and treat them as traitors to their Country.” If what is generally said be true, that the Congress made no laws, then it can be no transgression to trample upon and contemn the Association. For where there is no law, there can be no transgression. Now if you fail in proof of so high and presumptuous an imputation, the impartial publick must esteem you a most abusive and unlawful body. No sacred pretext or design can justify the commission of the least evil.

Tell us what moved you to proclaim our patriotick Printers traitors? Do you really mean to immure the Colonies in Popish darkness, by suppressing the vehicles of light, truth, and liberty? Are none to speak, write, or print, but by your permission? Does a conscience of guilt and tyranny hurry the Committees to starve and murder our virtuous Printers? One would conclude, from Mr. Holt’s papers, that they had lost virtue, honour, humanity, and common sense. A free Press has been the honour and glory of Englishmen; by it our most excellent Constitution has been raised to greater perfection than any in the world. But we are become the degenerate plants of a new and strange vine; and now it seems ignorance must be the mother of both devotion and politicks.

The Major and friends to Government desire the Committee, who had no right to represent Brookhaven, to take back the odious, despicable epithet of traitors, as it is peculiarly adapted to the enemies of the Country, and the deluded abetters of the rebellious saints at Boston. For we, in our turn, “think that they (if any) ought to be esteemed and treated as traitors to their Country, and enemies to the liberties of America.”

Signed by Major Benjamin Floyd, and a great number of others.

MEETING AT DANVERS, (ESSEX COUNTY,) MASSACHUSETTS.

At a meeting of the people of the Alarm List of the Third Company in Danvers, held at said Danvers 6th March, 1775, for the purpose of electing Officers for said Alarm List Company, Rev. Benjamin Balch, Chairman:

Said people unanimously made choice of Deacon Edmund Putnam for Captain; Rev. Benjamin Balch for a Lieutenant; and Mr. Tarrant Putnam for an Ensign. The said Gentlemen being all present, declared their acceptance.       Attest,

ARCH. DALE, Clerk of said Meeting.

Boston, March 6, 1775.

At this inauspicious day, when Tyranny lifts her shameless, front, and is followed by a train of unfeeling Apostates, I cannot let my pen sleep. The enemies to Freedom, convinced that the Americans are not to be cheated, now openly declare that the Colonies must and will be subjected by force. This brings up the last and great question, whether the United Colonies can defend their rights? If they cannot, of all men they will be the most miserable. But I believe they can, and will defend them; and if the sword should be drawn against them, they may strike such a blow as will shake Britain to the centre. It is painful to the Americans to contemplate measures which may be ruinous to their brethren in Britain, but a tyrannical Ministry; encouraged by the Tories in both Countries, are now pushing their destructive plans with such rapidity and violence, that we must look forward to the last grand step for defence; and if they will not hearken to the wise and just proposals of the American Congress, but still continue to go on from bad to worse, the Americans will be compelled, by the great Law of Nature, to strike a decisive blow, and follow the example of the once oppressed United Provinces—publish a manifesto to the world, showing the necessity of dissolving their connection with a Nation whose Ministers were aiming at their ruin; offer a Free Trade to all Nations, and an asylum in the free regions of America to all the oppressed through the world. THIS IS THE DERNIER RESORT; resort; and this, O Americans! you can do; and this you must do, unless tyranny ceases to invade your liberties. This great subject I have viewed on all sides; and it might be demonstrated by a million of reasons, that the Americans may thus secure to themselves and to posterity the blessings of Freedom.

TIME AND JUDGMENT.

An Oration delivered MONDAY, MARCH 6, 1775, at the request of the Inhabitants of the Town of BOSTON, to commemorate the bloody tragedy of the 5th of MARCH, 1770. By Doctor JOSEPH WARREN.

My ever honoured Fellow-Citizens:

It is not without the most humiliating conviction of my want of ability that I now appear before you; but the sense I have of the obligation I am under to obey the calls of my Country at all times, together with an animating recollection of your indulgence exhibited upon so many occasions, has induced me once more, undeserving as I am, to throw myself upon that candour which looks with kindness on the feeblest efforts of an honest, mind.

You will not now expect the elegance, the learning, the fire, the enrapturing strains of eloquence, which charmed you when a Lovel, a Church, or a Hancock spake; but you will permit me to say, that with a sincerity equal to theirs, I mourn over my bleeding Country; with them I weep at her distress, and with them deeply resent the many injuries she has received from the hands of cruel and unreasonable men.

That personal freedom is the natural right of every man, and that property, or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his own labour, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction; and no man, or body of men, can, without being guilty of flagrant injustice, claim a right to dispose of the persons or acquisitions of any other man, or body of men, unless it can be proved that such a right has arisen from some compact between the parties, in which it has been explicitly and freely granted.

If I may be indulged in taking a retrospective view of the first settlement of our Country, it will be easy to determine with what degree of justice the late Parliament of Great Britain have assumed the power of giving away that property which the Americans have earned by their labour.

Our fathers having nobly resolved never to wear the yoke of Despotism, and seeing the European world, through indolence and cowardice, falling a prey to tyranny, bravely threw themselves upon the bosom of the Ocean, determined to find a place in which they might enjoy their freedom, or perish in the glorious attempt. Approving Heaven beheld the favourite ark dancing upon the waves, and graciously preserved it, until the chosen families were brought in safety to these Western regions. They found the land swarming with Savages, who threatened death with every kind of torture; but Savages, and death with torture, were far less terrible than slavery. Nothing was so much the object of their abhorrence as a tyrant’s power; they knew that it was more safe to dwell with man, in his most un-polished state, than in a Country where arbitrary power prevails. Even Anarchy itself, that bugbear held up by the tools of power, (though truly to be deprecated,) is infinitely less dangerous to mankind than arbitrary Government. Anarchy can be but of short duration; for when men are at liberty to pursue that course which is most conducive to their own happiness, they will soon come into it; and, from the rudest state of nature, order and good government must soon arise. But tyranny, when once established, entails its curse on a Nation to the latest period of time, unless some daring genius, inspired by Heaven, shall, unappalled by danger, bravely form and execute the arduous design of restoring liberty and life to his enslaved, murdered Country.

The tools of power, in every age, have racked their inventions to justify the few in sporting with the happiness of the many, and, having found their sophistry too weak to hold mankind in bondage, have impiously dared to force Religion, the daughter of the King of Heaven, to become a prostitute in the service of Hell. They taught that Princes, honoured with the name Christians, might bid defiance to the Founder of their faith; might pillage Pagan Countries, and deluge them with blood, only because they boasted themselves to be the disciples of that Teacher who strictly charged his followers to “do to others as they would that others should do unto them.”

This Country having been discovered by an English subject in the year 1620, was (according to the system which the