To what feelings, then, to what conduct, it may be asked, will this independence in the resources of the colonists, the bitter fruit of so much privation and misery, give birth?  Will this, the painful result of so many years’ injustice and oppression, tend to strengthen the bond of union between the colony and this country?  Or will it not be the crisis that will sever it for ever?  England, placed as she is at present on the pinnacle of glory, and reposing in security on the basis of that commercial and maritime greatness, from which the gigantic efforts of united Europe have not been able to remove her, may laugh to scorn the presumption of any colony, however powerful, that might attempt to shake off her authority.  Like Jupiter on Olympus, she has only to stretch out her hand and overthrow the united force of all her colonies with the chain to which she has bound their destinies.  No one can doubt, that such an attempt would be preposterous at the present moment, nor would the most strenuous advocate for colonial independence, the most violent enemy to the supremacy of this country, dream of its immediate execution.  Still let her not lull herself into a false security; let her not measure the forbearance of the colony by its own impotency and insignificance.  Despair always begets resources, and inspires an unnatural vigor.  The enmity of the most feeble becomes formidable, when it has justice ranged under its banners, and ought not to be excited without necessity.  Besides, is it worthy the character of a nation, who has evinced herself the determined enemy of tyrants, and the avenger of the freedom of the world, to become the oppressor of her own subjects, and that too for the mere sake of oppression, in subversion alike of their interests and of her own?  Has she not, and will she not always have external enemies enow to contend with, without thus creating, unnecessarily creating, domestic ones? Let her from the midst of the glory with which she is environed compare her situation, brilliant and imposing as it is, with what it might have been:  let her look at the consequences of her former injustice.  Is not the most formidable on the list of her enemies, a nation, which might have this day been the most attached and faithful of her friends?  A nation which, instead of watching every occasion to circumscribe her power, would, if its rights had been respected, have been still embodied with her empire and confirmatory of her strength?  Will this terrible lesson have no influence on the regulation of her future conduct?  Will not this dear bought experience teach her wisdom?  Or has she yet to learn that the reign of injustice and tyranny involves in its very constitution the germ of its duration and punishment?  Let her ask herself, “what would have been the consequence if, during the late war with America, the ports of this colony had been open to the vessels of that nation?” How many hundreds of the valuable captures, which