Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

effectual measures to enforce due obedience to the laws and authority of the supreme legislature.

19. Soon after the commercial intercourse of whole colonies, with foreign countries, and with each other, was cut off by an act of parliament. By another, several of them were entirely prohibited from the fisheries in the seas near their coast, on which they always depended for their subsistence; and large reinforcements of ships and troops were immediately sent over to general Gage.

20. Fruitless were all the entreaties, arguments, and eloquence of an illustrious band of the most distinguished peers and commoners, who nobly and strenuously asserted the justice of our cause, to stay or even to mitigate, the heedless fury with which these accumulated and unexampled outrages were hurried on.

21. Equally fruitless was the interference of the city of London, of Bristol, and many other respectable towns in our favor. Parliament adopted an insiduous manœuvre calculated to divide us, to establish a perpetual auction of taxations, where colony should bid against colony, all of them uninformed what ransom would redeem their lives; and thus to extort from us, at the point of the bayonet, the unknown sums that would be sufficient to gratify, if possible to gratify, ministerial rapacity, with the miserable indulgence left to us of raising, in our own mode, the prescribed tribute.

22. What terms more rigid and humiliating could have been dictated by remorseless victors to conquered enemies? In our circumstances, to accept them would be to deserve them.

23. Soon after the intelligence of these proceedings arrived on this continent, general Gage, who, in the course of the last year had taken possession of the town of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, and still occupied it as a garrison, on the 19th day of April, sent out from that place a large detachment of his army, who made an unprovoked assault on the inhabitants of the said province, at the town of Lexington; asappears by the affidavits of a great number of persons (some of whom were officers and soldiers of that detachment) murdered eight of the inhabitants, and wounded many others.

24. From thence the troops proceeded in warlike array to the town of Concord, where they set upon another party of the inhabitants of the same province, killing several and wounding more, until compelled to retreat by the country people, suddenly assembled to repel this cruel aggression.

25. Hostilities thus commenced by the British troops, have been since prosecuted by them without regard to faith or reputation. The inhabitants of Boston, being confined in that town by the general their governor, and having, in order to procure their dismission, entered into a treaty with him, it was stipulated that the said inhabitants having deposited their arms with their own magistrates, should have liberty to depart, taking with them their other effects.

26. They accordingly delivered up their arms; but in open violation of honor, in defiance of the obligation of treaties, which even savage nations esteem sacred, the governor ordered the arms deposited as aforesaid that they might be preserved for their owners, to be seized by a body of soldiers; detained the greatest part of the inhabitants in the town, and compelled the few who were permitted to retire, to leave their most valuable effects behind.

27. By this perfidy, wives are separated from their husbands, children from their parents, the aged and sick from their relations and friends, who wish to attend and comfort them :and those who have been used to live in plenty, and even elegance, are reduced to deplorable distress.

28. The general, further emulating his ministerial masters by a proclamation bearing date on the 12th day of June, after venting the grossest falsehoods and calumnies against the good people of these colonies, proceeds to "declare them all, either by name or description, to be rebels and traitors; to supercede the course of common law, and instead thereof to publish and order the use and exercise of the law martial."

29. His troops have butchered our country men, have wantonly burnt Charlestown, besides a considerable number of houses in other placer; our ships and vessels are seized; the necessary supplies of provisions are intercepted, and he is ex. ercising his utmost power to spread destruction and devasta. tion around him.

30. We have received certain intelligence, that gen. Carleton, the governor of Canada, is instigating the people of that province, and the Indians, to fall upon us; and we have but too much reason to apprehend, that schemes have been formed to excite domestic enemies against us. In brief, a part of these colonies now feel, and all of them are sure of feeling, as far as vengeance of administration can inflict them, the compliI calamities of fire, sword and famine.

We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an un

2

conditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom, which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infainy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

-32. Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great; and if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favor towards us, that Providence would not perinit us to be called into the severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strongth, and had been previously exercised in warlike operations, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves.

33. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that excrting the utmost energy of these powers, which our benefi cent Creator has graciously bestowed upon us, the arins we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind, resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

34. Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored. Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them.

35. We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without an imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.

34. In our own native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birth right, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against, violence actually offered, we have taken up arms.We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

37. With an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the universe, we most devoutly impiore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war.

ELOQUENCE.

Extract from Mr.AMES' Speech in Congress on the subject of ex. ecuting the Treaty between the U. States and G. Britain. 1. THE consequences of refusing to make provision for the

treaty are not all to be foreseen. By rejecting, vast in. terests are committed to the sport of the winds. Chance be. comes the arbiter of events, and it is forbidden to human foresight, to count their number, or measure their extent. Before we resolve to leap into this abyss, so dark and so profound, it becomes us to pause and reflect upon such of the dangers as are obvious and inevitable. If this assembly should be wrought in. to a temper to defy the consequences, it is vain, it is deceptive to pretend that we can escape them. It is worse than weakness to say, that as to public faith our vote has already settled the question. Another tribunal than our own is already erected. The public opinion, not merely of our own country, but of the enlightened world, will pronounce a judgment that we cannot resist, that we dare not even affect to despise.

2. Well may I urge it to men who know the worth of character, that it is no trivial calamity to have it contested. Refusing to do what the treaty stipulates shall be done, opens the controversy. Even if we should stand justified at last, a character that is vindicated is something worse than it stood before, unquestioned and unquestionable. Like the plaintiff in an action of slander, we recover a reputation disfigured by in ctive, and even tarnished by too much handling. In the

:

combat for the honor of the nation, it may receive some wounds, though they shall heal, will leave scars. I need not say, for surely the feelings of every bosom have anticipated, that we cannot guard this sense of national honor, this ever. living fire which alone keeps patriotism warm in the heart, with a sensibility too vigilant and jealous.

3. If, by executing the treaty, there is no possibility of dishonor, and if, by rejecting, there is some foundation for doubt and for reproach, it is not for me to measure, it is for your own feelings to estimate, the vast distance that divides the one side of the alternative from the other.

4. To expatiate on the value of public faith may pass with some men for declamation-to such men I have nothing to say. To others I will urge, can any circumstance mark upon a people more turpitude and debasement? Can any thing tend more to make men think themselves mean, or 'degrade to a lower point their estimation of virtue and their standard of action?

5. It would not merely demoralize mankind, it tends to break all the ligaments of society, to dissolve that mysterious charm which attracts individuals to the nation, and to inspire in its stead a repulsive sense of shame and disgust.

6. What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent preference because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the character of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended self-love, ming. ling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we see, not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our country's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defence, and he is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it. For what rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable when a state renounces the principles that constitute their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded what would its enjoyments be in a country odious in the eyes of strangers, and dishonored in his own? Could he look with affection and veneration to such a country as his parent? The sense of having one would die within him, he would blush for bis patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a vice. He would be a banished man in his native land.

« ZurückWeiter »