Messieurs EDES & GILL,
Please to insert the following,
TEA! how I shudder at thy fatal Stream !
As Læthe, dreadful !     YOUNG.

WE may resolve as often as we will upon oeconomy,
industry, and the encouragement of our own ma-
nufactures -- we may exert ourselves as much as we will to
procure leather and wool and flax, and working them into
cloathing ; -- nay, we may declaim against luxury and ef-
feminacy, as the bane, and ruin our country ; and in all
this we shall do well : -- But here is one resolution more
which would do us more essential service than all the rest ; I
mean a resolution to discard from our houses that most
pernicious article of Luxury, TEA.

It is from the duties imposed on this article, that the
fautors of an American revenue, expect to derive it. --
The produce of all the duties upon glass, paper, paint,
&c. would be but a trifle and quite insufficient for the
purpose of supporting civil government and the admini-
stration of justice in those colonies where it shall be want-
ed. But, TEA was known to be imported into America
in such immense quantities, and the taste, I might more
properly say the passion for it, to be grown so universal
and so strong, that the politicians who planned our ruin,
I mean the placemen and pensioners, who expect to be sup-
ported by it, selected this article, as a bait, to allure us to
their snare. -- The cunning of the old serpent is more
visible in this than in any one of their devices.

The duty was before paid upon Tea, in Great-
Britain, was one shilling a pound. -- This duty is now
taken off by a drawback, and three pence sterling only a
pound is imposed on the importation of it into the Colo-
nies. -- In this manner nine pence a pound sterling is saved
to the consumer, which, considering the quantity used upon
the continent, is a great thing. This it was thought must
be popular, like the device of James II. to introduce Po-
pery under the disguise of so popular a measure as an uni-
versal toleration. But such dissimulation, however speci-
ous, will never amuse wise men. -- The same power that
impos'd three pence, will, when once acknowledged and
obeyed as authority, and whenever the demands of their
hosts of pensioners require it, impose three shillings on
three pounds.

There is not however so much danger of our being de-
ceived by this feint, as there is of our deceiving ourselves
by our own habits and appetites. The whole continent
is so bigotted and devoted to Tea, that there is really
some reason to fear they would part with all their liber-
ties, and religion too, rather than renounce it. -- Good
God ! Is this possible ! Is man a rational creature, or is he
more stupid than the cattle ! Can the spirit of man submit
to the insolence of a crew of little dirty tyrants, and en-
tail the curs'd inheritance to his children, rather than
mortify one ridiculous appetite ! -- far otherwise. A wise
man would cut off a right hand, or pluck out a right eye,
rather than part with any one Right of a British Subject.
-- It is ridiculous to talk of expedients and equivalents --
tho' enough of these might be found. -- Let us abjure the
poisonous baneful plant and its odious infusion -- Poison-
ous and odious, I mean, not on account of its physical
qualities, but on account of the political diseases & death
that are connected with every particle of it.