earth may say of your Paper, have
done important service to your country, by your readiness and freedom
in publishing the speculations of the curious. The stale, impudent
insinuations of slander and sedition, with which the gormandizers of
power have endeavoured to discredit your Paper, are so much the more to
your honour; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her
arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of
thinking, speaking, and writing.--And if the public interest, liberty
and happiness have been in danger, from the ambition or avarice of any
great man, or number of great men, whatever may be their politeness,
address, learning, ingenuity, and in other respects integrity and
humanity, you have done yourselves honour, and your country service, by
publishing and pointing out that avarice and ambition.--These views are
so much the more dangerous and pernicious, for the virtues with which
they may be accompanied in the same character, and with so much the more
watchful jealousy to be guarded against.

"Curse on such virtues, they've undone their country."

_Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing, with
the utmost freedom whatever can be warranted by the laws of your
country; nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any
pretences of politeness, delicacy, or decency._ These, as they are often
used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and
cowardice. Much less, I presume, will you be discouraged by any
pretences, that malignants on this side the water[A] will represent your
Paper as facetious and seditious, or that the Great on the other side
the water will take offence at them. This dread of representation has
had for a long time in this province effects very similar to what the
physicians call an _hydrophobia_, or dread of water.--It has made us
delirious--and we have rushed headlong into the water, till we are
almost drowned, out of simple or phrensical fear of it. Believe me, the
character of this country has suffered more in Britain, by the
pusillanimity with which we have borne many insults and indignities from
the creatures of power at home, and the creatures of those creatures
here, than it ever did, or ever will by the freedom and spirit that has
been or will be discovered in writing or action. Believe me, my
countrymen, they have imbibed an opinion on the other side the water,
that we are an ignorant, a timid, an