the Americans made in the Indian seas and on the coast of Peru, might have safely awaited there the termination of the war, which were recaptured by her cruisers in view of the ports of their country?  How many hundreds of their own vessels, that shared the same fate, would have still belonged to their merchants?  And is there no probability, that a perseverance in the present system of injustice and oppression, may on some future occasion, urge the colonists to shake off this intolerable yoke, and throw themselves into the arms of so powerful a protector?  May they not by these means acquire independence long before the epoch when they would have obtained it by their own force and maturity?  Or at least may they not place themselves under the government of more just and considerate rulers?  How would this country repent her folly, if she should thus become the instrument of her own abasement; if she should herself be the cause of establishing a power already the most formidable rival of her commercial and maritime ascendency, in the very heart of her most valuable possessions, at the main external source of her wealth and prosperity?

To those who are acquainted with the local situation of this colony; who have traversed the formidable chain of mountains by which it is bounded from north to south; who have viewed the impregnable natural positions, that the only connecting ridge by which a passage into the interior can be effected, every where presents; to those who are aware that this ridge is in many places not more than thirty feet in width, and have beheld the terrific chasms by which it is bounded, chasms inaccessible to the most agile animal of the forest, and that will for ever defy the approach of man; to those, I say, who are acquainted with all these circumstances, the independence of this colony, should it be goaded into rebellion, appears neither so problematical nor remote, as might be otherwise imagined.  Of what avail would whole armies prove in these terrible defiles, which only five or six men could approach abreast?  What would be the effect of artillery on advancing columns crowded into so narrow a compass?  A few minutes exposure to such a dreadful carnage, would annihilate the assailing army; or at best only preserve its scattered remnants from destruction by raising an intervening barrier of the carcases of its slaughtered martyrs.  If the colonists should prudently abandon the defence of the sea-coast, and remove with their flocks and herds into the fertile country behind these impregnable passes, what would the force of England, gigantic as it is, profit her?  She might, indeed, if they were unassisted in their efforts by any foreign power, cut off their communication for awhile with the coast; but her armies entirely dependent on external supply, and at so great a distance from the centre of their resources, would gradually moulder away, as well by the incessant operation of a partisan warfare, as by defection to their adversaries, whom her troops