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his cheats on this house, so long as he thinks them neces sary to his purpose, and so long as he has money enough at command to bribe gentlemen to pretend that they believe him. But a black and bitter day of reckoning will surely come; and whenever that day comes, I trust I shall be able, by a parliamentary impeachment, to bring upon the heads of the authors of our calamities, the punishment they de

scrve.

BURKE.

CHI-CHARACTER AND FATE OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

1. IN the fate of the Aborigines of our country-the American Indians-there is, my friends, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much which may be urged to excuse their atrocities; much in their characters, which may betray us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? Two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams, and the fires of their councils rose in every valley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the Lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunter's trace, and the dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young men listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down; but they wept not. They should soon be at rest in fairer regions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, in a home prepared for the brave, beyond the western skies. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrunk from no dangers, and they feared no hardships.

2. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love,

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But

like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. where are they? Where are the villages, and warriors, and youth? The sachems and the tribes? The hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No-nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores- -a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated— a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already, the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mis.sissippi.

3. I see them leave their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the women and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes. speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage, absorbed in despair. They linger but for at moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them-no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove further, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burial ground of their race.

STORY.

CIV.-ILLUSTRIOUS MODEL FOR THE FORMATION OF

CHARACTER.

1. LET your ambition, gentlemen, be to enroll your names. among those over whose histories our hearts swell, and our

eyes overflow with admiration, delight, and sympathy, from infancy to old age; and the story of whose virtues, exploits, and sufferings will continue to produce the same. effect throughout the world, at whatever distance of time. they may be read. It is needless, and it were endless to name them. On the darker firmament of history, ancient and modern, they form a galaxy resplendent with their luster.

2. To go no farther back, look for your model to the signers of our Declaration of Independence. You see revived in those men the spirit of ancient Rome in Rome's best day; for they were willing, with Curtius, to leap into the flaming gulf, which the oracle of their own wisdom. had assured them could be closed in no other way. There was one, however, whose name is not among those signers, but who must not, nay, can not be forgotten; for when a great and decided patriot is the theme, his name is not far off.

3. Gentlemen, you need not go to past ages nor to distant countries. You need not turn your eyes to ancient Greece or Rome, or to modern Europe. You have in your own Washington a recent model, whom you have only to imitate to become immortal. Nor must you suppose that he owed his greatness to the peculiar crisis which called out his virtues, and despair of such another crisis for the display of your own. His more than Roman virtues, his consummate prudence, his powerful intellect, and his dauntless decision and dignity of character, would have made him illustrious in any age. The crisis would have done nothing for him had not his character stood ready to match it.

4. Acquire this character, and fear not the recurrence of a crisis to show forth its glory. Look at the elements of commotion that are already at work in this vast republic, and threatening us with a moral earthquake that will convulse it to its foundation. Look at the political degeneracy which pervades the country, and which has already borne us so far away from the golden age of the revolution; look at all the "signs of the times," and you will see but little cause to indulge the hope that no crisis is

likely to occur to give full scope for the exertion of the most heroic virtues.

5. Hence it is that I so anxiously hold up to you the model of Washington Form yourselves on that noble model. Strive to acquire his modesty, his disinterested. ness, his singleness of heart, his determined devotion to his country, his candor in deliberation, his accuracy of judgment, his invincible firmness of resolve, and then may you hope to be in your own age, what he was in his "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of your countrymen."

6. Commencing your career with this high strain of character, your course will be as steady as the needle to the pole. Your end will be always virtuous, your means always noble. You will adorn as well as bless your country. You will exalt and illustrate the age in which you live. Your example will shake like a tempest that pestilential pool in which the virtues of our people are already beginning to stagnate, and restore the waters and the atmosphere to their revolutionary purity.

WIRT.

CV.-SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS.

1. THE war must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. Why then, sir, do we not, as soon as possible, change this from a civil to a nationai war? And since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us and will carry themselves gloriously through this struggle.

we gain the victory?

2. I care not how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of these colonies; and I know that resist ance to British aggression is deep and settled in their hearts,

KIDD. --22

and can not be eradicated. Every colony, indeed, has expressed its willingness to follow, if we but take the lead. Sir, the declaration will inspire the people with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for chartered immunities, held under a British king, set before them the glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life.

3. Read this declaration at the head of the army; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it, who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

4. Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs; but 1 see, I see clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously, and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.

5. But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, And illuminations. On its annual return they will shed

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