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rights, they endeavoured to deprive us of the enjoyments of our religious privileges; to viciate our morals, and thereby render us deferving of deftruction. Hence, the rude din of arms, which broke in upon your folemn devotions in your temples, on that day hallowed by heaven, and fet apart by God himself for his peculiar worthip.

11. Hence impious oaths and blafphemies so often tortur⚫ed your unaccustomed ear. Hence, all the arts which idleness and luxury could invent, were used, to betray our youth of one fex, into extravagance and effeminacyand of the other, into infamy and ruin; and did they not but fucceed too well? Did not a reverence for religion fenlibly decay? Did not our infants almost learn to lifp out curses before they knew their horrid import? Did not our youth forget they were Americans, and, regardless of the admonitions of the wife and aged, fervilely copy from their tyrants, vices which finally mult overthrow the empire of Great Britain? and muft I be impelled to acknowledge, that even the nobleft, fairest part of all the lower creacron, did not entirely escape the cursed fnare? When virtue has once erected her throne within the female breast, it is upon fo folid a basis that nothing is able to expel the heavenly inhabitant.

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12. But have there not been fome, few indeed, I hope, whose youth and inexperience have rendered them a prey to wretches, whom upon the leaft reflection, they would have defpifed and hated, as foes to God and their country; I fear there have been some such unhappy instances; or why have I feen an honest father cloathed with shame? or why a virtuous mother drowned in tears!

13. But I forbear, and come reluctantly to the tranfactions of that dismal night, when in such quick fuccefhon we felt the extremes of grief, aftonishment and rage; when heaven in anger, for a dreadful moment fuffered hell to take the reins; when fatan with his chofen band opened the fluices of New-England's blood, and sacrilegiously polluted our land with the dead bodies of her guitlefs fons.

14. Let this fad tale of death never be told without a tear; Let not the heaving bofom cease to burn with a manly indignation at the barbarous story, through the long

tracts of future time; Let every parent tell the shameful story to his liftening children, till tears of pity glisten in their eyes, and boiling passion shake their tender frames; and whilst the anniversary of that ill-fated night, is kept a jubilee in the grim court of pandemonium, let all America join in one common prayer to heaven, that the inhuman, unprovoked murders of the fifth of March, 1770, plouned by Hiltsborough, and a knot of treacherous knaves in Bos-:ton, and executed by the cruel hand of Preston and his sanguinary coadjutors, may ever ftand on history without a pa

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15. But what, my countrymen, withheld the ready arm of vengeance from executing inftant justice on the vile affaffins? perhaps you feared promiscuous carnage might enfue, and that the innocent might share the fate of those who had performed the infernal deed. But were not all guilty? were you not too tender of the lives of those who came to fix a yoke on your neck? but I must not too severely blame a fault, which great fouls only can commit.

16. May that magnificence of spirit which scorns the low pursuits of malice; may that generous compaffion which often preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant hoft vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, them we despised; we dread but nothing slavery. Death is the creature of a poltron's brain: 'tis immortality to facrifice ourfelves for the falvation of our country. We fear not death.

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17. That gloomy night, the pale faced moon, and the affriglited stars that hurried thro the sky, can witness that we fear not death. Our hearts, which at the recollection glow with a rage that four rovolving years have scarcely taught us to restrain, can witness that we fear not death; and happy it is for those who dared to insult that their naked bones are now piled up an everlasting monument of Massachusett's bravery. But they retired, they fled, and

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in that flight they found their only fafety.

18. We then expected that the hand of publie justice would foon inflict that punishment upon the murderers, which, by the laws of God and man, they had inerited. But let the unbiaffed pen of Robertfon, or perhaps of

some equally famed American, conduct this trial before the great tribunal of forceeding generations: And tho the murderers may escape the just resentment of an enraged people; tho drowsy juftice, intoxicated by the poisonous draught prepared for her cup, ftill nods upon her rotten feat, yet be affured, fuch complicated crimes will meet their juft reward..

19. Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villians high and low! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and stings of confcious guilt, pierce thro your favage bosoms? The fome of you may think yourielves exhalted to a height that bids deñance to the arm of human justice, and others furoud yourfelves beneath the mask of hypocrify, and build your hopes of fafety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery, and falfehood; yet do you not fometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies? Do not the injured thades of Maverick, Grey, Caldwell, Attucks, and Car, attend you in your folitary walks, arrest you even in the midst of 'your debancheries, and fill even your dreams with terror.

10. But if the unappeafed manes of the dead should not disturb their murderers, yet furely their obdurate hearts muft fhrink, and your guilty blood muft chill within your rigid veins, when you behold the miferable Monk, the wretched victim of your favage cruelty. Observe his tot tering knees, which searce fuftain his wasted body; look on his haggard eyes; mark well the deathlike paleness of his fallen cheek, and tell me, does not the fight plant daggers in your fouls.

21. Unhappy Monk! cut off in the gay morn of man. hood from all the joys which sweeten life, doomed to drag on a pitiful existence, without even a hope to tafte the pleasures of returning health! yet Monk, thou liveft not in vain : thou livell a warning to thy country, which sympathizes with thee in thy fufferings; thou liveft an affecting, an alarming instance of the unbeunded violence which luft of power, affifted by a standing anny can lead a traitor to

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22. For us he bled, and now languishes. The wounds by which he is tortured, to a lingering death were aimed * Persons slain on the fifth of March, 1770.

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at our country! Surely meek eyed charity can never behold fuch fufferings with indifference. Nor can her lenient hand forbear to pour oil and wine into these wounds; and to af fuage at least, what it cannot heal.

23. Patriotism is ever united with humanity and com paffion. This noble affection which impels us to facrifice every thing dear, even life itself, to our country, involves in it a common sympathy and tenderness for every citizen, and must ever have a particular feeling for one who fuffers in a public caufe. Thoroughly perfuaded of this, I need not add a word to engage your compaffion and bounty towards a fellow-citizen, who with long protracted anguish, falls a victim to the relentless rage of our common enemy.

24. Ye dark designing knaves, ye murderers, parricides! how dare you tread upon the earth, which has drank in the blood of flaughtered innocence shed by your wicked hands! How dare you breathe that air which wafted to the ear of heaven, the groans of these who fell

facrifice to your cursed ambition. But if the laboring earth doth not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commiffioned to be the minifter of death; yet, hear it and tremble!

25. The eye of heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the foul, traces the leading clue through all the labyrinths which your industrious follies had devised: and you, however you might have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands red with the blood of those whose death you have procured, at the tremendous bar of God.

An ORATION, delivered at the North Church in Hart ford, at the meeting of the Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati, July 4th, 1787, in commemoration of the Independence of the United States. By JOEL BARLOW, Esq. Published by desire of said Society. Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Society, and Fellow Citizens, I. N the anniverfary of so great as event as the birth of the Empire in which we live, none will queftion the propriety of paffing a few moments in contem plating the various objects suggested to the mind by the important occafion.

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2. But at the present period, while the blessings claim

ed by the sword of victory, and promised in the voice of peace, remain to be confirmed by our future exertions; while the nourishment, the growth, and even the existence of our empire, depend upon the united efforts of an extensive and divided people; the duties of this day afcend from amusement and congratulation, to a serious patriotic employment.

3.. We are assembled, my friends, not to boast, but to realize; not to inflate our national vanity by a pompous relation of past achievements in the council or in the field; but from a modest retrospect of the truly dignified part already acted by our countrymen, from an accurate view of our present situation, and from an anticipation of the scenes that remain to be unfolded; to difcern and familiarize the duties that still await us as citizens, as foldiers, and as men.

4. Revolutions in other countries have been effected by accident. The faculties of human reason, and the rights of human nature, have been the sport of chance and the prey of ambition. And when indignation has burst the bands of flavery, to the deftruction of one tyrant, it was only to impose the menacles of another.

5. This arose from the imperfection of that early stage of fociety, which neceffarily occafioned the foundation of empires, on the eastern continent, to be laid in ignorance, and which induced a total inability of forefeeing the improvements of civilization, or of adapting the government to a state state of focial refinement.

6. I shall but repeat a common observation, when I remark, that on the western continent the scene was entirely different, and a new task, totolly unknown to the legiflatures of other nations, was impofed upon the fathers of the American empire.

* 7. Here was a people, thinly scattered over an extenfive territory, lords of the foil on which they trod, commanding a prodigious length of coaft, and an equal breadth of frontier: a people habituated to liberty, profeffing a miid and benevolent religion, and highly advanced in science and civilization. To conduct fuch a people in a revolution, the address must be made to reason as well as to the paffions, And to reason, to the clear understanding of these vari oufly affected colonies, the folemn address was made.

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