Since the Americans have made it neceffary to fubdue them, may they be fubdued with the least injury poffible to their perfons and their poffeffions! When they are reduced to obedience, may that obedience be secured by ftricter laws and ftronger obligations!

Nothing can be more noxious to fociety, than that erroneous clemency, which, when a rebellion is fuppreffed, exacts no forfeiture and establishes no fecurities, but leaves the rebels in their former state. Who would not try the experiment which promises advantage without expence? If rebels once obtain a victory, their wishes are accomplished; if they are defeated, they fuffer little, perhaps lefs than their conquerors; however often they play the game, the chance is always in their favour. In the mean time, they are growing rich by victualling the troops that we have fent against them, and perhaps gain more by the refidence of the army than they lose by the obftruction of their port.

Their charters being now, I fuppofe, legally for- 17 feited, may be modelled as shall appear most commodious to the Mother-country. Thus the privileges, which are found by experience liable to mifufe, will be taken away, and those who now bellow as patriots, blufter as foldiers, and domineer as legiflators, will fink into fober merchants and filent planters, peaceably diligent, and fecurely rich.

But there is one writer, and perhaps many who do not write, to whom the contraction of these pernicious privileges appears very dangerous, and who ftartle at the thoughts of England free and America

in chains. Children fly from their own fhadow, and rhetoricians are frighted by their own voices. Chains is undoubtedly a dreadful word; but perhaps the masters of civil wifdom may difcover fome gradations between chains and anarchy. Chains need not be put upon those who will be reftrained without them. This conteft may end in the fofter phrafe of English Superiority and American Obe

dience.

We are told, that the fubjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties: an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to forefee. If flavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudeft yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

But let us interrupt a while this dream of conqueft, fettlement, and fupremacy. Let us remember that being to contend, according to one orator, with three millions of Whigs, and according to another, with ninety thoufand patriots of Massachufet's Bay, we may poffibly be checked in our career of reduction. We may be reduced to peace upon equal terms, or driven from the western continent, and forbidden to violate a second time the happy borders of the land of liberty. The time is now perhaps at hand, which Sir Thomas Brown predicted between jeft and earnest,

When America shall no more send out her treasure,
But spend it at home in American pleasure.

If we are allowed upon our defeat to ftipulate conditions, I hope the treaty of Boston will permit us to import into the confederated Cantons fuch

6

products

products as they do not raife, and fuch manufactures as they do not make, and cannot buy cheaper from other nations, paying like others the appointed customs; that if an English fhip falutes a fort with four guns, it shall be answered at least with two; and that if an Englishman be inclined to hold a plantation, he fhall only take an oath of allegiance to the reigning powers, and be fuffered, while he lives inoffenfively, to retain his own opinion of English rights, unmolefted in his confcience by an oath of abjuration.

!

POLITICAL

ESSAYS.

OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

STATE OF AFFAIRS IN M,DCC,LVI.

HE time is now come in which every English

TH

man expects to be informed of the national affairs, and in which he has a right to have that expectation gratified. For whatever may be urged by minifters, or thofe whom vanity or intereft make the followers of minifters, concerning the neceffity of confidence in our governors, and the prefumption of prying with profane eyes into the receffes of policy, it is evident, that this reverence can be claimed only by counfels yet unexecuted, and projects suspended in deliberation. But when a design has ended in mifcarriage or fuccefs, when every eye and every ear is witness to general difcontent, or general fatisfaction, it is then a proper time to difentangle confufion, and illuftrate obfcurity, to fhew by what caufes every event was produced, and in what effects it is likely to terminate: to lay down with distinct particularity what rumour always hudVOL. X.

L

dles