17. If you see rival nations rejoicing at the prospect of your disunion with your provinces, and endeavoring to promote it; if they translate, publish and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonists, 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.

18. 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.

19. 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,

VOL. I.

2 E

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 ill-will or your ignorance, and contribute farther to produce and strengthen an opinion among them, that you are no longer fit to govern them.*

20. 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

1 I am not versed in Indian affairs, but I find that in April 1773, 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 [on the Ohio] and removing the soldiers with their sharp-edged weapons out of the 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: I attempt no application of facts, personally invidious. B. V.

2 As the reader may be inclined to divide his belief between the wisdom of ministry, and the candor and veracity of Dr. Franklin, I shall inform him that two contrary objectious may be made to the truth of this representation. The first is, that the conduct of Great Britain is made too absurd for possibility; and the second, that it is not made absurd enough for fact. If we consider that this writing does not include the measures subsequent to 1773, the latter difficulty is easily set aside. The former, I can only solve by the many instances in history, where the infatuation of individuals has brought the heaviest calamities upon nations. B. V.

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.

PAPER

Written in England by Benjamin Franklin, to discourage the intended act for preventing emigration.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

SIR,

You give us in your paper of Tuesday the 16th of November, what is called "the Plan of an Act to be proposed at the next meeting of Parliament to prevent the Emigration of our People." I know not from what authority it comes, but as it is very circumstantial, I suppose some such plan may be really under consideration, and that this is thrown out to feel the pulse of the public. I shall therefore, with your leave, give my sentiments of it in your paper.

During a century and half that Englishmen have been at liberty to remove if they pleased to America, we have heard of no law to restrain that liberty, and confine them as prisoners in this island. Nor do we perceive any ill effects produced by their emigration. Our estates, far from diminishing in value through a want of tenants, have been in that period more than doubled; the lands in general are better cultivated; their increased produce finds a ready sale at an advanced price, and the complaint has for some time been, not that we want mouths to consume our meat, but that we want meat for our number of mouths.

Why then is such a restraining law now thought necessary? A paragraph in the same paper from the Edinburgh Courant, may perhaps throw some light upon this question. We are there told, "that 1500 people have emigrated to America from the shire of Sutherland within these two years, and carried with them 7,500l. sterling; which exceeds a year's rent of the whole county; that the single consideration of the misery which most of these people must suffer in America, independent of the loss of men and money to the mother-country, should engage the attention not only of the landed interest, but of administration." The humane writer of this paragraph may, I fancy, console himself with the reflection, that perhaps the apprehended future sufferings of those emigrants will never exist; for that it was probably the authentic accounts

they had received from friends already settled there, of the felicity to be enjoyed in that country, with a thorough knowledge of their own misery at home, which induced their removal. And, as a politician, he may be comforted by assuring himself, that if they really meet with greater misery in America, their future letters lamenting it, will be more credited than the Edinburgh Courant, and effectually, without a law put a stop to the emigration. It seems some of the Scottish chiefs, who delight no longer to live upon their estates in the honorable independence they were born to, among their respecting tenants, but choose rather a life of luxury, though among the dependants of a court, have lately raised their rents most grievously to support the expense. The consuming of those rents in London, though equally prejudicial to the poor county of Sutherland, no Edinburgh newspaper complains of; but now, that the oppressed tenants take flight, and carry with them what might have supported the landlord's London magnificence, he begins to feel for the MOTHER-COUNTRY, and its enormous loss of 7,500l. carried to her colonies! Administration is called upon to remedy the evil, by another abridgment of ENGLISH LIBERTY. And surely administration should do something for these gentry, as they do any thing for administration.

But is there not an easier remedy? Let them return to their family seats, live among their peo