ornish congress at Truro."

Of this memorial, what could be said, but that it was written in jest,
or written by a madman? Yet I know not whether the warmest admirers of
Pennsylvanian eloquence, can find any argument in the addresses of the
congress, that is not, with greater strength, urged by the Cornishman.

The argument of the irregular troops of controversy, stripped of its
colours, and turned out naked to the view, is no more than this. Liberty
is the birthright of man, and where obedience is compelled, there is no
liberty. The answer is equally simple. Government is necessary to man,
and where obedience is not compelled, there is no government.

If the subject refuses to obey, it is the duty of authority to use
compulsion. Society cannot subsist but by the power, first of making
laws, and then of enforcing them.

To one of the threats hissed out by the congress, I have put nothing
similar into the Cornish proclamation; because it is too wild for folly,
and too foolish for madness. If we do not withhold our king and his
parliament from taxing them, they will cross the Atlantick, and enslave
us.

How they will come, they have not told us; perhaps they will take wing,
and light upon our coasts. When the cranes thus begin to flutter, it is
time for pygmies to keep their eyes about them. The great orator
observes, that they will be very fit, after they have been taxed, to
impose chains upon us. If they are so fit as their friend describes
them, and so willing as they describe themselves, let us increase our
army, and double our militia.

It has been, of late, a very general practice to talk of slavery among
those who are setting at defiance every power that keeps the world in
order. If the learned author of the Reflections on Learning has rightly
observed, that no man ever could give law to language, it will be vain
to prohibit the use of the word slavery; but I could wish it more
discreetly uttered: it is driven, at one time, too hard into our ears by
the loud hurricane of Pennsylvanian eloquence, and, at another, glides
too cold into our hearts by the soft conveyance of a female patriot,
bewailing the miseries of her friends and fellow-citizens.

Such has been the progress of sedition, that those who, a few years ago,
disputed only our right of laying taxes, now question the validity of
every act of legislation. They consider themselves as emancipated from
obedience, and as being no longer the subjects of the