omnipotence of Parliament will never be able to arrest the sun in her course, subvert the order of nature, alter the charter of Heaven, or interdict vegetation. If, then, we may judge of the future from what we have experienced, that annual produce that has sustained the Continent the last, may do the same for the present, or any year yet to come, with an increase only in proportion to the increase of its inhabitants. We shall also have in reserve that vast quantity exported to the West-Indies, and to a number of other ports. Surely, if we could feed ourselves, and so many of our hungry neighbours, in a time of luxury and extravagancy, we can do the former in a time when every individual is roused to industry, and piqued to economy. The army that heretofore have been garrisoned in our Towns, and the navy that have invested our coast, were likewise supplied from our stalls and our granaries. These drains being hedged up by bulwarks and intrenchments, must make provisions flow back upon our hands in an uncommon surplusage. No country has less to fear on this score than ourselves, notwithstanding the chimerical idea of some, of starving us into submission. I appeal to facts, to daily observations. The interior parts of the Continent are like one capacious store-house, immensely furnished with every necessary, or like a living fountain constantly flowing. From this source we see our capital roads alive with passing droves and labouring teams. By these means supplies at our camps are become much more ample than their wants, and the farmer is unable to vend his marketing. His complaints will probably increase. Those subduers of the wood who have received their nourishment from the older improvements, who, by selling the hemlock and cutting the shrub, have been annually planting Towns in the wilderness, and threatening to reach the Pacifick Ocean by their extended settlements, will, for the future, supply others. We shall see their fields rejoicing with wheat, and their hills skipping with flocks and with herds.

The article of clothing may be an acquisition of more, but not of lasting difficulty. Our wants will perfect the arts of supplying. Necessity will lead to inventions, and drive to exertions. The skill of producing the raw materials is continually improving; with this skill the knowledge of manufacturing keeps equal pace, and both are hastening to the zenith. Nothing can be wanting but application and assiduity. Wool and flax may be made to abound. The produce of the several climates is various. One part of our Country is adapted for grazing and the raising of sheep; others are famed for different productions. Flax, if properly managed, may generally grow in every climate. It may be annually increased to any degree, and wool, likewise, in an amazing proportion. The manufacturing of saltpetre at length wears a promising aspect. In different parts, attempts are making with various success. In the school of experience we may soon acquire the needed skill. Like the electrick fluid, it exists in almost every subject. The plain, diligent, persevering hand is all that is requisite. The fingers of the fair may even assist in the business. Materials at large, for every expedient, are the common produce for each particular Province, either for ammunition, guns, fortresses, and potent ships of war. The one and the other, and all of these are now in making. The Colony of the Massachusetts alone, as appears by a representation to the Lords of Trade, have furnished five hundred sail of ships, and employed near as many thousand sailors. The other Colonies have done in the same proportion. A Country that could do this for the increase of its opulence, can do something effectual for the defence of its maritime borders.

The millions that were remitted for trinkets and superfluities will now cease. The stoppage of those silver and golden streams that have been, like the vulture upon the entrails of our Country, consuming its vitals, will now have an opposite effect, and increase the fund of our riches. This alone will almost carry us triumphant through the expenses of the day.

Wide is the difference between assaulting and being assaulted, and this in some proportion to the distance of the invading power from the invaded. The question is not whether we are able to conquer Great Britain, as has been sometimes asked, nor whether we are competent to the levying of troops equal to their transportation, and capable of carrying the war home to her own doors, or able to maintain a conflict, and furnish resources in her very bowels, sufficient for her conquest. Suppose us increased to any given number, I hold we are totally unequal to the task. The only question is, whether we are equal to a defence against such a very remote assailant. I assert that we are; and nothing but the curse of cowardice in us, or the power of miracles in them, can ever yield them the laurels of victory.

The strength of the invaded depends much upon the situation and nature of the country they are in possession of. Nature sometimes not only supplies the place of art, but greatly exceeds and even baffles its most laboured efforts. Of all countries, America is the worst calculated for a subjugation by foreign force, and the best adapted for its own defence. Did she, with Roman intrepidity, know her internal strength, she might bid defiance to the conjoined efforts of all Europe. To elude the force of prejudice and habitual influences, which are too apt to sway the mind, let the reader paint to himself Great Britain, stripped of all resources from the Colonies, maimed and crippled as she is. Let him view her as described in my last number, sinking under the enormous sum of an hundred and forty-two millions sterling, with an acquired fatality of taking the worst method to every end, and using the most expensive means for the accomplishment of every purpose. Let him paint the merchant, the manufacturer, the mechanick, and the labourer, murmuring for business, loaded with taxes, and distressed for bread. Let him paint, in lively sensations, her internal convulsions and vital contortions, with the capital of the Kingdom in determined opposition to the supremacy of Government. Let him paint, but in modest colours, the rendings of parties and the clashings of debate, from the influence of the idols of the people—a Pitt, a Camden, a Burke, a Barré, a Wilkes, and others, the political heroes of the day. A Pitt, who has pawned his understanding and pledged his reputation for the success of America. A Burke, who has vowed by all that is great and tremendous, by all that is dear to him, both here and hereafter, if he can be properly supported by the people, to bring the planners of the present measures to merited punishment. Let him paint Ireland as she is, and France and Spain as they may be. Let him still go on painting other objects, too many to be enumerated, that must and will influence. Then let him pause, and, by the force of imagination, conjure up from the midst of the sea a new world, a large rugged Continent, above an hundred times as big as the Island of Great Britain, and a thousand leagues distant from her, with a coast extending from north to south more than three thousand miles along the Atlantick, with an infinite variety of ports, natural harbours, and capacious bays. Let him suppose this ideal Continent stretching itself back thousands of miles westward, with a continued irregularity of mountains, rivers, valleys, and hills, together with an uninterrupted spread of forts, retrenchments, moats, ramparts, bastions, parapets, guards, counter-guards, covert-ways, and other lines of defence, no matter whether natural or artificial. Let him suppose three millions of people to cover the face of this fortified territory, and in the domestick possession of those natural bulwarks. Suppose ten or twelve hundred thousand of these inhabitants to be trained to arms, to have anticipated an invasion, to have taken their posts, and to be prepared for a defence, with resources and barracks on the spot. Suppose them united in one object, directed by prudence, animated by zeal, and regulated by the wisest of men—a Continental Congress. Suppose a well-organized and disciplined army of twenty, thirty, fifty, or an hundred thousand, as the occasion may be, intrenched on the frontiers as guards in advance, with experienced leaders in command, and ordnance for use, to prevent a pervasion of the country. Let him suppose a main body of eight or ten hundred thousand in reserve, to be in possession of the interior works, and fully competent, in conjunction with others, for the raising provisions, and the purposes of husbandry, tillage, and manufacturing. In such a situation, let the reader give further loose to the extravagance of imagination, and suppose some one inhabitant of Great Britain, perhaps a Minister of State, romantickly mad enough to project the conquest of such a country, the blockade of all her harbours, and the destruction of all her trade. Let him still wander in the regions of fancy, and suppose Great