mity in bearing them, will be sufficient I hope, to procure them the esteem of those, who have been so much blinded by passion, as to deny it to their other numerous virtues and accomplishments. Your island is respectable. Your private characters may be amiable; but in a public capacity, you have cast a most high and unprovoked censure on a gallant, generous, loyal people. You have propagated a set of sentiments, and have promoted a tenor of conduct, that may be hurtful to the cause of freedom. I have engaged with too unequal arms perhaps to oppose you; but to fail in such a contest, will afford me some kind of pleasure. I wish you every blessing that men can enjoy ; and as a foundation and security of all the rest, I wish you a true love of liberty. A NORTH-AMERICAN. THE FARMER'S LETTERS in this collection, are published from the Virginia edition of them in 1769, the only copy the editors have been able to procure. The preface to that edition, is believed to have been written by Richard Henry Lee, afterwards president of congress. IN May, 1768, Dr. Franklin had the letters reprinted in London, and in a preface strongly recommended them to the attention of the public. In that preface he says, "As I consider our fellow subjects of America as reasonable creatures, I "cannot but be astonished, that since there ap 66 pears to be an extreme diversity of sentiment, "between us and them, concerning the power of 66 66 parliament to impose taxes in America, there “has not been any address made to their reason; "that none of our able and learned writers has attempted to convince them that they are in the wrong, by clearly proving, either by the common "law of nations, or by the terms of their funda"mental constitutions, that they are subject to be "taxed by our parliament, though they have no representatives in it. 66 |