_To the Inhabitants of the Province of Massachusetts Bay_,
It would be an endless task to remark minutely upon each of the fancied grievances, that swarm and cluster, fill and deform the American chronicles. An adeptness at discovering grievances has lately been one of the principal recommendations to public notice and popular applause. We have had geniuses selected for that purpose, called committees upon grievances; a sagacious set they were, and discovered a multitude before it was known, that they themselves were the greatest grievances that the country was infested with. The case is shortly this; the whigs suppose the colonies to be separate or distinct states: having fixed this opinion in their minds, they are at no loss for grievances. Could I agree with them in their first principle, I should acquiesce in many of their deductions; for in that case every act of parliament, extending to the colonies, and every movement of the crown to carry them into execution, would be really grievances, however wise and salutary they might be in themselves, as they would be exertions of a power that we were not constitutionally subject to, and would deserve the name of usurpation and tyranny; but deprived of this their corner stone, the terrible fabric of grievances vanishes, like castles raised by enchantment, and leaves the wondering spectator amazed and confounded at the deception. He suspects himself to have but just awoke from sleep, or recovered from a trance, and that the formidable spectre, that had froze him with horror, was no more than the creature of a vision, or the delusion of a dream.
Upon this point, whether the colonies are distinct states or not, our patriots have rashly tendered Great Britain an issue, against every principle of law and constitution, against reason and common prudence. There is no arbiter between us but the sword; and that the decision of that tribunal will be against us, reason foresees, as plainly as it can discover any event that lies in the womb of futurity. No person, unless actuated by ambition, pride, malice, envy, or a malignant combination of the whole, that verges towards madness, and hurries the man away from himself, would wage war upon such unequal terms. No honest man would engage himself, much less plunge his country into the calamities of a war upon equal terms, without first settling with his conscience, in the retired moments of reflection, the important question respecting the justice of his cause. To do this, we must hear and weigh every thing that is fairly adduced, on either side of the question, with equal attention and care. A disposition to drink in with avidity, what favours our hypothesis, and to reject with disgust whatever contravenes it, is an infallible mark of a narrow, selfish mind. In matters of small moment, such obstinacy is weakness and folly, in important ones, fatal madness. There are many among us, that have devoted themselves to the slavish dominion of prejudice; indeed the more liberal have seldom had an opportunity of bringing the question to a fair examen. The eloquence of the bar, the desk and the senate, the charms of poetry, the expressions of painting, sculpture and statuary have conspired to fix and rivet ideas of independance upon the mind of the colonists. The overwhelming torrent, supplied from so many fountains, rolled on with increasing rapidity and violence, till it became superior to all restraint. It was the reign of passion; the small, still voice of reason was refused audience. I have observed that the press was heretofore open to but one side of the question, which has given offence to a writer in Edes and Gill's paper, under the signature of Novanglus, to whom I have many things to say. I would at present ask him, if the convention of committees for the county of Worcester, in recommending to the inhabitants of that county not to take newspapers, published by two of the printers in this town, and two at New York, have not affected to be licensers of the press? And whether, by proscribing these printers, and endeavouring to deprive them of a livelihood, they have not manifested an illiberal, bigoted, arbitrary, malevolent disposition? And whether, by thus attempting to destroy the liberty of the press, they have not betrayed a consciousness of the badness of their cause?