caused it to burst, and, like a conflagration, to spread over the whole Continent, not in sudden flashes, but in a constant, fervent, inextinguishable glow, such as every genuine lover of his Country feels animating and warming his own breast. It has now a fixed predominancy; nor is there danger of a decline from inconstancy of make. It is interwoven with his constitution, improved by education, enlivened by religion, confirmed by habits, and increased by every motive that can play on the human heart. It is therefore solid and inflexible. This ought to inspire mutual confidence, mutual affection, and joint vigorous exertions in the common cause.

Having in a general way collected the materials, and delineated the power of Great Britain and America respecting the present dispute, resulting from the conjoined forces of the numbers, riches, situation, and temper of each contending State, and placed them in a contrasting point of view, let the reader recollect the whole of my two last numbers. Fixing the contents fairly in his mind, let him examine if the description is in substance true; then let him compare his ideas, and see which is the strongest, considering the one as invading, the other defending. The conclusion may be certain, and the process the same as determining mathematical propositions. Measuring on this scale, I have determined for myself; and I dare to prophesy, and for its accomplishment I dare to risk my all, that if the Americans are virtuous, resolute, and brave, it is not all the ships, armies, guns, and bayonets, that Great Britain Can send, can conquer our spirits and subdue our Country. She might as well storm the planets by kites, or conflict with sky-rockets the thunderbolts of Heaven.

AN ADDRESS TO THE SOLDIERS OF MASSACHUSETTS-BAY WHO ARE NOW IN ARMS AGAINST THE LAWS OF THEIR COUNTRY.

My Fellow-Citizens:

You have been addressed by the General Officers of the Continental Army as fellow-soldiers, and with that insinuating art which was designed to move your passions. I would not draw your attention from it, provided you will devote your cooler moments to a dispassionate consideration of its subject-matter.

Suffer me, on my part, to address you as fellow-citizens, for I cannot have such dishonourable thoughts of you as to suppose, that when you put on the soldier, that you then put off the citizen. Citizens most of you were; you enjoyed the comforts of domestick life; you lately followed your different occupations, and reaped the profits of a quiet and peaceable industry; and I hope in God that you may yet do it, without any disturbance to your innocent wives and children. But, in the late courses of your lives, you must not only have given great uneasinesses to your families, but I dare to say that all of you were not quite free from uneasiness in your own minds. I know, my dear countrymen, that many of you have been drove to take up arms against your Sovereign, and the laws of the happiest Constitution that ever human beings were blessed with—some through the necessities incident to human nature, and others by that compulsion which the malevolent and ambitious arts of your leaders have made necessary to deceive you with, in order to screen themselves from that vengeance which the injured laws of society had devoted them to. Many a tear of pity have I dropped for you and for the fate of my Country, and many more tears I fear that I shall be forced to shed for that wrath which awaits you from an offended Heaven and an injured Government. Many of your associates have already quitted the field of battle, to appear before that solemn tribunal where the plea of the united force of all the Colonies will be of no avail to bribe the judgment or avert the sentence of an offended Deity. Some of them, in the agonies of death, sent messages to their friends to forbear proceeding any further, for they now found themselves in the wrong; others have repeatedly said, that an ambition of appearing something considerable, and that only, led them into rebellion; and the unhappy leader in the fatal action at Charlestown, who, from ambition only, had raised himself from a bare–legged milk boy to a Major–General of the Army, although the fatal ball gave him not a moment for reflection, yet had said, in his lifetime, that he was determined to mount over the heads of his coadjutors, and get to the last round of the ladder, or die in the attempt. Unhappy man! his fate arrested him in his career, and he can now tell whether pride and ambition are pillars strong enough to support the tottering fabrick of rebellion.

But, not to divert you from an attention to the address of your officers, I would rather wish you to weigh it with exactness; and, after you have so done, if you then should think that it is better to trample upon the laws of the mildest Government upon earth, and throw off your allegiance to the most humane Sovereign that ever swayed a sceptre, and submit to a tyranny uncontrolled either by the laws of God or man, then blame none but yourselves, if the consequences should be fatally bad to you and to your families.

Your officers, my countrymen, have taken great pains to sooth and flatter you, that you may not quit your posts, and forsake them, until they have accomplished their ambitious and desperate schemes. Your leaders know that they have plunged themselves into the bowels of the most wanton and unnatural rebellion that ever existed; they think, that by engaging numbers to partake in their guilt, that they shall appear formidable; and that, by so numerous an appearance, the hand of justice will not dare to arrest them. Some of you know that this argument hath been frequently urged; but you must know that much superior powers than this Continent can boast of have been conquered by that Government which you are now at war with.

Your officers tell you that they have reduced the Regiments from thirty-eight to twenty-six, and assign, as a reason, that “many officers, from a puny habit of body, found themselves incapable of fulfilling the duty of their station, have been obliged to absent themselves from their posts, and consequently the duty has fallen very heavily upon those who remained.” Whether this is a true reason or not, some of you can tell. Be it so or not, why then not appoint others? Are none of you fit for officers, but those who absented themselves from their posts? You generally took up arms about the same time, and I dare to say that many of you were as well qualified for commissions as those who left their posts.

Another reason they sooth you with for disbanding twelve Regiments is, that the vast expense attending the maintenance of so many Regiments might have disabled the Continent from persevering in its resolution of defending their liberties, if the contest should be of any continuance. Surely, my countrymen, you cannot be deluded with such trifling pleas. Can this Continent, which undertakes to carry on a war with the power of Great Britain, be alarmed at a few millions of dollars? Their resources are boundless; the issuing of paper money is easily accomplished, and, while you can be compelled to take it, the Continent can never be disabled from persevering in its resolutions. Unhappily for them, they have discovered to you what will be much for your interest to know, viz: that the vast expense of this civil war will be a burden too heavy for the shoulders of you or your posterity to bear. Consider that already three millions of dollars have been emitted in paper, and that four hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars, equal to nine hundred and seventy-six thousand pounds, old tenor, is assessed on the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay, to redeem their part; and how much more must be raised, to carry on this unnatural war, which was commenced to gratify the pride and desperation of many of your leaders, time alone will discover. You have just entered the lists, but there is much yet to be done; to finish the mighty independent empire which they have planned for you, demands such resources as it will require one century to sponge away. Most of you have groaned under a tax of about two or three hundred thousand pounds, old tenor; but when millions are thrown into the scale, they will press you down, never to rise more.

Your officers tell you that men who are possessed of a vivacity of disposition, though brave, and in all other respects unexceptionable, are totally unfit for service. This is a new doctrine, advanced to make good officers and soldiers; it is a mystery, which I leave to that dullness