The Virginia Gazette

Extract of a letter from a Gentleman in England, to his friend in Connecticut.

"My heart trembles under the prospect of public affairs. It looks to me as though God was about to punish both us and you for our respective wretched declensions. The clouds are gathering, the storm of the divine indignation seems to be approaching. I should have been glad to have read from your public papers that you had appointed days for fasting and prayer, and were engaged in seeking to the Lord that your grievances, instead of being increased, might be removed. This would have been more pleasing, and of far more service to your cause in Britain, and of much better report, than the account of the manner in which the 14th of August was celebrated by the Sons of Liberty, and of the toasts they drank. I am so much the friend to that cause they are the espousers of that I am grieved at every thing that has a tendency to injure it by prejudicing people against the Americans.

Let nothing provoke you to have a recourse to arms, for many would be glad to see you falling into that snare; and your doing it would lose you a number of your friends. You have now gone too far to go back; you must abide by your determinations, and let nothing move you from your resolutions, though an entire stop should be put to your whole trade. You must try who can stand it out longest, Britain or America. Should you tire as Issachar, and crouch down between your burthens, because that present rest is good, you are loaded for ever with a mode of taxing wherein your consent is not required. The merchants and traders must agree to submit to any difficulties for a few years, that they may carry their point, and leave their posterity that invaluable pearl LIBERTY. A few years must relieve them, for firm adherence to their resolutions will so affect our manufactures (there are our present difficulties, already so great, through the decay of commerce, that we know not what to do) excite compassion, and raise up a party to espouse their interest, that for our own sakes we shall be obliged to comply."