nary wrongs. These parties are always more troublesome than the genuine neutral merchant; and are the most clamorous asserters of the respect due to their flag, for the same reason that a fashionable sharper is, in his quarrels, often more punctilious than a real gentleman, in maintaining the point of honour. It is not his sentiment, but his trade. The neutral ministers, in consequence, present memorials and remon strances; and their governments, perhaps, are induced to take up the dispute. But if abuses of the neutral flag, were made grounds not merely of defence, but of voluntary and original accusation, and if the punishment of the offenders were firmly demanded, the latter would often deem it prudent to be silent; while the neutral governments and their ministers, if they had serious and frequent complaints to answer, would have less leisure, and less inclination, to complain; they ought therefore, I think, under present circumstances, to be put in their turn on the defensive.

Our only effectual remedy, however, must be found in that ancient and just resort, the seizure and confiscation of the property, which is the subject of illicit transactions.

3d. Of the Prudence of applying the proposed Remedy, in regard to the Colonial Trade.

It remains only to consider, as I proposed to do in the last place, whether it is prudent to resort to that remedy for the evils which have been delineated, our right of applying which has, I trust, been sufficiently shewn.

In this, as in most other questions of practical policy, especially in the present very difficult times, it is vain to expect that the alternative to existing evil, should be complete and unqualified good. We are sailing in a tempestuous unknown sea, surrounded with rocks and shoals; and the question is not whether, by changing our course, we shall certainly have a prosperous voyage; but whether the ship will labour less, and the breakers in sight be avoided.

It has been shewn, that the extreme licence of the neutral flags, teems with mischiefs of a ruinous and fatal tendency to our commerce, to our colonies, to our wooden walls themselves, and to our best hopes in the war; and it remains to see, what new evils or dangers must be en countered, should this pernicious licence be restrained.

The sum of all these opposing considerations seems to be this, "we may provoke a quamel

"with the neutral powers." I propose, therefore, briefly to consider, first, the degree of this danger: and next, whether the evils of such a quarrel would be greater than those to which we at present submit.

It is certain, that should his Majesty's government think fit to recall the indulgent instruction that has been so much abused, and revert to the rule of the war 1756, with such modifications only as can be safely allowed, great clamours would immediately arise in the neutral countries. The neutralizing agents, deprived of a large portion of their fraudulent gains, would exclaim aloud against the measure; and even such merchants as have carried on the colonial trade on their own account, would not be well satisfied to find their field of commerce materially narrowed by the assertion of our belligerent rights.

The neutral governments therefore would no doubt complain and remonstrate; "but would they, if firmly, though temperately, resisted, push the controversy into a quarrel? would they maintain their pretensions to the trade in question, at the expence of a war with Great Britain?" I firmly believe they would not; because I am sure they ought not, whether they regard their honour, their duty, or their interests.

Much though the principles of justice are unhappily made to bend to political convenience in

the conduct of nations, they have not yet wholly lost their force. Like the merits of an honorary quarrel among gentlemen, they may at least serve for a basis of conciliation, between parties who have no very urgent motive, or determined inclination, to fight. They will save the point of honour; for a nation cannot be disgraced by receding from pretensions which are demonstrably groundless and unjust.

I cannot help hoping, however, that with our late fellow subjects of America at least, the equity of our cause will have a more direct and powerful influence; for I have marked as an auspicious omen, in this vernal season of their power, a reverence for moral principle prevailing in their supreme representative assembly, and triumphing, in matters of interior legislation at least, over the suggestions of an ungenerous policy.

It cannot be supposed, that the great body of the American people are at this period partial to France, or inimically disposed to Great Britain. If they are insensible to the ties of a common extraction, and if the various sympathies of religion, language, and manners, that ought to incline them favourably towards us, have lost their natural influence, they still cannot be regardless of the interesting fact, that we alone, of all the nations in the old world, now sustain the sinking `cause of civil liberty, to which they are so fondly

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attached. They see that the iron yoke of a military despotism is now rivetted on the neck of that powerful people, which aspires to universal domination, and which has already deprived its defenceless neighbours of the freedom, they formerly enjoyed; nor can they doubt that the subjugation of England, would be fatal to the last hope of liberty in Europe.

Is the Atlantic thought a sufficient rampart for themselves, against the same despotic system? The people of America, are neither so ungenerous, nor so unwise, as to act on that mistaken confidence. They will advert to the state of things which a disastrous issue of the present war might produce. They will contemplate the possible approach of a political prodigy, more terrific than any that earth has yet beheld-France lord of the navies, as well as the armies, of Europe. They will look to the South, and see the resources of the Spanish American empire, in the hand of this Colossus; they will look behind them, and regard a large country, in which, were the British government subverted, religion, extraction, and language, would favour the ambition of France. Nor will they forget, that this unprincipled power is crafty, as well as audacious; that she well knows how to divide those whom she means to subdue; and has already broken confederations as sacred, as that of the American states.