in the ordinary course, it demands.  It is no light cause which, even for a time, could persuade us to relax in any part of that attendance.  The British empire is in convulsions which threaten its dissolution.  Those particular proceedings which cause and inflame this disorder, after many years’ incessant struggle, we find ourselves wholly unable to oppose and unwilling to behold.  All our endeavors having proved fruitless, we are fearful at this time of irritating by contention those passions which we have found it impracticable to compose by reason.  We cannot permit ourselves to countenance, by the appearance of a silent assent, proceedings fatal to the liberty and unity of the empire,—­proceedings which exhaust the strength of all your Majesty’s dominions, destroy all trust and dependence of our allies, and leave us, both at home and abroad, exposed to the suspicious mercy and uncertain inclinations of our neighbor and rival powers, to whom, by this desperate course, we are driving our countrymen for protection, and with whom we have forced them into connections, and may bind them by habits and by interests,—­an evil which no victories that may be obtained, no severities which may be exorcised, ever will or can remove.

If but the smallest hope should from any circumstances appear of a return to the ancient maxims and true policy of this kingdom, we shall with joy and readiness return to our attendance, in order to give our hearty support to whatever means may be left for alleviating the complicated evils which oppress this nation.

If this should not happen, we have discharged our consciences by this faithful representation to your Majesty and our country; and however few in number, or however we may be overborne by practices whose operation is but too powerful, by the revival of dangerous exploded principles, or by the misguided zeal of such arbitrary factions as formerly prevailed in this kingdom, and always to its detriment and disgrace, we have the satisfaction of standing forth and recording our names in assertion of those principles whose operation hath, in better times, made your Majesty a great prince, and the British dominions a mighty empire.

ADDRESS

TO THE

BRITISH COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA.

The very dangerous crisis into which the British empire is brought, as it accounts for, so it justifies, the unusual step we take in addressing ourselves to you.

The distempers of the state are grown to such a degree of violence and malignity as to render all ordinary remedies vain and frivolous.  In such a deplorable situation, an adherence to the common forms of business appears to us rather as an apology to cover a supine neglect of duty than the means of performing it in a manner adequate to the exigency that presses upon us.  The common means we have already tried, and tried to no purpose.  As our last resource, we turn ourselves to you.  We address you merely in our private capacity, vested with no other authority than what will naturally attend those in whose declarations of benevolence you have no reason to apprehend any mixture of dissimulation or design.