contemptible, and bespeak a
narrowness of soul which the virtuous are strangers to. Let not, then,
any disrespectful epithets which the vulgar and illiterate may throw
out, prejudice you against them; and endeavor to observe this general
rule, dictated at least by humanity, 'that he is a good man who is
engaged in a good cause.'

Your enemies have said you are friends to absolute monarchy and
despotism, and that you have offered yourselves as tools in the hands of
Administration, to rivet the chains forging for your brethren in
America. I hope and think my knowledge of you authorizes the assertion
that you are friends to liberty, and the natural and avowed enemies of
tyranny and usurpation. All of you, I doubt not, came into the Country
with a determined resolution of finishing here your days; nor dare I
doubt but that, fired with the best and noblest species of human
emulation, you would wish to transmit to the rising generation that best
of all patrimonies, the legacy of freedom.

Private views, and offers of immediate reward, can only operate on base
and unmanly minds. That soul in which the love of liberty ever dwelt
must reject, with honest indignation, every idea of preferment, founded
on the ruins of a virtuous and deserving people. I would have you look
up to the Constitution of Britain as the best and surest safeguard to
your liberties. Whenever an attempt is made to violate its fundamental
principles, every effort becomes laudable which may tend to preserve its
natural purity and perfection.

The warmest advocates for Administration have candor sufficient to admit
that the people of Great Britain have no right to tax America. If they
have not, for what are they contending? It will, perhaps, be answered,
for the dignity of Government. Happy would it be for those who advance
this doctrine to consider, that there is more real greatness and genuine
magnanimity in acknowledging an error, than in persisting in it.
Miserable must that state be, whose rulers, rather than give up a little
punctilio, would endanger the lives of thousands of its subjects in a
quarrel, the injustice and impropriety of which is universally
acknowledged. If the Americans wish for anything more than is set forth
in the address of the last Congress to the King and people of Great
Britain--if independence is their aim--by removing their real
grievances, their artificial ones (if any they should avow) will soon
appear, and with them will th