possible confidence in your rulers, that they never would use that power to your injury; but distrustful of government, and jealous of your liberty, you rejected such counsel with disdain; the bare possibility that Britain might abuse it, if once conceded, kindled a flame from one end of this continent to the other, and roused you to arms. Weak and defenseless as you were, unused to military exertions, and unsupplied with warlike stores, you braved the strength of a nation the most powerful and best provided—you chose to risk your lives and property rather than to risque the possibility that the power claimed by the British government should be exercised to your injury—a possibility which the minions of power at that time, with as much confidence as those of the present day, declared to be absolutely visionary. Heaven wrought a miracle in your favour, and your efforts were crowned with success. You are not now called upon to make an equal sacrifice, you are not now requested to beat your ploughshares into swords, or your pruning hooks into spears, to leave your peaceful habitations, and exchange domestic tranquillity for the horrors of war; peaceably, quietly and orderly to give this system of slavery your negative, is all that is asked by the advocates of freedom—to pronounce the single monosyllable no, is all they entreat. Shall they entreat you in vain? When by this it is to be determined, whether our independence, for obtaining which we have been accustomed to bow the knee with reverential gratitude to Heaven, shall be our greatest curse; and when on this it depends whether we shall be subject to a government, of which the little finger will be thicker than the loins of that of Great Britain. But there are also persons who pretend that your situation is at present so bad that it cannot be worse, and urge that as an argument why we should embrace any remedy proposed, however desperate it may appear. Thus do the poor erring children of mortality, suffering under the presence of real or imaginary evils, have recourse to a pistol or halter for relief, and rashly launch into the untried regions of eternity—nor wake from this delusion, until they wake in endless woe. Should the citizens of America, in a fit desperation, be induced to commit this fatal act of political suicide, to which by such arguments they are stimulated, the day will come when laboring under more than Egyptian bondage; compelled to finish their quota of brick, though destitute of straw and of mortar; galled with your chains, and worn down by oppression, you will, by sad experience, be convinced (when that conviction shall be too late), that there is a difference in evils, and that the buzzing of gnats is more supportable than the sting of a serpent. From the wisdom of antiquity we might obtain excellent instruction, if we were not too proud to profit by it. Æsop has furnished us with a history of a nation of frogs, between which and our