[Extract]

The Viper, sloop-of-war, has aped the piratical conduct of the Ministerial ships to the eastward, by taking several of our vessels, inward bound, without so much as the least colour of their having violated any of the acts of trade. Nothing can more clearly manifest the absurdity and injustice of the present measures against this distressed Country, than the violations of those acts which they contend ought to bind the Americans, and which they come to enforce against them by every artifice their wicked hearts can suggest. Will a God of justice suffer such matchless wickedness to pass with impunity? Surely he will not.