Congress, to have saved all; but I fear the time is now passed, especially if nothing turns up soon to prevent their sending over more forces, for the purpose of subduing us as rebels. But subdue us to a subjection unto the supreme legislation and taxation authority of the British Parliament over the Colonies without their consent, they will not, they shall not! Will it not be the proper dictate of wisdom, as the way, and only way left us of our preservation and safety, as soon as we see the sword of Great Britain drawn against us, to sacrifice every New-England Tory among us; to publish a manifesto with promises of protection and rewards to all of the British Troops that shall join in the cause of American liberty, and immediately cut off all such as intend to act as our enemies; and to send ambassadors to the Courts of Europe, with a declaration of all our Ports being opened to them for a free trade?

JOHANNES IN EREMO.

Salem, Massachusetts, April 18, 1775.

London, April 19, 1775.

Though the whole body of the people might, with great facility, get into their power any Standing Army which Ministers may employ in destruction of our liberties, yet, by my advice, not a single Briton should be put to the sword, except in the field of battle, or by the divine law of retaliation. Besides, were we not powerful enough within ourselves to effect this purpose, we may be assured that our own Militia, who are the only constitutional Soldiers of this Realm, will not longer remain idle, or that they will, like hired ruffians or mercenary troops, imbrue their hands in the blood, or sheathe their bayonets in the bosoms of their countrymen; for our Militia ought to be enrolled, and composed only of the Knights or landed gentry of the Country, and as such their respective Lord-Lieutenants would not dare to send them upon any unconstitutional service, because, by the Norman Treaty, our Militia-men are enjoined to obey their Colonels, so far forth as “eorumjusta præcepta” shall extend, but not a single hair’s breadth farther; for they are guilty of treason against the Constitution the moment they pass the Rubicon. And here lies the great distinction between Militia-men and Regulars; the former, at the hazard of their lives, are to execute no unjust, unnatural, unconstitutional orders; the latter, even at the peril of their lives, must implicitly and unhesitatingly obey every order they receive from their commanding officer, was it even to lay the whole City of London in ashes this very moment, or to rip open the bowels of every pregnant woman in the Kingdom, their own mothers not excepted. Happy, indeed, though our Mutiny Acts authorize the execution of every species of Herodian barbarity and Neronian cruelty, yet, as several clauses in those very Acts are most flagrant violations of the Norman Treaty, and shocking to human nature, they are, as I have frequently observed, not law; consequently the King’s Troops, as they are faithfully called, (for they are not the Troops of the King, but on the contrary the Troops of the Kingdom, and in the pay of the Kingdom, and of the Kingdom only,) would be highly justified were they, like true Englishmen, unanimously to lay down their arms, and absolutely refuse to fight against their countrymen, constitutionally assembled, either in the plains of Runnymede, or in the Town of Boston. Conscious of the rectitude and truism of this position, our honest, brave English Soldiery, one and all, grounded their firelocks on, Hounslow-Heath, nobly and most spiritedly refusing to obey the butcherly commands of that pigmy of a tyrant, James the Second—a pigmy, I mean, compared to the colossal tyrants of the present day. Nor does this immortal precedent stand single in the historick page, for the Troops of Cinna, in his fourth Consulship, when ordered by the Senate to embark for Dalmatia, and give battle to Sylla, most gloriously refused to go aboard, peremptorily insisting they would not be employed as barbarian ruffians or inhuman monsters, to slaughter their countrymen in cold blood; and this, too, even though the Senate had previously declared both Sylla and his forces enemies to Rome. To compel your Army to obedience merely by the terrours of punishment and Mutiny Acts of Parliament; this is not to govern, but to domineer. This true and most excellent observation doubtless will have its proper weight with our whole Military, since it is the dictum of as great a General, and of as great an Empire as ever existed—I mean Caius Marius, who, though born a plebian, and therefore regularly precluded from the Consulship of Rome, yet, in consideration of his signal courage, contempt of money, love of his Country, and unparalleled knowledge of the whole theory and practice of war, was seven times successively elected Consul, an honour never conferred upon any Roman, either before or after his advancement to that superlatively imperial dignity.

I have thus laid before you a true state of the weakness and insignificancy of the Standing Army at present in Great Britain, not, indeed, out of any disrespect or disparagement to them, for I have a presentiment that the marching Regiments and Lighthorse will maturely consider they do not receive the King’s pay, but that of the Kingdom, and therefore, properly and strictly speaking, are in the actual service, not of the King, but of the Kingdom; and that, consequently, whenever the popular State shall constitutionally and simultaneously rise up in arms, as our glorious ancestors did against the Kings John and James the Second, the Regulars have only this optional alternative in law, namely, either to lay down their arms, as I have mentioned they did on Hounslow-Heath, or take an active part under the banners of the people.

This being the case, and seeing there is no real danger in the present Standing Army, were they even to act hostilely against the people constitutionally assembled, which cannot reasonably be expected; and seeing that Lieutenant Colonel James Abercrombie, who is embarked with a powerful reinforcement for that Army, which is to destroy the liberties of America, hath actually carried over with him peremptory orders to disarm the people of Boston, which is another most insolent, impudent violation of the Bill of Rights, (for by that treaty it is expressly and sacro-sanctionally stipulated, that every Protestant subject shall always carry arms for his defence.) What remains, then, for us, but instantly to put a stop to this rapid and all-deluging torrent of tyranny? What better advice can there be, than immediately to convene a National Congress here in England, and take the field, as our ancestors did on the plains of Runnymede, and thus constitutionally and effectually assist our American brethren, whom to desert in their present distresses, or even not to assist to the utmost of our abilities, would, in us, be unpardonably unjust, superlatively iniquitous, and infamously ungrateful; for in fact they are now fighting our battles. It is the glorious cause of liberty they are engaged in; the common cause and common birthright of every Englishman. I say the common birthright of every Englishman, for the liberty of an Englishman is an inheritance issuing out of his freehold land; and whether my freehold lies at Boston, in New-England, or at Boston, in Old England, it makes no difference, because by the same tyranny that I am, forcibly disseized of my ancestral grant of land, which entailed with it a grant of liberty in one part of the British Empire, I may be equally robbed of it by the same lawless power of the sword in any other part of the British Dominions. Let us, then, here at home, my countrymen, never suffer so inestimable a grant to be tamely wrested from us; let us join our brother Americans in so just and glorious a cause, and, like our immortal exemplary ancestors, make that King tremble on his throne who shall sacrilegiously dare to invade the majesty of the Democratick State in the most essential of their rights, the free gift and grant of their money.

BRECKNOCK.

NEW-YORK COMMITTEE.

New-York, April 17, 1775.

The Sub-Committee appointed 27th March last, to State and Report an account, of the Sales, and of the Profits which have arisen from the Goods, Wares, and Merchandise, disposed of under the direction of the General Committee, agreeable to the Tenth Article of the Association of the late Continental. Congress, do make the following Report, viz:

In the Sloop Polly, Captain Thompson, from Falmouth,