er resentment, and
operated as a screen to the whole. But even these considerations
must cease, when national objects interfere and oppose them. Repeated
aggravations will provoke a retort, and policy justify the measure. We
mean now to take you seriously up upon your own ground and principle,
and as you do, so shall you be done by.

You ought to know, gentlemen, that England and Scotland, are far more
exposed to incendiary desolation than America, in her present state, can
possibly be. We occupy a country, with but few towns, and whose riches
consist in land and annual produce. The two last can suffer but little,
and that only within a very limited compass. In Britain it is otherwise.
Her wealth lies chiefly in cities and large towns, the depositories
of manufactures and fleets of merchantmen. There is not a nobleman's
country seat but may be laid in ashes by a single person. Your own
may probably contribute to the proof: in short, there is no evil which
cannot be returned when you come to incendiary mischief. The ships in
the Thames, may certainly be as easily set on fire, as the temporary
bridge was a few years ago; yet of that affair no discovery was ever
made; and the loss you would sustain by such an event, executed at a
proper season, is infinitely greater than any you can inflict. The East
India House and the Bank, neither are nor can be secure from this sort
of destruction, and, as Dr. Price justly observes, a fire at the latter
would bankrupt the nation. It has never been the custom of France and
England when at war, to make those havocs on each other, because the
ease with which they could retaliate rendered it as impolitic as if each
had destroyed his own.

But think not, gentlemen, that our distance secures you, or our
invention fails us. We can much easier accomplish such a point than any
nation in Europe. We talk the same language, dress in the same habit,
and appear with the same manners as yourselves. We can pass from
one part of England to another unsuspected; many of us are as well
acquainted with the country as you are, and should you impolitically
provoke us, you will most assuredly lament the effects of it. Mischiefs
of this kind require no army to execute them. The means are obvious, and
the opportunities unguardable. I hold up a warning to our senses, if you
have any left, and "to the unhappy people likewise, whose affairs are
committed to you."* I call not with the rancor of an enemy, but the