obvious inquiry. The answer is easy: caution and bravery, magnanimity and spirit, prudence and firmness, will conduct us, with honour and success, to glory and happiness.

Our immediate business is to annoy, weaken, and distress the enemy, to the utmost of our power; to improve in the art, and, by all possible ways, procure the means of doing the same for the future; to exert our whole force uniformly and at once, and at every hazard guard against and prevent the enemy’s getting any advantage, any foot-hold in our Country. Let us conduct by foresight, and avoiding the common calamities of after-wisdom. Whatever is practicable, at any expense, it ought to be done. The consideration of cost and trouble sink to nothing, are not to be mentioned, when our Country is invaded, and piratical depredations are constantly making. Is the plan good ? and its execution feasible ? are the only questions. The skill of war, and the art of destroying, though dreadful, are become of unavoidable necessity. We have got the rampant lion by the beard; by keeping the hold we may demolish his strength, and bring him to the ground; if we yield to his force, he will rend us to atoms, or grind us to powder in his voracious, sanguinary jaws. Let us not only oppose, but make effectual opposition. Let us do it in time. It is in our power. There is in the power of mortals a degree of enterprise and persevering resolution that invariably commands success. Nothing else is wanting. For God’s sake, and our Country’s sake, let us exert it on the great and trying occasion. If a people once yield to the expansions of power and the efforts of a tyrant, their case is forlorn. If they are staggered by the force of superior abilities, caught by surprise, or the suggestions of the timid, the enemy enters and the danger advances. A single point gained, adds to the weight in the opposite scale, and one advantage secured, gives a facility in obtaining a second. The invader in his progress receives fresh accessions of strength. His power, incessantly growing like a torrent increasing as it runs, soon becomes too forcible for any possible barriers opposed to its passage. Many invasions which might have been repelled by a seasonable, bold, and united resistance, have become invincible, by cowardice, divisions, and preposterous exertions. One part of the community is subdued and made subservient to enslaving the other. On this fatal rock were wrecked the ancient republicks of the world. By it Ccesar destroyed the liberties of Rome; by it thousands have waded through blood to despotick command. The conquering tribes among the Huns and the Goths, with their bold and enterprising warriors, says the historian, for a succession of ages, furnished their Princes with their military guards; but at length were made the tools of oppressing themselves. In this manner has slavery and ruin made their way into regions so much renowned for the wild freedom of nature. A power which was the terrour of every effeminate Province is disarmed, and the nursery of nations is itself gone to decay. Happy the people that profit by others’ misfortunes! Doubly happy ! Happy in themselves, and happy in a numerous progeny of freemen.

I do not mean to assert that a single victory, or a repeated conquest, would enable the enemy to subdue our Country, or ought to dishearten; I intend to show the reverse. Delays in preparing, and remissness in executing, are dangers to be guarded against. Every inch of ground should be disputed with spirit, to enhance the price of the enemy’s purchase. The present acquisitions of our enemies were obtained at a dear rate. If they were to pay in the same proportion for the most inferior Province on the Continent, it would exhaust the nation of her blood and treasure, and she must soon die insolvent. I am sensible there are some who have chanted a different tone. They seem to have considered every thing British as unrivalled. They have represented her as the store-house of wisdom, and the only place where soldiers are formed; as placed in the centre of being, an overawing creation. She frames her edicts, and the nations are hushed. She hurls her thunderbolts, and all is conquest.   At her gentle reproofs, union was to languish; at her more decisive frowns, opposition die. It is true she is powerful, and her troops naturally brave. But has experience verified such unmeaning rant? Or are events still sleeping in the lap of futurity ? Has not picked Battalions, chosen Brigades, with a Percy at their head, marched the quickstep before a sudden collection of undisciplined peasants? Does her resources come forth of the dust, or her invincible power spring out of the ground? Are her troops invulnerable? Are their bones bars of iron? Have they brass sinews ? Does tempered steel compose their muscles? and are their hearts cased with adamant ? Or have our swords leaden points, that they cannot penetrate ? Or are our balls watery bubbles that will burst in air? In what then consists the boasted superiority of British mercenaries, compared with the freeborn sons of America? In voce et preterea nihil. In gasconading, and nothing else.

Let us appeal to facts, attend coolly and deliberately to the real circumstances of each conflicting power, as they connect with and will necessarily affect each party in the bloody dispute. It is prudent, it is wise to inquire if we are equal to a defence against all the power that Great Britain can possibly exert. I assert that we are, and must ultimately triumph, having our temples wreathed with laurels of eternal glory. The strength of a country consists in numbers, riches, situation, temper and habits, the common resources of war. A state composed of corrupted, degenerate, cowardly men, is weak, however numerous, wealthy, and refined; consisting of virtuous, vigorous, learned, publick spirited, and resolute men, is strong, is invincible, however attacked, however despised; but the resources of war in hands that will not employ them, is like a keen edged sword sleeping in its scabbard.

Let us consider Great Britain in this four-fold point of view. Consider her numbers, her riches, her situation, her temper and habits, in relation to a war with America. With respect to her numbers, let us deduct from the account all those who cannot in some way or another, either mediately or immediately, add to the strength of the nation, and subserve the purposes of war. Let us further consider how much of the labour of the useful, and wealth of the nation, is constantly consumed in supporting this large catalogue of burdensome beings, this dead weight in luxury and debauchery. It is not the effeminate, luxurious, and debauched, that can defend their Country in the day of battle ! they increase timidity by their example, weaken counsels by their influence, and are so many useless mouths constantly consuming the resources of war. The Spaniards and Portuguese, says an historian, are incapable of defending themselves against a powerful foreign invasion. The immense wealth of the Indies, that every year comes home to their ports, goes to enrich a few. Their subjects are either in the extremes of wealth or poverty. The rich have only slaves beneath them, who hate those for whom they must labour; the poor have no acquisitions or property to defend! so that their armies are composed, either of wretches pressed into the service, who only seek for opportunities not to fight, but to fly; or of men rich and noble, courageous from pride, yet weak from luxury. These observations apply in many respects to Great Britain. Besides these, that illustrious band of patriots and Whigs, both in Britain and Ireland, that are engaged in a glorious opposition, and are willing to range under the American standard should it ever be erected in Britain, must diminish in a great degree, as it operates in a duplicate ratio, adding to one scale what it takes from the other. Another circumstance which goes to the quality of this garbled number sinks its importance still lower, in a military point of view. The lower and middling sort of people, although useful citizens, add but little to the martial strength, for, by the tyranny of certain laws, being deprived of the use of arms, they neither possess the knowledge, nor the natural aptitude for the use of the sword or the musket. This difficulty cannot easily be cured. It is founded upon a ruinous principle of national policy. A calculation then, subject to the above deductions, gives us the full strength of Great Britain, so far as it consists in numbers. I shall not attempt a particular computation that will give a product precisely equivalent to her whole numerical force, as this would be rather a round of sportive acuteness than of real utility; but I will venture to assert, that it cannot be equal to those banded thousands, I had almost said millions, of brave musketeering Americans. Their principal muscular strength, at present, consists then in a number of mercenary, hackneyed, tattered Regiments, patched up by the most abandoned and debauched of mankind, the scum of the nation, the dregs of Irish and Scottish desperadoes.

*