The Virginia Gazette

These miscreants of power in this once happy kingdom have now nearly reduced it, by their arbitrary and scandalous proceedings, to a most dangerous and wretched situation. By a dispute with America (which they ought to have prevented, instead of provoked) we are deprived of the advantages resulting from their trade and commerce; an advantage which our rivals, the Dutch, are already improving, by lading their vessels for America with those very articles which our wise Counsellors have, through fear, prohibited. Britons! How long will you remain the dupes of pensioned hirelings, and behold yourselves robbed and plundered of your trade?

The proclamation against sending guns and gunpowder out of this kingdom will be of very little use or effect, because the Americans will certainly procure whatever quantity of them they want from Holland, France, or Spain; and if orders were given to stop and seize such ships as were laden with the above commodities by those nations, it would bring on an immediate war with them; an event which our present despicable ministry dare not hazard with any foreign power, though they assume courage sufficient to send fleets and armies to cut the throats of our American brethren.