and stupidity which your officers have complimented you with to unravel. The meaning of it you are best acquainted with; but it puts me in mind of what I have heard from the mouth of an arch traitor, who was disappointed in his expectations of the promotion of his near relation, viz: that the people were a set of d—d stupid asses, and were fit only to be drove.

You are further told, that the present campaign is far from an hard one. How hard you have worked, and how much duty you have done, you yourselves can tell best. Many, who have seen your labours, have thought them great; and I am much inclined to believe that you have gone through some difficulty, especially when your officers, having forgot the popularity of this harangue, almost in the next breath tell you that the post you at present occupy was fortified and secured by infinite labour. It is an old and just maxim, my countrymen, that deceivers ought to have good memories.

You are next addressed, in the invariable style, for years past, of newspapers and popular harangues, with the abuses of Ministers and Generals. This may keep up your spirits, for aught I know. Town-meeting oratory, I know, has frequently had this effect, till the spirit of it was evaporated, and then it flattened so as to be quite insipid. They boast much of the attachment of Nova-Scotia and Canada to what they call your interest, as well as of the rest of the Continent. I give you one word of advice; and as it is from a book which it is said you are fighting for, so I suppose that you will not totally diregard it. It is this: “Let not him that putteth on the harness boast as he that puttetli it off.” But, as to the success of union which you have met with, the same book says, that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. It is so, my countrymen, in a double sense; for, in the first place, no person but one who was bewitched would run the risk of engaging in a rebellion; and in the next place, which is the true meaning of the words, as witchcraft is renouncing the authority of God Almighty, and applying to the Devil, so rebellion is withdrawing allegiance from a lawful Sovereign, overturning his laws and Government, and joining with a power inimical to him.

You are also told, that as the Southern Provinces have ever placed the greatest confidence in your zeal and valour, they did not think it necessary to raise any bodies in the other Provinces for this particular service. Do you believe, my countrymen, that any of the Massachusetts officers were concerned in drawing this address to you? If so, beware, of them before it is too late. I will not believe it; it surely must be drawn by some of your foreign officers, whom.you have disgraced yourselves by suffering them to command you, when you had men of your own Province, who were at least equal to them, and who would have more naturally cared for you; but you may have felt the ill consequence of it ere now, and it may be too late for redress. The true English of it runs thus: the Massachusetts have a different inerest from the rest of the Continent; they are a set of brave, hardy dogs, and are always encroaching upon their neighbours, and ought to be humbled; and when we have, established our independency, we shall have much to fear from them. Let us therefore make them the mercenaries. They will sacrifice every thing for money; we can pay them in paper, which they are so fond of. By engaging them for soldiers, they will get knocked in the head their wives and children will be ruined, and when we have established our Empire we shall have nothing to fear from them; they will become an easy prey to the rest of the Provinces, and we can parcel them out among us as we may think proper.

The remainder of your officers’ address to you, I leave to your own remarks. It is so full of compliment and flattery, in order to catch your passions, that I cannot help blushjng for you; and if you are caught by it, I shall then pity you, and you will blush for yourselves.

That you may not plead ignorance, in justification of yourselves, in case the fate of war should be against you, I will now Let you into the origin and progress of the publick disorders which, for many years past, have sickened the state of this Province, and at last hath terminated in a most unnatural and ungrateful rebellion. I am persuaded, my countrymen, that you are ignorant of the true rise of your disorders; the aim of your leaders hath been to keep you in ignorance; they knew that your ignorance was their protection. Had you known their views, you would not only have spurned at the thought of overturning the Constitution, but I venture to say that some of you would have dragged them to the bar of justice, there to have received that punishment which now awaits them, and I wish that you yourselves may not be involved in, as partakers in their crimes. The history runs thus, and every page of it is capable of ample proof.

Know then, for many years past this Province hath been deeply immersed in the smuggling business. Perhaps some of you are ignorant, though I am sure all of you are not, of the meaning of smuggling business. I will tell you what it means: it is an importation of goods contrary to the laws of the society to which we belong; it is a defrauding the King of those dues which the law hath granted to him; which fraud is equal in criminality to the injuring of a private person; it is a violation of the laws of Christianity, and . . . . ruining our neighbours; in short, when it . . . . engaged in, it naturally tends, by degrees, to the effacing every sentiment of virtue. This is a description of the smuggling business, and it is here where I fix the sudden rise of the present rebellion.

In order to evade those laws against unlawful trade, those who were concerned in it exerted themselves to defeat them. Unluckily for the Government, at that juncture, a person who had a long while been hunting after preferment was disappointed of his game; on which a friend of his, who was versed in the law, vowed revenge, but swore that he would see the Province in a flame, if he died in the attempt. He fulfilled his oath, and burnt his fingers to such a degree that he hath irrecoverably lost the use of them. Remember, my countrymen, that there is one sort of flame that consumes not only a man’s property, but also a man’s understanding, and ruins very often his posterity also. This man’s adroitness in law was thought necessary to be engaged in the cause of defeating acts of Parliament. He was engaged, and he had shrewdness enough to start a thought which, artfully pursued, hath generally its expected effect in all popular commotions; he said that it was necessary to enlist a black Regiment in their service; the bait was snapped at; and many Ministers of the Gospel too, too many for the honour of the Christian religion, joined in the cry. The press then roared out its libels; the sacred desk, which ought to have been devoted to the doctrines and precepts of the Prince of Peace, rang its changes on Government, and sounded the trumpet of sedition and rebellion. Boys who had just thrown away their satchels, and who could scarcely read English, mounted the pulpit, and ventured to decide on matters which had puzzled the sages of the law. Nay, they could not be contented to decide controversies of law in their harangues to their audience, but must show their parts in their solemn addresses to the Supreme Being, telling him who had been guilty of murder where the law had pronounced the supposed crime to be only self-defence; and some of them even debased the sacred character, by setting on the rabble in the publick street to insult a person who was obnoxious to the leaders of the mob. At the same time a notorious defaulter, who had pocketed a large sum of the publick moneys, in order to screen himself, took it into his head to mouth it for patriotism; and, by artful wiles and smooth demeanor, he talked the people out of their understandings, and persuaded them to give him a discharge from the debt, on account of his patriotism. This man, whom, but a day before, hardly any one would have trusted with a shilling, and whose honesty they were jealous of, now became the confidant of the people. With his oily tongue he duped a man whose brains were shallow and pockets deep, and ushered him to the publick as a patriot too. He filled his head with importance, and emptied his pockets, and as a reward hath kicked him up the ladder, where he now presides over the twelve United Provinces, and where they both are at present plunging you, my countrymen, into the depths of distress, Libertinism, riot, and robbery soon became the effects of this sort of publick spirit; houses were plundered and demolished, persons were beat, abused, tarred and feathered; courts of justice were insulted; the pillars of Government were destroyed; and no way to escape the torrent of savage barbarity but by paying obedience to