promote it, if they translate, publish and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonies, at the same time. privately stimulating you to severer measures, let not that alarm or offend you. Why should it? since you all mean the same thing?

XVIII. If any colony should at their own charge erect a fortress, to secure their port against the fleets of a foreign enemy, get your governor to betray that fortress into your hands. Never think of paying what it cost the country, for that would look, at least, like some regard for justice; but turn it into a citadel, to awe the inhabitants and curb their commerce. If they should have lodged in such fortress the very arms they bought and used to aid you in your conquests, seize them all; it will provoke like ingratitude added to robbery. One admirable effect of these operations will be, to discourage every other colony from erecting such defences, and so their and your enemies may more easily invade them, to the great disgrace of your government, and of course the furtherance of your project.

XIX. Send armies into their country, under pretence of protecting the inhabitants; but, instead of garrisoning the forts on their frontiers with those troops, to prevent incursions, demolish those forts, and order the troops into the heart of the country, that the savages may be encouraged to attack the frontiers, and that the troops may be protected by the inhabitants: this will seem to proceed from your illwill or your ignorance, and contribute farther to produce and strengthen an opinion among them, that you are no longer fit to govern them'.

k In April, 1778, the assembled chiefs of the western nations told one of our Indian agents. "that they remembered their father, the king of Great Britain's message, delivered to them last fall, of demolishing Fort Pittsburg and removing the soldiers with their sharp-edged weapons out ofthe country:-this gave them great pleasure, as it was a strong proof of his paternal kindness towards them." (See considerations on the Agreement with Mr. T. Walpole for Lands upon the Ohio, p. 9). This is general history: the persons concerned are dead, and the application of facts would be personally invidious.

1 As some readers may be inclined to divide their belief between the wisdom of the British ministry and the candor and veracity of Dr. Franklin, it may be ob

XX. Lastly, invest the general of your army in the provinces with great and unconstitutional powers, and free him from the control of even your own civil governors. Let him have troops enow under his command, with all the fortresses in his possession, and who knows but (like some provincial generals in the Roman empire, and encouraged by the universal discontent you have produced) he may take it into his head to set up for himself? If he should, and you have carefully practised these few excellent rules. of mine, take my word for it, all the provinces will immediately join him—and you will that day (if you have not done it sooner) get rid of the trouble of governing them, and all the plagues attending their commerce and connection from thenceforth and for ever.

State of America on Dr. Franklin's Arrival there.

DEAR FRIEND,

Philadelphia, May 16, 1775.

YOU will have heard before this reaches you, of a march stolen by the regulars into the country by night, and of their expedition back again. They retreated 20 miles in six hours.

The governor had called the assembly to propose lord North's pacific plan, but, before the time of their meeting, began cutting of throats.-You know it was said he carried the sword in one hand, and the olive branch in the other; and it seems he chose to give them a taste of the sword first.

He is doubling his fortifications at Boston, and hopes to secure his troops till succor arrives. The place indeed is naturally so defensible, that I think them in no danger.

served that two contrary objections might be made to the truth of this representation. The first is, that the conduct of G. Britain is made 100 absurd for possibility, and the second, that it is not made absurd enough for fact. If we consider that this piece does not include the measures subsequent to 1773, the latter difficulty is easily set aside. The former can only be solved by the many instances in history, where the infatuation of individuals has brought the heaviest calamities upon nations.

All America is exasperated by his conduct, and more firmly united than ever. The breach between the two countries is grown wider, and in danger of becoming irreparable.

I had a passage of six weeks, the weather constantly so moderate that a London wherry might have accompanied us all the way. I got home in the evening, and the next morning was unanimously chosen by the assembly a delegate to the congress, now sitting.

In coming over, I made a valuable philosophical discovery, which I shall commicate to you when I can get a little time. At present am extremely hurried.

Yours most affectionately,

B. FRANKLIN.

Proposed Vindication and Offer from Congress to Parliament,

in 1775.m

FORASMUCH as the enemies of America, in the parliament of Great Britain, to render us odious to the nation, and give an ill impression of us in the minds of other European powers, have represented us as unjust and ungrateful in the highest degree; asserting on every occasion, that the colonies were settled at the expence of Britain; that they were, at the expence of the same, protected in their infancy; that they now ungratefully and unjustly refuse to contribute to their own protection and the common defence of the nation; that they aim at independence; that they intend an abolition of the navigation acts: and that they are frandulent in their commercial dealings, and purpose to cheat their creditors in Britain, by avoiding the payment of their just debts :—

m This paper was drawn up in a committee of congress, June 25, 1775, but does not appear on their minutes, a severe act of parliament, which arrived about that time, having determined them not to give the sum proposed in it.-[It was first printed in Woodfall's Public Advertiser for July 18, 1777.]

And as, by frequent repetition, these groundless assertions and malicious calumnies may, if not contradicted and refuted, obtain farther credit, and be injurious throughout Europe to the reputation and interest of the confederate colonies, it seems proper and necessary to examine them in our own just vindication.

With regard to the first, that the colonies were settled at the expence of Britain, it is a known fact, that none of the twelve united colonies were settled, or even discovered, at the expence of England. Henry the VIIth indeed granted a commission to Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian, and his sons, to sail into the western seas for the discovery of new countries; but is was to be "suis eorum propriis sumptibus et expensis," at their own costs and charges. They discovered, but soon slighted and neglected, these northern territories; which were, after more than a hundred years dereliction, purchased of the natives, and settled at the charge and by the labour of private men and bodies of men, our ancestors, who came over hither for that purpose. But our adversaries have never been able to produce any record, that ever the parliament or government of England was at the smallest expence on these accounts: on the contrary, there exists on the journals of parliament a solemn declaration in 1642, (only twenty-two years after the first settlement of the Massachusetts, when, if such expence had ever been incurred, some of the members must have known and remembered it) "That these colonies had been planted and established without any expence to the state. New York is the only colony in the founding of which England can pretend to have been at any expence, and that was only the

n See the Commission in the Appendix to Pownall's Administration of the Colonies. Edit. 1775.

"Veneris, 10 March, 1642. Whereas the plantations in New England have, by the blessin of the Almighty, had good and prosperous success, without any public barge to this state, and are now likely to prove very happy for the propagation of the gospel in those parts, and very beneficial and commodious to this kingdom and nation: the commons, now assembled in parlia ment, &c." See Governor Hutchinson's History.

charge of a small armament to take it from the Dutch, who planted it. But to retain this colony at peace, another at that time, full as valuable, planted by private countrymen of ours, was given up by the crown to the Dutch in exchange, viz. Surinam, now a wealthy sugar-colony in Guiana, and which, but for that cession, might still have remained in our possession. Of late, indeed, Britain has been at some expence in planting two colonies, Georgia and Nova Scotia; but those are not in our confederacy; and the expence she has been at in their name, has chiefly been in grants of sums unnecessarily large, by way of salaries to officers sent from England, and in jobs to friends, whereby dependants might be provided for; those excessive grants not being requisite to the welfare and good government of the colonies; which good government (as experience in many instances of other colonies has taught us) may be much more frugally, and full as effectually provided for, and supported.

With regard to the second assertion, that these colonies were protected in their infant state by England: it is a notorious fact, that in none of the many wars with the Indian natives, sustained by our infant settlements, for a century after our first arrival, were ever any troops or forces of any kind sent from England to assit us; nor were any forts built at her expence to secure our sea-ports from foreign invaders; nor any ships of war sent to protect our trade, till many years after our first settlement, when our commerce became an object of revenue, or of advantage to British merchants; and then it was thought necessary to have a frigate in some of our ports, during peace, to give weight to the authority of custom-house officers, who were to restrain that commerce for the benefit of England. Our own arms, with our poverty, and the care of a kind providence, were all this time our only protection, while we were neglected by the English government; which either thought

p Georgia acceded to the confederacy afterwards, that is in July, 1775