How they will come, they have not told us; perhaps they will take wing, and light upon our coasts.  When the cranes thus begin to flutter, it is time for pygmies to keep their eyes about them.  The great orator observes, that they will be very fit, after they have been taxed, to impose chains upon us.  If they are so fit as their friend describes them, and so willing as they describe themselves, let us increase our army, and double our militia.

It has been, of late, a very general practice to talk of slavery among those who are setting at defiance every power that keeps the world in order.  If the learned author of the Reflections on Learning has rightly observed, that no man ever could give law to language, it will be vain to prohibit the use of the word slavery; but I could wish it more discreetly uttered:  it is driven, at one time, too hard into our ears by the loud hurricane of Pennsylvanian eloquence, and, at another, glides too cold into our hearts by the soft conveyance of a female patriot, bewailing the miseries of her friends and fellow-citizens.

Such has been the progress of sedition, that those who, a few years ago, disputed only our right of laying taxes, now question the validity of every act of legislation.  They consider themselves as emancipated from obedience, and as being no longer the subjects of the British crown.  They leave us no choice, but of yielding or conquering, of resigning our dominion or maintaining it by force.

From force many endeavours have been used, either to dissuade, or to deter us.  Sometimes the merit of the Americans is exalted, and sometimes their sufferings are aggravated.  We are told of their contributions to the last war; a war incited by their outcries, and continued for their protection; a war by which none but themselves were gainers.  All that they can boast is, that they did something for themselves, and did not wholly stand inactive, while the sons of Britain were fighting in their cause.

If we cannot admire, we are called to pity them; to pity those that show no regard to their mother-country; have obeyed no law, which they could violate; have imparted no good, which they could withhold; have entered into associations of fraud to rob their creditors; and into combinations to distress all who depended on their commerce.  We are reproached with the cruelty of shutting one port, where every port is shut against us.  We are censured as tyrannical, for hindering those from fishing, who have condemned our merchants to bankruptcy, and our manufacturers to hunger.

Others persuade us to give them more liberty, to take off restraints, and relax authority; and tell us what happy consequences will arise from forbearance; how their affections will be conciliated, and into what diffusions of beneficence their gratitude will luxuriate.  They will love their friends.  They will reverence their protectors.  They will throw themselves into our arms, and lay their property at our feet; they will buy from no other what we can sell them; they will sell to no other what we wish to buy.