinction. Let us compare the rights of a British subject with those of an American, we shall see a very striking disparity.

In a former paper I observed, that the legal Government of America terminated in the year 1763. A series of acts since that time will evince the truth of my assertion.

Then, for the first time, the taxation of America was attempted, and has been continued with unremitted assiduity to the present moment—then the powers of Admiralty and Vice-Admiralty Courts were extended beyond their former limits—then our property, for the first time, was taken from us without our consent—trial by juries in many cases of property abolished, and an innocent suitor laid under every possible disadvantage in asserting his rights. Soon after, the absolute Statute of Henry VIII, was revived, by Resolves of both Houses of Parliament, by which Americans may be carried to England, and tried for offences alleged to be committed in America. In the twelfth year of His Majesty’s reign, the charge of burning any of the King’s Ships or Stores in America was expressly made triable in England, to the total exclusion of a jury of the vicinage. The Acts respecting Massachusetts-Bay are too recent to need particular enumeration; their charter privileges, their justice, trade, and Government are wholly subverted, without observing the common forms of justice. What has been their case, may be that of every other Province; and let me observe, that innocence is a poor protection, when no opportunity is given to manifest it.

What opinion now, my fellow-citizens, ought you to form of an author, who calls an opposition to these measures a “utopian scheme, quickened into publick life by an itch of “superiority and thirst of applause;—an infatuation, over “leaping all the sober bounds of law and Government; “conducted by men who delight in the destruction of “peace and good order; whose safety consists in their pre “cipitating their Country into anarchy and confusion.” Shameless falsehoods! calculated to impose on the weak and unwary; to foment those divisions, and bring on that ruin, upon which some men mean to build their own greatness. No, my dear fellow-citizens, look around you; are the men you deputed to the late Congress, those who have been active in Committees of publick transactions; are they men of doubtful characters and desperate fortunes? Are anarchy and confusion required for their safety or establishment in life? Is a bold step for the reformation of Government necessary to retrieve their characters? Have they been distinguished for a spirit of enterprise, wickedness, and folly, on other occasions?

The man whose signature is A Friend to the Constitution, and whose sentiments are in such unison with our author, shall determine these questions; for he must have supposed them applicable to this Province, or their publication here was idle. To arraign the justice of a cause; to entangle the honest mind in doubts and difficulties; to cut off all hopes and prospects of success; to paint in terrible colours events which have happened in dissimilar cases, and conceal the happy issue of similar struggles, are arts which will be practised, and against which we ought to be particularly guarded. I have attempted to vindicate the former, and in some future paper shall endeavour to show, that if unanimity accompanies our opposition, we have the utmost reason to hope that success will crown the work, and though we shall continue a dependant, we shall be a free and happy people.

CAMILLUS.

NEWPORT (RHODE-ISLAND) COMMITTEE.

At a Meeting of the Committee, of Inspection, for the Town of Newport, held in the Council Chamber, on Wednesday, March 1, 1775,

Mr. JOHN TANNER in the Chair.

Resolved, That the freedom of the Press is of the utmost importance to civil society; and that its importance consists, “besides the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, where, by oppressive Officers, are shamed or intimidated into more honourable and just modes of conducting affairs;" and therefore it is the duty of every friend of Civil Government to protect, and preserve from violation, that invaluable right, that noble pillar, and great support of Public Liberty; and to countenance and encourage the Press, so long as it shall be employed in promoting those beneficial purposes. But when, instead thereof, a Press is incessantly employed and prostituted to the vilest uses; in publishing the most infamous falsehoods; in partial or false representations of facts; in fomenting jealousies, and exciting discord and disunion among the people; in supporting and applauding the worst of men, and worst of measures; and in vilifying and calumniating the best of characters, and the best of causes; it then behooves every citizen, every friend to truth, science, arts, liberality of sentiment, to that union between subjects, upon which depends their security against oppression, to discountenance and discourage every such licentious, illiberal, prostituted Press.

And whereas, a certain James Rivington, a Printer and Stationer in the City of New-York, impelled by the love of sordid pelf, and a haughty domineering spirit, hath, for a long time, in the dirty Gazetteer, and in pamphlets, if possible still more dirty, uniformly persists in publishing every falsehood which his own wicked imagination, or the imaginations of others of the same stamp, as ingenious perhaps in mischief as himself, could suggest and fabricate, that had a tendency to spread jealousies, fear, discord, and disunion through this country; and by partial and false representations of facts, hath endeavoured to pervert truth, and to deceive and mislead the incautious into wrong conceptions of facts reported, and wrong sentiments respecting the measures now carrying on for the recovery and establishment