Pall Mall, Jan. 20.

After a great deal of unavailing argumentation, the difpute between the Americans and us feems now to be reduced to the fingle queftion, Whether we are able by force to reduce them to obedience, or not? It is a mere question of fact, in which, as the lawyers fay, the parties join iffue, and fo is ready to be fent to trial, without any farther demurring; leaving the caufe to be finally decided, as the weight of evidence fhall preponderate in favour of one fide or the other.

That the power which fo lately carried on a fuccefsful war against the united forces of France and Spain, fhould not be able to fubdue a parcel of planters and merchants, who have no fleet, no army, no public treasury, no artillery or military ftores, and who have no refpectable head of authority to produce uniformity of conduct, or to prevent muti. ny and fedition in thofe, who, from a fpirit of fedition only, take upon them to be foldiers, is what no man will eafily conceive, who is in the leaft acquainted with the history of human dealings. At the fame time, in examining how the powers of G. Britain are to be brought to act hoftilely against the Americans, I am fenfible of fome difficulty; the caufes of which I fhall here endeavour to inveftigate.

The English nation has hitherto divided the whole human race into two claffes only, viz. Foreigners, who are always fuppofed to be at bottom enemies; and Englishmen, who are always fuppofed to be at bottom friends, to England. In compliance with this diftinction, not ill founded in the nature of things, two very different plans of conduct have been conftantly followed by the people of England, whenever any infult has been offered by the one or by the other of thofe two claffes to any branch of their government. Were, for inftance, a captain of a French or Spanish man of war to order the cockfwain of an English long-boat to be tarred and feathered in the bay of Campeachy, the news would put all England in an uproar: Fleets would be immediately fitted out, officers put into commiffion, and men preffed at every port, to refent the affront put upon the British flag; and all this, without any cool or regular examination into the fact, or how far the cockfwain might not have drawn this feathering upon himself

by his own infolence. Should the mini

ftry fhew any backwardness in feconding this ardour in the people, and treat this feathering as a teterrima belli causa, their eternal oppofers would not fail to lay hold of fo favourable an occasion of representing them as traitors to their country, and of driving them out of their fomuch-withed-for places. If, on the contrary, the ministry should engage heartily in a war, the most hungry orator amongst the patriots would not dare to open his mouth against them.

On the other hand, the groffeft infults offered by an Englishman, not only to an inferior officer, but to the highest perfons and departments in the government, and which manifeftly lead to other practices totally fubverfive of the ftate, are treated with the utmost temper and moderation. If he is called to account for this offence, he becomes immediately the favourite of the populace, and zealously fupported by the minority in both houses of parliament. Tho' the laws of England are of themselves sufficiently formed for the protection of the individuals, every quibbling interpretation of them, by every factious or mercenary lawyer, is readily admitted in his defence; none againft him. Every evidence againft him is examined with the utmoft fcrupulousness, and every informality in the mode of trial is allowed to operate in his favour. And laftly, his jury, who are much more nearly allied to him than to his accusers, are easily induced, not only to let him come off unpunished, when every rational man efteems him punishable, but may poffibly ordain heavy damages to be given to him by his profecutors for any irregularities they may inadvertently have fallen into in the courfe of their proceeding,

When we look back for the cause of this extraordinary heat of the English, in refenting the affronts done to those who reprefent their ftate in one of those cafes, and of their no less extraordinary coolnefs in the other, it plainly turns out to be this: That any contempt fhewn by a foreign power to their rulers, is fuppofed to be levelled at the whole commu nity, and at every individual of it; whereas the infults of an Englishman, who is himfelf a member of the community of England, and interested in its welfare, cannot be supposed to mean any mifchief to it, or to his fellow-citizens; and the fpirit of liberty, which requires

them

them to have always a jealous eye to the conduct of their rulers, naturally inclines them to take part with any one of their own body who complains of an undue exertion of power, and to overlook the demerits of the complainer.

If the government of England were to have no difputes to fettle with any but mere Foreign States, and mere Englishmen, the experience they have acquired in the conflicts of feveral centuries paft, would be fufficient to guide them in any new emergencies of a like kind: but, unfortunately, there has lately started up to view in America a new clafs of men, who will be found upon examination to belong to neither of thofe two claffes; which, for that reafon, give great perplexity both to the government and people of England, and must ever continue to perplex them, till their true nature, and their true relation to G. Britain, is accurately known, and a fuitable mode of proceeding with regard to them adopted.

Being defcended from an English stock, fpeaking the English language, holding amongst themselves laws, cuftoms, and religion, fomewhat fimilar to those of England; being in the practice of calling themselves Englishmen, and us brethren; they have artfully perfuaded the people of England, that they are their fellow-citizens, and Englishmen like themselves to all intents and purposes. But this is altogether a fallacy. Similarity of language or defcent do not confer upon a man the rights of any community, nor does the want of them preclude him from thofe rights, if he happens to be furnished with the more effential requifites. A native of Languedoc or Dauphiny, who fells his lands, and, with his family and effects, comes over to fettle in England, becomes upon his landing as good an Englishman, in every political fenfe of the word, as any man born in the island; and if he is not completely fo in the eye of the law, it is because our law is not able to diftinguish, at first fight, the ftrangers who come into England with the fixed purpose of settling, from those who do not. In like manner, a native Englishman, who leaves England to fettle in Languedoc, and there purchafes lands, or enters into partnership in trade or manufactures with Frenchmen, becomes himself a Frenchman to all intents and purposes. He cannot owe allegiance to two different fovereigns at

the fame time, and therefore pays it to the King of France, from whom he receives protection; forfeiting all the rights of citizenship he held in his native country, to which he is thus become a commercial rival, and political enemy; for where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.

An American Englishman, according to his own defcription of himself, feems to differ but in one circumftance from this Frenchified Englishman; and that is, in his not having come under the allegiance of any foreign prince by which it must be allowed, that he is not completely a foreigner. But his allegiance to the King of England is of a very weak and ambiguous kind; little more than nominal; as he acknowledges him only in his feudal capacity, as lord of the manor of Greenwich, or of Windfor castle; renouncing him in his more exalted character of head of the British empire, and third part of its legislative power. He allows, that his own fituation excludes him from having any share in the legiflature of G. Britain; and affirms, that it has no right to tax him, as it taxes Englishmen.

These are fome of the principal features by which an American is, by his own account, to be distinguished from an Englishman of this country: but they are likewise the features of an alien, not of our fellow-citizen. Nor do the marks of an alien appear stronger in thofe political circumftances, than in his interests as a landholder, a merchant, and a manufacturer: for, fo far from having a common interest with the Americans, in which the great characteristic of citizenfhip confifts, the profperity of their trade and manufactures would have long ago ruined England, had it not been for that tyrannical and unconftitutional power, as they call it, of the British parliament, which has put a variety of fetters upon their trade, and made it fubfervient to ours, very little with their own confent, as appears by many paffages in their late manifeftoes from Philadelphia.

When a Boltonian tells us, he carried the free conflitution of England with him to America, it is very difficult to fay what he means. But if we may be allowed to explain his meaning by the help of the fact itfelf, he can only mean, That he left England to become a freeman of a corporation, fettled in a far diftant country, by a charter from the King of England;

that

that the internal policy of this corporation was formed upon the model of that of England; that he had there his Houfe of Commons, in which he was reprefented, and which had the right of impofing taxes upon him for the purpofes of this corporation; that he had a Council, which anfwered to our House of Peers; and that, to make this a complete parliament, like that of England, a Bailiff or Governor from the King of England was fent to prefide in it. Suppofing all this fimilitude to be juft, as in fact it is not, for an American Council is exceedingly unlike an hereditary Houfe of Peers; yet when the whole, or any of the parts, of an American government, is put fide by fide with the whole, or any of the correfponding parts, of the government of England, fo different in its nature as well as magnitude, the comparifon produces something completely ridiculous. Mr Hancock may be a very good Englishman amongst Bostonians, but he is no more an Englishman amongst Englishmen, than General Gage is a King amongst Sovereigns.

To hinder us from perceiving that they are not Englishmen or our fellow-citizens, the Americans have availed themfelves of every ambiguity in our language. They have called themselves our Fellow-fubjects, knowing that they are to only from a circumflance which belongs to them in common with the people of Hanover. They have talked conftantly of their Mother-country, and have founded their abfurd pretenfions on their British defcent; when they know, that there are thousands amongst them who join in those demands upon their Mother-country who were born in Weftphalia, and who owe their rights of American Englifhmen merely to an act of that legiflature, the authority of which they join in difclaiming and they have lately talked to us, in the tragic ftrain, about the horrors of a civil war, when they know, that, let the war in America be ever fo horrible, there will no true Englishman fall in it, except he be from amongst thofe brave men who have lately failed from England, with red coats upon their backs, to vindicate the important rights of their countrymen. But all this juggling, of which the detail is infinite, muft lofe its effect upon Englifhmen, whenever they come to be dillinctly informed, that the Americans are not their fellow-citizens, but their fubjects; and that it is to be

independent of them, not of the parliament, which, separate from the people of England, has no meaning at all, that is the great object of the present American ftruggles.

With this fingle light, the people of England will be able to fee through all the fophiftry of the American pampleteers; who, having no sense of their own, borrow fome from Locke, and then turn it into nonfenfe by their misapplication of it. They will fee, that all they have faid about taxation going hand in hand with representation, and which Locke exprefsly confines to free men, members of a free state, was never meant to be applied to our Americans, who are not free men, nor in a state of independence, with refpect to England. They will fee, that, notwithstanding the deep and important maxim, That every man's property is his own, and that other no less wonderful discovery, That it is no better than robbing a man to take his property from him without his own confent; yet that the Americans are ftill liable to be juftly taxed by the English; inafmuch as no man who is indebted to other people has a right to call any thing he poffeffes his own, till all thefe his debts are difcharged; that in the mean time he must acknowledge a right in his creditors of taking from him what belongs to them, whether he will or not; and that he must not think of excluding from the number of those creditors the perfon to whom he owes much for fupport and protection, and without whofe fupport and protection he would never have been poffeffed of any thing at all. The Americans are certainly not reprefented in the British parliament; and, from what I have already faid of their fituation and circumstances, it is impoffible they ever fhould; not from the impoffibility of sending members from a great diftance, a circumftance in which the inhabitants of Rhode-ifland do not effentially differ from thofe of the Orkneys, but from the incompatibility of their partial interefts with ours in matters of trade and manufactures, which would make their admiffion into our councils a mifchievous abfurdity.

Minifters of state have seldom leisure, from official bufinefs and parliamentary wrangling, to enter into fpeculative inquiries concerning the more abstract relations of men and things; yet it appears by the late acts of parliament for curbing the Americans, that the true relation be

tween

tween them and us, as laid open in this paper, was not unknown to them. It is at leaft upon this ground that the propriety of those acts can be best defended, and the abfurdity of the complaints againft them easily expofed. The Americans, for inftance, complain, that trials by jury, the birthright of every Englishman, is taken from them. But this afsertion, as far as regards them as Boitonian Englishmen, is not in the least true. They ftill are allowed juries of their own vicinage for deciding every cause, civil or criminal, that can occur with regard to their own affairs within their own diftrict, as fully as is enjoyed by any Englithman in England. But what the Boftonians moft unfairly contend for is, to have difputes between them and the English nation fettled by a jury of Boftonians; that is, that they be allowed to become at the same time both judge and party. This our parliament has wifely provided againft, by ordering all caufes refpecting the public revenue to be tried by the courts of admiralty; and all treafons, and other crimes and mifdemeanors againft the state of G. Britain, to be tried in G. Britain, or in fome other part of the British empire, where its fupreme authority is fully acknowledged. In like manner, their complaints against the plan of government established in Canada, give the ftrongeft prefumption of the wisdom and propriety of it, as thofe complaints manifeftly arife from the various means provided in that plan to prevent the Canadians from entering into rebellious projects, fuch as the Boftonians have lately fallen into, and into which they have been at great pains to draw all their neighbours. The Canadians, upon large and truly revolution principles, are allowed the free exercife of their religion, with full fecurity for their property by forms of law to which they have been long accuftomed, and which, while they are more convenient for them than the common law of England, are of perfect indifference to us. But their duty to the British state is marked out in that plan with much more precifion than has been done in any of the former eftablishments in America, in which there has been more trusted to the gratitude, the justice, and common fenfe, of the perfous on whom they were bestowed, than the event has been able to justify.

I have ftill more to fay upon this fubject, and indeed one of the chief obftructions to our acting hoftilely against the AYOL. XXXVII.

mericans is ftill untouched: but finding I have already extended this letter to an unufual length, must reserve what remains for another. BRITANNICUS.

Lond. Chron.

AMERICA.

A letter from the general congrefs; copies of which, and of the petition to the King, were delivered to each of the Speakers of the provincial affemblies in America, to be by them tranfmitted to their agents at London, viz. Paul Wentworth, Efq; Dr Benjamin Franklin, William Bollen, Elg; Dr Arthur Lee, Thomas Life, Efq; Edmund Burke, Efq; Charles Garth, Efq;

Gentlemen, Philadelphia, O. 26. 1774. WE give you the strongest proof of

our reliance on your zeal and attachment to the happinefs of America, and the cause of liberty, when we commit the inclofed paper to your care.

We defire you will deliver the petition into the hands of his Majefty; and after it has been prefented, we wish it may be made public through the prefs, together with the lift of grievances. And as we hope for great afistance from the fpirit, virtue, and juftice of the nation, it is our carneft defire, that the most effectual care be taken, as early as poffible, to furnifh the trading cities and manufacturing towns throughout the united kingdoms, with our memorial to the people of G. Britain [xxxvi. 691.]

We doubt not but your good fenfe and difcernment will lead you to avail yourselves of every affiftance that may be derived from the advice and friendship of all great and good men, who may incline to aid the cause of liberty and mankind.

The gratitude of America, expreffed in the inclosed vote of thanks [xxxvi. 691.], we defire may be conveyed to the deferving objects of it, in the manner that you think will be most aceeptable to them.

It is propofed, that another congrefs be held, on the roth of May next, at this place; but in the mean time we beg the favour of you, Gentlemen, to tranfmit to the Speakers of the feveral Affemblies, the earlieft information of the most authentic accounts you can collect, of all fuch conduct and designs of the ministry, or parliament as it may concern America to know. We are, &c.

By order and in behalf of the congress,
HENRY MIDDLETON, Prefident.
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