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themselves entitled to the island, and injured by Captain Hunt, in their turn demanded satisfaction, which was refused; and where is the wonder if their concessions were delayed! They may tell us, that an independent nation is to be influenced not by command, but by persuasion; that if we expect our proposals to be received without deliberation, we assume that sovereignty which they do not grant us; and that if we arm while we are deliberating, we must indulge our martial ardour at our own charge.

The English ministry asked all that was reasonable, and enforced all that they asked. Our national honour is advanced, and our interest, if any interest we have, is sufficiently secured. There can be none amongst us to whom this transaction does not seem happily concluded, but those who, having fixed their hopes on public calamities, sat like vultures waiting for a day of carnage. Having worn out all the arts of domestic sedition, having wearied violence, and exhausted falsehood, they yet flattered themselves with some assistance from the pride or malice of Spain; and when they could no longer make the people complain of grievances which they did not feel, they had the comfort yet of knowing that real evils were possible, and their resolution is well known of charging all evil on their governors.

The reconciliation was therefore considered as the loss of their last anchor; and received not only with the fretfulness of disappointment, but the rage of desperation. When they found that all were happy in spite of their machinations, and the soft effulgence of peace shone out upon the nation, they felt no motion but that of sullen envy; they could not, like Milton's prince of hell, abstract themselves a moment from their evil; as they have not the wit of Satan, they have not his virtue; they tried once again what could be done by sophistry without art, and confidence without credit. They represented their sovereign as dishonoured, and their country as betrayed, or, in their fiercer paroxysms of fury, reviled their sovereign as betraying it.

Their pretences I have here endeavoured to expose, by showing that more than has been yielded was not to be expected, that more perhaps was not to be desired, and that, if all had been refused, there had scarcely been an adequate reason for war.

There was perhaps never much danger of war or of refusal; but what danger there was, proceeded from the faction. Foreign nations, unacquainted with the insolence of Common Councils, and unaccustomed to the howl of plebeian patriotism, when they heard of rabbles and riots, of petitions and remonstrances, of discontent in Surrey, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire, when they saw the chain of subordination broken, and the legislature threatened and defied, naturally imagined that such a government had little leisure

for Falkland's Island; they supposed that the English, when they returned ejected from Port Egmont, would find Wilkes invested with the protectorate; or see the Mayor of London, what the French have formerly seen their mayors of the palace, the commander of the army and tutor of the king; that they would be called to tell their tale before the Common Council; and that the world was to expect war or peace from a vote of the subscribers to tue Bill of Rights.

But our enemies have now lost their hopes, and our friends, I hope, are recovered from their fears. To fancy that our government can be subverted by the rabble, whom its lenity has pampered into impudence, is to fear that a city may be drowned by the overflowing of its kennels. The distemper which cowardice or malice thought either decay of the vitals, or resolution of the nerves, appears at last to have been nothing more than a political phthiriasis, a disease too loathsome for a plainer name; but the effect of negligence rather than of weakness, and of which the shame is greater than the danger.

Among the disturbers of our quiet are some animals of greater bulk, whom their power of roaring persuaded us to think formidable, but we now perceive that sound and force do not always go together. The noise of a savage proves nothing but his hunger.

We

After all our broils, foreign and domestic, we may at last hope to remain a while in quiet, amused with the view of our own success. have gained political strength by the increase of our reputation; we have gained real strength by the reparation of our navy; we have shown Europe that ten years of war have not yet exhausted us; and we have enforced our settlement on an island on which twenty years ago we durst not venture to look.

These are the gratifications only of honest minds; but there is a time in which hope comes to all. From the present happiness of the public, the patriots themselves may derive advantage. To be harmless, though by impotence, obtains some degree of kindness: no man hates a worm as he hates a viper; they were once dreaded enough to be detested, as serpents that could bite; they have now shown that they can only hiss, and may therefore quietly slink into holes, and change their slough unmolested and forgotten.

THE PATRIOT:

ADDRESSED TO THE ELECTORS OF GREAT BRITAIN, 1774.
They bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
Yet still revolt when truth should set them free;
License they mean, when they cry liberty,
For who loves that must first be wise and good.

MILTON.

To improve the golden moment of opportunity,

and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life. Many wants are suffered, which might once have been supplied; and much time is lost in regretting the time which had been lost before.

At the end of every seven years comes the Saturnalian season, when the freemen of Great Britain may please themselves with the choice of their representatives. This happy day has now arrived, somewhat sooner than it could be claimed.

To select and depute those by whom laws are to be made, and taxes to be granted, is a high dignity, and an important trust and it is the business of every elector to consider how this dignity may be well sustained, and this trust faithfully discharged.

species of disease; and they feel some part of what they express. But the greater, far the greater, number of those who rave and rail, and inquire and accuse, neither respect, nor fear, nor care for the public; but hope to force their way to riches by virulence and invective, and are vehement and clamorous, only that they may be sooner hired to be silent.

A man sometimes starts up a Patriot only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation.

This practice is no certain note of patriotism. | To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errors, and few faults of government, can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to

It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in parlia-judge of what they cannot understand, and ment who is not a PATRIOT. No other man will protect our rights, no other man can merit our confidence.

whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion.

The fallaciousness of this note of patriotism A PATRIOT is he whose public conduct is re- is particularly apparent when the clamour congulated by one single motive, the love of his tinues after the evil is past. They who are still country; who, as an agent in parliament, has filling our ears with Mr. Wilkes and the Freefor himself neither hope nor fear, neither kind-holders of Middlesex, lament a grievance that ness nor resentment, but refers every thing to is now at at end. Mr. Wilkes may be chosen, the common interest. if any will choose him, and the precedent of his exclusion makes not any honest, or any decent, man think himself in danger.

It may be doubted whether the name of a Patriot can be fairly given as the reward of se

That of five hundred men, such as this degenerate age affords, a majority can be found thus virtuously abstracted, who will affirm? Yet there is no good in despondence: vigilance and activity often effect more than was ex-cret satire, or open outrage. To fill the newspected. Let us take a Patriot where we can meet him; and that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain from those which may deceive: for a man may have the external appearance of a Patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.

Some claim a place in the list of Patriots by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court.

This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country. He that has been refused a reasonable or unreasonable request, who thinks his merit underrated, and sees his influence declining, begins soon to talk of natural equality, the absurdity of many made for one, the original compact, the foundation of authority, and the majesty of the people. As his political melancholy increases, he tells, and perhaps dreams, of the advances of the prerogative, and the dangers of arbitrary power; yet his design in all his declamation is not to benefit his country, but to gratify his malice.

These, how ever, are the most honest of the opponents of government; their patriotism is a

papers with sly hints of corruption and intrigue, to circulate the Middlesex Journal, and London Paquet, may, indeed, be zeal; but it may likewise be interest and malice. To offer a petition, not expected to be granted; to insult a king with a rude remonstrance, only because there is no punishment for legal insolence, is not courage, for there is no danger; nor patriotism, for it tends to the subversion of order, and lets wickedness loose upon the land, by destroying the reverence due to sovereign authority.

It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see public dangers at a distance. The true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy: he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism therefore may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities; who tells, that the last peace was obtained by bribing the Princess of Wales; that the king is grasping at arbitrary power; and that because the French in the new conquests enjoy their own laws, there is a design at court of abolishing in England the trial by juries.

Still less does the true Patriot circulate opi- | fligate, who have no hope but from mischief nions which he knows to be false. No man, who loves his country, fills the nation with clamorous complaints, that the protestant religion is in danger, because popery is established in the extensive province of Quebec-a falsehood so open and shameless, that it can need no confutation among those who know that of which it is almost impossible for the most unenlightened zealot to be ignorant,

That Quebec is on the other side of the Atlantic, at too great a distance to do much good or harm to the European world:

That the inhabitants, being French, were always papists, who are certainly more dangerous as enemies, than as subjects:

That though the province be wide, the people are few, probably not so many as may be found in one of the larger English counties:

That persecution is not more virtuous in a protestant than a papist; and that while we blame Lewis the Fourteenth for his dragoons and his galleys, we ought, when power comes into our hands, to use it with greater equity:

and confusion; let his love of the people be no longer boasted. No man can reasonably be thought a lover of his country, for roasting an ox, or burning a boot, or attending the meeting at Mile End, or registering his name in the Lumber Troop. He may, among the drunkards, be a hearty fellow, and among sober handicraftsmen, a free-spoken gentleman; but he must have some better distinction before he is a Patriot.

A Patriot is always ready to countenance the just claims, and animate the reasonable hopes, of the people; he reminds them frequently of their rights, and stimulates them to resent encroachments, and to multiply securities.

But all this may be done in appearance, without real patriotism. He that raises false hopes to serve a present purpose, only makes a way for disappointment and discontent. He who promises to endeavour, what he knows his endeavours unable to effect, means only to delude his followers by an empty clamour of ineffectual zeal.

A true Patriot is no lavish promiser: he undertakes not to shorten parliaments; to repeal laws; or to change the mode of representation, transmitted by our ancestors: he knows that

That when Canada with its inhabitants was yielded, the free enjoyment of their religion was stipulated; a condition, of which king William, who was no propagator of popery, gave an example nearer home, at the surrender of Li-futurity is not in his power, and that all times merick :

are not alike favourable to change.

Much less does he make a vague and indefi. nite promise of obeying the mandates of his constituents. He knows the prejudices of faction, and the inconstancy of the multitude. He would first inquire, how the opinion of his con

That in an age, where every mouth is open for liberty of conscience, it is equitable to show some regard to the conscience of a papist, who may be supposed, like other men, to think himself safest in his own religion; and that those, at least, who enjoy a toleration, ought not to de-stituents shall be taken. Popular instructions ny it to our new subjects.

are commonly the work, not of the wise and If liberty of conscience be a natural right, we steady, but the violent and rash; meetings held have no power to withhold it; if it be an indul- for directing representatives are seldom attendgence, it may be allowed to papists, while it ised but by the idle and the dissolute; and he is not denied to other sects. not without suspicion, that of his constituents, as of other numbers of men, the smaller part may often be the wiser.

A Patriot is necessarily and invariably a lover of the people. But even this mark may sometimes deceive us.

The people is a very heterogeneous and confused mass of the wealthy and the poor, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad. Before we confer on a man, who caresses the people, the title of Patriot, we must examine to what part of the people he directs his notice. It is proverbially said, that he who dissembles his own character, may be known by that of his companions. If the candidate of patriotism endeavours to infuse right opinions into the highir ranks, and by their influence to regulate the wer; if he consorts chiefly with the wise, the emperate, the regular, and the virtuous, his love of the people may be rational and honest. But if his first or principal application be to the indigent, who are always inflammable; to the weak, who are naturally suspicious; to the ignorant, who are easily misled; and to the pro

He considers himself as deputed to promote the public good, and to preserve his constituents, with the rest of his countrymen, not only from being hurt by others, but from hurting themselves.

The common marks of patriotism having been examined, and shown to be such as artifice may counterfeit, or folly misapply, it cannot be improper to consider, whether there are not some characteristical modes of speaking or acting, which may prove a man to be not a patriot.

In this inquiry, perhaps, clearer evidence may be discovered, and firmer persuasion at. tained; for it is commonly easier to know what is wrong than what is right; to find what we should avoid, than what we should pursue.

As war is one of the heaviest of national

taxation.

evils, a calamity in which every species of misery | therefore establish a mode and proportion of is involved; as it sets the general safety to hazard, suspends commerce, and desolates the country; as it exposes great numbers to hardships, dangers, captivity, and death; no man, who desires the public prosperity, will inflame general resentment by aggravating minute injuries, or enforcing disputable rights of little importance.

It may therefore be safely pronounced, that those men are no Patriots, who, when the national honour was vindicated in the sight of Europe, and the Spaniards having invaded what they call their own, had shrunk to a disavowal of their attempt, and a relaxation of their claim, would still have instigated us to a war for a bleak and barren spot in the Magellanic ocean, of which no use could be made, unless it were a place of exile for the hypocrites of patriotism.

Yet let it not be forgotten, that, by the howling violence of patriotic rage, the nation was for a time exasperated to such madness, that for a barren rock, under a stormy sky, we might have now been fighting and dying, had not our competitors been wiser than ourselves; and those who are now courting the favour of the people by noisy professions of public spirit, would, while they were counting the profits of their artifice, have enjoyed the patriotic pleasure of hearing sometimes, that thousands had been slaughtered in a battle, and sometimes that a navy had been dispeopled by poisoned air and corrupted food.

But there are some who lament the state of the poor Bostonians, because they cannot all be supposed to have committed acts of rebellion, yet all are involved in the penalty imposed. This, they say, is to violate the first rule of justice, by condemning the innocent to suffer with the guilty.

This deserves some notice, as it seems dictated by equity and humanity, however it may raise contempt by the ignorance which it betrays of the state of man, and the system of things. That the innocent should be confounded with the guilty, is undoubtedly an evil; but it is an evil which no care or caution can prevent. Na tional crimes require national punishments, of which many must necessarily have their part, who have not incurred them by personal guilt. If rebels should fortify a town, the cannon of lawful authority will endanger equally the harmless burghers and the criminal garrison.

In some cases, those suffer most who are least intended to be hurt. If the French, in the late war, had taken an English city, and permitted the natives to keep their dwellings, how could it have been recovered, but by the slaughter of our friends? A bomb might as well destroy an Englishman as a Frenchman; and by famine we know that the inhabitants would be the first that should perish.

This infliction of promiscuous evil may therefore be lamented, but cannot be blamed. The

He that wishes to see his country robbed of power of lawful government must be mainits rights, cannot be a Patriot.

That man therefore is no Patriot, who justifies the ridiculous claims of American usurpation; who endeavours to deprive the nation of its natural and lawful authority over its own colonies; those colonies which were settled under English protection; were constituted by an English charter; and have been defended by English arms.

To suppose, that by sending out a colony, the nation established an independent power; that when, by indulgence and favour, emigrants are become rich, they shall not contribute to their own defence, but at their own pleasure; and that they shall not be included, like millions of their fellow-subjects, in the general system of representation; involves such an accumulation of absurdity, as nothing but the show of patriotism could palliate.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government.

The less is included in the greater. That power which can take away life, may seize upon property. The parliament may enact for America a law of capital punishment; it may

tained; and the miseries which rebellion produces can be charged only on the rebels.

That man, likewise, is not a Patriot, who denies his governors their due praise, and who conceals from the people the benefits which they receive. Those, therefore, can lay no claim to this illustrious appellation, who impute want of public spirit to the late parliament; an assembly of men, whom, notwithstanding some fluctu ation of counsel, and some weakness of agency, the nation must always remember with gratitude, since it is indebted to them for a very ample concession in the resignation of protections, and a wise and honest attempt to improve the constitution, in the new judicature instituted for the trial of elections.

The right of protection, which might be necessary when it was first claimed, and was very consistent with that liberality of immunities in which the feudal constitution delighted, was, by its nature, liable to abuse, and had in reality been sometimes misapplied, to the evasion of the law, and the defeat of justice. The evil was perhaps not adequate to the clamour; nor is it very certain, that the possible good of this privilege was not more than equal to the possible evil. It is, however, plain, that whether they

save any thing or not to the public, they at least lost something from themselves. They divested their dignity of a very splendid distinction, and showed that they were more willing than their predecessors to stand on a level with their fellow-subjects.

The new mode of trying elections, if it be found effectual, will diffuse its consequences further than seems yet to be foreseen. It is, I believe, generally considered as advantageous only to those who claim seats in parliament; but, if to choose representatives be one of the most valuable rights of Englishmen, every voter must consider that law as adding to his happiness, which makes his suffrage efficacious; since it was vain to choose, while the election could be controlled by any other power.

insulting dignity, have gathered round them
whatever the kingdom can supply of base, and
gross, and profligate; and, raised by merit to this
bad eminence, arrogate to themselves the name
of PATRIOTS.

Curies

TAXATION NO TYRANNY; it. II

AN ANSWER TO THE RESOLUTIONS AND ADDRESS OF THE 185
AMERICAN CONGRESS, 1775.

In all the parts of human knowledge, whether
terminating in science merely speculative, or
operating upon life private or civil, are admitted
some fundamental principles, or common axioms,
which being generally received are little doubt-
ed, and being little doubted have been rarely
proved.

With what imperious contempt of ancient rights, and what audaciousness of arbitrary authority, former parliaments have judged the disputes about elections, it is not necessary to relate. The claim of a candidate, and the right of electors, are said scarcely to have been, even in appearance, referred to conscience; but to have been decided by party, by pass on. by prejudice, or by frolic. To have friends in the borough was of little use to him who wanted friends in the house; a pretence was easily founded. to evade a majority, and the seat was at last his, that was chosen not by his electors, but his fellow-senators.

Thus the nation was insulted with a mock election, and the parliament was filled with spurious representatives; one of the most important claims, that of right to sit in the supreme council of the kingdom, was debated in jest, and no man could be confident of success from the justice of his cause.

A disputed election is now tried with the same scrupulousness and solemnity as any other title. The candidate that has deserved well of his neighbours, may now be certain of enjoying the effect of their approbation; and the elector, who has voted honestly for known merit, may be certain that he has not voted in vain.

Such was the parliament, which some of those, who are now aspiring to sit in another, have taught the rabble to consider as an unlawful convention of men, worthless, venal, and prostitute, slaves of the court and tyrants of the people.

That the next House of Commons may act upon the principles of the last, with more constancy and higher spirit, must be the wish of all who wish well to the public; and it is surely not too much to exped that the nation will recover from its delusion, and unite in a general abhorrence of those who, by deceiving the credulous with fictitious mischiefs, overbearing the weak by audacity of falsehood, by appealing to the judgment of ignorance, and flattering the vanity of meanness, by slandering honesty and

Of these gratuitous and acknowledged truths it is often the fate to become less evident by endeavours to explain them, however necessary such endeavours may be made by the misapprehensions of absurdity, or the sophistries of interest. It is difficult to prove the principles of science; because notions cannot always be found more intelligible than those which are questionIt is difficult to prove the principles of practice, because they have for the most part not been discovered by investigation, but obtruded by experience; and the demonstrator will find, after an operose deduction, that he has been trying to make that seen which can be only felt.

Of this kind is the position, that "the supreme power of every community has the right of requiring from all its subjects, such contributions as are necessary to the public safety or public prosperity," which was considered by all mankind as comprising the primary and essential condition of all political society, till it became disputed by those zealots of anarchy, who have denied to the parliament of Britain the right of taxing the American Colonies.

In favour of this exemption of the Americans from the authority of their lawful sovereign, and the dominion of their mother-country, very loud clamours have been raised, and many wild assertions advanced, which by such as borrow their opinions from the reigning fashion have been admitted as arguments; and, what is strange, though their tendency is to lessen English honour, and English power, have been heard by Englishmen with a wish to find them true. Passion has in its first violence controlled interest, as the eddy for a while runs against the

stream.

To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near to laudable, that they have been often praised, and are alway pardoned. To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their prefer

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