By proceeding in a firm, but in a peaceable, loyal and constitutional manner, in the settlement of this unhappy difl^erence with our mother country, we cannot fail, I am convinced, of meeting with all desirable success. We shall by these means, undoubtedly, secure to ourselves a free constitution ; we shall have a line of government stretched out and ascertained, and we shall be restored to the favor and protection of the parent state, which, next to the favor of Heaven, will be our best and strongest safeguard and security. But if you listen to the dictates of violent and enthusiastic men, if you adopt the ill-judged, tyrannical, and destructive measures of the Congress, where will your miseries end 1 where, indeed, I cannot tell ; but from that moment you must date the cjmmencement of them; from that moment be assured your ruin is inevitable. Now is the critical moment of our fate ; we have it in our power to do the most essential good, or the most essential mischief to ourselves and our posterity. If we neglect this opportunity of promoting our common felicity, and of establishing our liberties upon a firm and lasting basis, we may, perhaps, never have another, and we shall repent of our fatal folly and infatuation, when too late to retrieve the mistake ; when the horrors and miseries of a civil war shall be increased, if possible, ten fold upon our heads, by the curses and execration of our distracted and deluded constituents ; when all orders and degrees of men shall, in the bitterness of their hearts, point us out as the authors of their ruin ; when we shall be obliged to submit to the laws of conquest, or the penalties of rebellion.