While the colonies were under any apprehensions from the encroachments of the French and Indians, they submitted to the British legislature without reluctance; because they were sensible of their inability to defend themselves, and of the necessity of taking shelter under the wings of their mother. But no sooner were the French kites and Indian vultures scared away, than they began to strut and to claim an independent property to the dunghil. Their fear and their natural affection forsook them at one and the same time. They now boast that they owe their present happy state to no power on earth but themselves; that they worked out their own salvation by their own right arm: forgetting that, had we not conquered at Louisbourg, at Quebec, and many other places; had we not constantly protected and defended them, the French and Indians would have long ago reduced them to the situation of the ancient Britons, and we should ere now have received some such letter as this, inscribed, _The groans of the Americans. The barbarians, on one hand, drive us into the sea; the sea on the other, forces us back on the barbarians: so that we have only the hard alternative left us, of perishing by the sword, or by the waves._ Their insolence is arrived to such a pitch that they are not ashamed to assume to themselves the merit of bringing the last war but one to a period. According to them, what obliged the enemy to listen to terms of accommodation was not our success by sea, not the ruin of the French navy, not the total stagnation of their trade, not the march of the Russian auxiliaries; but the reduction, in a couple of short days, by a couple of little cannon, of a little island hardly discernable in a map, called Cape-Breton. This undutiful, this disobedient behaviour of Britain's children abroad, owed, no doubt, its origin partly to the causes assigned above, and partly to the murmurs and discontent of those at home; the Sacheveril in London produced another in Boston; the spirit of disaffection and mutiny, which the harangues of a general raised in the cyder counties, those of a colonel conjured up in New-England. Out of one hydra many more arose, and there wants a Hercules to crush them. But who has the courage and skill to wield his club? In hopes that such a hero will arise, I will endeavour to furnish him with weapons, and to show him how to pierce the vitals of the monster. The most effectual way, in my opinion, of laying the spirit of disaffection among the colonists, and of quieting the present disturbances to the mutual satisfaction of each party, is to convince the Americans that they ought to be taxed rather than the English, and to prove that the interest of both is best promoted by leaving the power of taxation in the hands of the British legislature; I shall therefore address myself now to this task.