Tell my Friend M S. that I will answer his Letter the next post.  In the mean time ask him whether a Christian is bound to confide in the Man who has attempted seven times (though in vain) to ruin him.

Adieu.

Manifesto of the continental congress.

October 30, 1778.

[W.  V. Wells, Life of Samuel Adams,1 vol. iii., pp. 46, 47.]

The United States having been driven to hostilities by the oppressive and tyrannous measures of Great Britain, having been compelled to commit the essential rights of men to the decision of arms, and having been at length forced to shake off a yoke which had grown too burdensome to bear, they declared themselves free and independent.

Confiding in the justice of their cause; confiding in Him who disposes of human events; although weak and unprovided, they set the power of their enemies at defiance.

In this confidence they have continued through the various fortunes of three bloody campaigns, unawed by the power, unsubdued by the barbarity of their foes.  Their virtuous citizens have borne without repining the loss of many things which make life desirable.  Their brave troops have patiently endured the hardships and dangers of a situation fruitful in both beyond former example.

The Congress, considering themselves bound to love their enemies as children of that Being who is equally the Father of all, and desirous, since they could not prevent, at least to alleviate the calamities of war, have studied to spare those who were in arms against them, and to lighten the chains of captivity.

The conduct of those serving under the King of Great Britain hath, with some few exceptions, been diametrically opposite.  They have laid waste the open country, burned the defenceless villages, and butchered the citizens of America.

Their prisons have been the slaughter-houses of her soldiers, their ships of her seamen, and the severest injuries have been aggravated by the grossest insults.

Foiled in their vain attempts to subjugate the unconquerable spirit of freedom, they have meanly assailed the representatives of America with bribes, with deceit, and the servility of adulation.  They have made a mock of religion by impious appeals to God, whilst in the violation of His sacred command.  They have made a mock even of reason itself, by endeavoring to prove that the liberty and happiness of America could safely be intrusted to those who have sold their own, unawed by the sense of virtue or of shame.

Treated with the contempt which such conduct deserved, they have applied to individuals.  They have solicited them to break the bonds of allegiance and imbue their souls with the blackest crimes.  But fearing that none could be found through these United States equal to the wickedness of their purpose, to influence weak minds they have threatened more wide devastation.