lull us into security, by granting us the full extent of our
petitions. The warm sunshine of influence would melt down the
virtue, which the violence of the storm rendered more firm and
unyielding. In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our
descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and
zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption
would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our
resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now
animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our
numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to
tyranny. Ye abandoned minions of an infatuated ministry, if
peradventure any should yet remain among us, remember that a Warren
and Montgomery are numbered among the dead. Contemplate the mangled
bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward
of such sacrifices? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee,
supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut
the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to
riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye
love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than
the animating contest of freedom,--go from us in peace. We ask not
your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed
you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget
that ye were our countrymen!

To unite the supremacy of Great Britain and the liberty of America
is utterly impossible. So vast a continent, and of such a distance
from the seat of empire, will every day grow more unmanageable. The
motion of so unwieldy a body cannot be directed with any dispatch
and uniformity without committing to the Parliament of Great Britain
powers inconsistent with our freedom. The authority and force which