The hand of Heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great Providential dispensation which is completing.  We have fled from the political Sodom; let us not look back, lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world!  For can we ever expect more unanimity and a better preparation for defence; more infatuation of counsel among our enemies, and more valor and zeal among ourselves?  The same force and resistance which are sufficient to procure us our liberties, will secure us a glorious independence and support us in the dignity of free, imperial states.  We can not suppose that our opposition has made a corrupt and dissipated nation more friendly to America, or created in them a greater respect for the rights of mankind.  We can therefore expect a restoration and establishment of our privileges, and a compensation for the injuries we have received from their want of power, from their fears, and not from their virtues.  The unanimity and valor, which will effect an honorable peace, can render a future contest for our liberties unnecessary.  He who has strength to chain down the wolf, is a mad-man if he lets him loose without drawing his teeth and paring his nails.

From the day on which an accommodation takes place between England and America, on any other terms than as independent states, I shall date the ruin of this country.  A politic minister will study to lull us into security, by granting us the full extent of our petitions.  The warm sunshine of influence would melt down the virtue, which the violence of the storm rendered more firm and unyielding.  In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war, and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible.  Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable.  When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin, and render us easier victims to tyranny.  Ye abandoned minions of an infatuated ministry, if peradventure any should yet remain among us!—­remember that a Warren and a Montgomery are numbered among the dead.  Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices?  Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood, and hunt us from the face of the earth?  If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom—­go from us in peace.  We ask not your counsels or arms.  Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.  May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity, forget that ye were our countrymen.