proceedings, and their violations of justice had roused the indignation of the people, and he was requested to do it by upwards of eighty thousand freeholders, (signed,) and the general voice of the whole Nation. But in 1774 he got the better of that tenderness; and to answer his own purposes, could exert the Royal prerogative, which he had absolutely refused to his subjects in the haughty terms of a despot, with no other view but to overturn the Constitution of the British Empire, in England and America, and destroy or enslave the people.

His Majesty, his minions, and instruments of slaughter, are now safe in robbing the people of their property, by shameful and iniquitous taxes, in time of peace; safe in their subversion of the Protestant Religion; safe and successful in their cruel plan for starving the honest and industrious inhabitants, and destroying the trade of the Town of Boston, in America, and the Commerce of England; safe so far in their attempt to destroy the lives, rights, liberties, and privileges of millions; I say they are safe in all these violations of, and depredations on out National security, and natural rights—because we are tame.

THE CRISIS.— NO. III.

To the King:

SIR: To follow you regularly through every step of a fourteen years’ shameful and inglorious reign, would be a task as painful as disagreeable, and far exceed the bounds of this paper: But we are called upon by the necessity of the times, the measures you are pursuing, by every principle of justice and self-preservation, and by the duty we owe to God and our Country, to declare our sentiments (with a freedom becoming Englishmen) on some of those dreadful transactions and oppressions which the Kingdom has laboured under since the glory and lustre of England’s Crown was doomed to fade upon your brow; and to point out to you, Sir, your own critical and dangerous situation.

Sir, it is not your rotten troop, in the present House of Commons; it is not your venal, beggarly, pensioned Lords; it is not your polluted, canting, prostituted Bench of Bishops; it is not your whole set of abandoned Ministers; nor all your army of Scotch cut-throats, that can protect you from the People’s rage, when driven by your oppressions, and, until now, unheard of cruelties, to a state of desperation.

The day, we fear, is not far distant, when you will have reason, too much reason, to wish you had acted like a father, and not like a tyrant; when you will be bound to curse those traitors, those exalted villains, who now, in the face of day, without a blush, you can be base enough to call your friends. Be assured, Sir, your danger is great, amidst all the fancied security; and it will be impossible for them to preserve you from the just resentment of an enraged, long abused, and much injured Nation. Should that day ever come, (but Heaven avert the stroke,) where can you hide yourself from the tenfold vengeance of a brave and mighty people, with law, justice, Heaven, and all their sacred truths on their side?

Then, like the wounds that bleed afresh, will be brought to their minds your barbarous and unprovoked massacre in. St. George’s Fields; when men and women were indiscriminately and inhumanly slaughtered, to gratify what would have disgraced even your footman—a pitiful revenge! Then, Sir, they will remember with horrour and indignation, the letter of thanks, sent from the Secretary at War, by your order, to the Officer on duty, the 10th of May, 1768, (the day of carnage,) and likewise your pensioning and screening the murderers from the punishment of the law. Then, Sir, they will remember, the horrid plan laid at Brentford, for destroying the right of election; or in the most savage manner to take away the lives of the Freeholders of Middlesex, which was (to make use of a word from your merciful Royal dictionary,) effectually carried into execution, and several people killed; to this plan, Sir, formed by Proctor and your minions, you must have been privy, as the event afterwards sufficiently proved. Then, Sir, they will remember the mean, low, and criminal subterfuge you had recourse to, to dispense with the laws, and set aside the just verdict of an honest jury, to pardon those hired ruffians, Balf and McQuirk, convicted upon the clearest evidence, of premeditated murder. Then, Sir, they will remember the insults they received, and the ignoble answers you gave to the remonstrances and petitions, delivered by them to the Throne, praying the dissolution of Parliament. Nor will they forget, Sir, the infernal plan for smuggling the present House of Commons, and destroying all the rights of this free Country. In a word, Sir, these and every other despotick and bloody transaction of your reign will rise fresh in their minds, if they should be driven by your encouragement of Popery, your persecutions, your oppressions, your violations of all justice, your treachery, and your weakness, into a fatal and unnatural Civil War in America; I say, they will rise fresh in their minds, and stimulate them to deeds of glory; nay, they may pursue with implacable revenge the author of all their miseries.

The people, Sir, with a candour and indulgence peculiar to Englishmen, passed over the injuries and insults in the first part of your reign, or kindly laid the blame at the door of your Ministers; but if is now evident to the whole world, that there was a plan formed by Lord Bute and yourself, either before, or immediately after you came to the Crown, for subverting the British Constitution in Church and State; which, to our grief, with indefatigable pains and too much success, Lord Bute’s tools, and your infernal minions, have carried into execution; therefore it no longer remains to determine who is now the greatest criminal in England.

Consider, Sir, if, through the late and present iniquitous measures, and an obstinate resolution in your Majesty to pursue them, the sword is forced to be drawn in America, it cannot remain long unsheathed in England. We hope there is some virtue here; and we entertain a better opinion of our countrymen than to believe they are so far degenerated as to tamely see a mercenary army of soldiers, who are at all times a terrour to the peaceable inhabitants of every free State, butcher their brethren and fellow-subjects in America, because they are determined, to defend, their own jour rights and the British Constitution. I say they never will tamely see that, without putting out a helping hand, and sharing with them the glory of a decisive victory over tyranny, and all the agents of the infernal monarch of the dark regions of hell, who would enslave the world.

Should you, Sir, still pursue the tyrannical measures, only to gratify a mean vindictive spirit, and be the author of such dreadful mischiefs, O, we shudder at the thought, the peeple will their perhaps treat you with as little ceremony, as little respect, and as little mercy, as you and your minions have them; for, Sir, whenever the State is convulsed by civil commotion, and the Constitution totters to its centre, the Throne of England must shake with it; a Crown will then be no security, and at one stroke all the gaudy trappings of royalty may be laid in the dust; at such a time of dreadful confusion and slaughter, when the son’s weapon drinks the father’s blood and we see the ruffian’s blade reeking from a brother’s heart; when rage is burning in the breasts of Englishmen, provoked by wrongs not to be borne by men, all distinctions must cease, the common safety and the rights of mankind will be the only objects in view, while the King and the peasant must share one and the same fate, and perhaps fall undistinguished together.

Let these things, Sir, be well weighed; tremble for the event; drive those traitors from your breast, who now surround you; let the just and honest have your confidence; and once more make your people happy, great and free; be not the instrument of their destruction; consider the solemn and sacred oath you made at your coronation to protect your subjects in all their rights and liberties, and the Protestant Religion as by Law established: consider, Sir, what a perversion of all right and justice that must be (besides the heinous crime of perjury,) when, instead of being their protector, you become their destroyer.

Your plan, Sir, for bringing the Colonies by force of arms into a state of subjection to your will, is cruel, bloody, and (I hope) impracticable; it is repugnant to every principle of humanity, justice, and sound policy, and the natural rights of mankind; it is the foulest disgrace to you, and