serve as the severest satire upon the species. It has been a compound of inconsistency, falsehood, cowardice, selfishness, and dissimulation. Proteus like, they have been in continual change; have borrowed what shapes and assumed what forms they found convenient to promote their sinister purposes. The most charitable construction to be put upon their conduct is, that they have had no system, and have been at perpetual variance with themselves; the most natural is, that they have been consistent only in a hypocritical concealment of their real principles and intentions. There is no alternative but to suppose that, while they have been exclaiming against anarchy in the state, they have been the unhappy victims of an intellectual chaos, a total confusion of understanding, which has obstructed the operations of common sense, and tossed them at random upon the waves of caprice, liable to be driven about by every gust of ministerial intrigue; or that they have only artfully diversified the means to one great end—the ruin of their Country; making the service of the Ministry their supreme good, and resolving to conform all their actions to the most perfect standard of submission.

It would be too arduous a task to follow these versatile beings through all their mean doublings and intricate windings, or to depicture them particularly under that infinite variety of disguises they have worn on different occasions.

“Chameleons, who can paint in black and white.”

But I may give a sketch of the principal traits of their character, and I doubt not the bare outlines of the portrait will be sufficient to excite disgust and abhorrence in every manly breast. Happy should I be, could the faithful representation reanimate some expiring remains of virtue in the bosoms of the self-degraded originals, and prevail with them to feel the guilt, the littleness, the infamy of forgetting they are men.

In order to have an adequate idea of their conduct during this last interesting period, it will be necessary to recollect the part they sustained in former transactions, which will serve as a foil or contrast to that, and will show them in a point of light truly ridiculous and contemptible.

The very men who have now luckily fallen into such a pleasant dream of loyalty and obedience, in the time of the Stamp Act, were most of them “patriots of distinguished note;” the most vociferous clamorers for liberty and property; the life and soul of mobs; the leaders in all the valorous exploits of plebeian phrensy, such as parading the streets with effigies, pulling down houses, tarring and feathering, and the like. In a word, they did not scruple in those days to run headlong into practices much more wanton and disorderly than any that have happened in the course of our present struggle, which has been managed with singular decency, regularity, and prudence.

They then thought it no treason, no mortal sin, no Republican or Presbyterian contrivance, to form a Continental Congress; to petition and remonstrate with spirit and freedom; to deny the right of taxation claimed and exercised by the Parliament; to enter into agreements for the restriction of commerce; to act in every respect with suitable vigour and resolution. They did not tremble at the sound of Ministerial vengeance; neither were they afraid to adopt any decisive measure, because it might tend to irritate, to widen the breach, to throw an obstacle in the way of peace and reconciliation, and the rest of the trite nonsense, the product of these exuberant times. The contracted views of party, the sordid motives of ambition and avarice, had not then taken such firm hold on their minds as they have since. They felt the force of reason, listened to its dictates, and co-operated in the necessary means of bringing speedy relief to their Country.

What a miserable reverse do we now behold! These mighty champions for the liberty of their Country have dwindled into a puny tribe of voluntary slaves. They have meanly abandoned the lofty ground they formerly stood upon, and are contented to become obsequious dependants on the bounteous indulgence of a despotick Ministry and venal Parliament for all they possess. While Administration, in pursuance of an open claim of unbounded authority over us, are driving us, as far as lies in their power, to the brink of perdition; while they are practising all the violences, as well as the refinements of destruction, against us, with an avowed intention to compel us to contribute as much as they think proper to the expenses of the Empire, or rather to the maintenance of parasites and minions, these shameless apostates are not simply inactive in the defence of their Country: they are industrious in promoting the views of its enemies; they are continually using all the arts of cunning and deceit to propagate the contagion of disaffection, to damp the zeal and ardour of their countrymen, and to discredit every method which is devised for the preservation of our common, essential rights; they have condemned those very principles and measures for which themselves were once the foremost advocates. Let them not presume to justify their inconsistencies by the subtleties of sophistry. Their own consciences must contradict the language of their tongues, and, whatever they may vainly flatter themselves, it is impossible for them to impose their flimsy apology upon any but the most vulgar and ignorant; men of sense easily detect the fallacy of their superficial pretences.

In consequence of the violent attacks made upon the Province of Massachusetts, all men were surprised and alarmed. The necessity of a Congress was universally allowed. The Committee which was formed here, for holding a correspondence and concerting measures with the other Colonies, was chiefly composed of the persons who are at this time principals in the opposition. Delegates were nominated and elected under their influence, and they bound themselves, by all the ties of honour and patriotism, to abide by the decisions of the Congress.

They professed at that time to agree in these leading principles: that the Parliament has no right to tax the Colonies; that the duty upon tea, being for the express purpose of raising a revenue, was a tax upon us, therefore illegal and unconstitutional; that the attempt to introduce it among us, encumbered with such an illegal duty, indicated a revived intention to enslave us; that the alteration of the Massachusetts Charter was an unwarrantable act of power, calculated to establish a precedent dangerous in the extreme to all the privileges of America; and that, whatever might be the ostensible motive, the real design was much more than barely to punish an outrage on private property. In a word, that all the late Ministerial proceedings were to the last degree alarming, and could not be quietly submitted to without endangering all our dearest rights and privileges.

Yet even then there were some peculiarities that discriminated the party. There were symptoms of luke-warmness in their behaviour, which produced no small suspicion of their sincerity. They seemed, as they still continue to be, averse from all vigorous measures, and desirous to confine their opposition to the absurd mode of petition and remonstrance. It was, with reason, thought not a little extraordinary, that they should be so entirely engrossed in a mode which repeated experiments had proved was disregarded and fruitless; and which now, less than ever, could be relied on, not only from past experience of its inefficacy, but from this odious consideration, that every fresh attempt rendered the arbitrary designs of the cabinet more apparent, and afforded a stronger argument that the subversion of all our liberties had been resolved on, and consequently that redress was less to be expected from the simple force of complaint and solicitation.

When the proceedings of the Congress appeared, they murmured against the adoption of the Suffolk Resolves, and some other less considerable matters; but the Association, which was the mainspring of our opposition, they declared themselves ready and willing to support. This, however, did not last long. In a little time, with their usual fickleness and inconstancy, they brought themselves to deny the whole authority of the Congress, to condemn all their measures, without reserve or distinction, as illegal, impolitick, and destructive, and to traduce the characters of the members with the utmost virulence of defamation. They were not satisfied to suppose that these had fallen into imprudent counsels, through intemperate zeal; but, with all the charity of good Christians and moderate men, they loudly stigmatized them every where as a knot of hairbrained Republicans, who had assembled, with rebellion and civil war in the dark recesses of their hearts, and who meditated nothing but to build their own greatness upon the ruin of their Country.