them together had ceased to operate, was necessity. Many of them would have withdrawn before the confederacy was agreed upon; even before the declaration of independence was published, but for the earlier measures with which they had entangled themselves, their characters, their popularity and resources, without any expectation of the consequences.

But, whatever may now be acknowledged to have been the natural law, which brought these several parts into such intimate connexion, and afterwards supported that connexion, it will be granted that, at the time, these effects were attributed to principles materially different. The weakness of the coalition was forgotten; its tendency to separation was disregarded; patriotism and virtue were considered as ligaments capable of counteracting these natural propensities.— The declaration of independence was received as the unanimous resolve of the thirteen Colonies. And even in England, where some intimations of such a design had been rumoured in the circles of government, and where the strength of the royalists was the most intimately known, the power of that formidable minority was forgotten in the alarm of the first intelligence, and the cabinet politicians themselves, for a while, believed that the whole population of America had spoken to their oppressors. The unanimity thus exhibited in this moment of unparallelled trial, was justly regarded as portentous not only of the nature, but of the termination of the contest.

To the sober and reflecting, there was a more justifiable ground for apprehensions, or fears, as they belonged to the oppressors or the oppressed, in the cool and weighty deliberation of the men who had resolved on this measure, though they had not given an un

animous decision, than there would have been in the most complete and unquestionable manifestations of popular unanimity. For a measure adopted unanimously by a multitude, from the nature of their deliberations, can never be so conclusive, as if it were sanctioned by the majority of a few, representing the many, even as they are usually represented. But men were never so represented, as in this Congress. The members composing it, were not only the chosen ones of their country, but chosen in the hour of trial, when only the great are to be seen; men slow in deliberation, but tried and known to be immoveable in their resolves.

The Delegates to this Congress who first gave a name to their country, were not the popular favourites who are brought into notice during the season of tumult and violence; nor were they such men as are chosen in times of tranquillity, when nothing is to be apprehended from a mistaken choice; not the favourites of a party or a family. But they were men to whom others might cling in times of peril; and look up to in the revolution of empires; men whose countenances in marble, as on the canvass, may be dweit upon, by after ages, as the history of their times.

In periods of revolution, common men are disregarded; popular favourites dwindle into obscurity ; and the humble stand contemplating the giants of their race, who have assembled and united for their protection. Such were they who composed that assembly; chosen in the most threatening hour of their existence, and placed as centinels upon the outworks of liberty.. There is something so grand and imposing in the nature of that event; in the character of the times and the actors, that we should regard it, were it a matter

of antiquity, as the most sublime exhibition that man has ever made to man and nothing short of an impossibility should be listened to, as an excuse, from an American, for not being familiar with its circumstances. The Chronicles of that age should be studied with reverence and intensity, by all whose ancestors had an interest in the question; and all who experience in themselves and the security of their liberties, the mighty effects of its decision; and this, while yet they are not too far removed from the period when men feel related to their ancestors, and speak with a generous enthusiasm of their deeds; and while yet within the time when benefactors are not quite forgotten.

If the mind were properly led to an examination of this subject, by a regular chain of deduction, from the first causes of dissatisfaction in the Colonists, to the times of greater violence, and more open and decided opposition to the British Ministry; and thence to a period when open war was proclaimed against their formidable adversary, it will be acknowledged that there is no record in history of greater interest; nor any people, unless it be the Greeks, in their strife with the Persians, who have dared so much, with so fearful a disproportion. And should the same dispassionate consideration of the subject be resumed for another purpose, it will be found that at no time of the struggle, from the first symptoms of disaffection, to the period when a small minority of the oppressed gave battle to their oppressors in the Eastern Colonies, to the declaration of the majority against tyranny, though clothed in the verable habiliments of British law, which this country so reverenced, and so cherishes yet, and to the final consummation of their in

dependence, was there a period so critical, as when that declaration was first publickly proposed by Richard Henry Lee. Let it be supposed, for a moment, that it had been rejected. How different would be the present situation of America! France would have had no confidence in a people that had none in themselves; and to this hour America might have been a part of the British Empire. The Americans, until that paper was published to the world, had done nothing which their king might not have forgiven with dignity.

That measure to which the latest posterity of the authors will appeal as the most convincing evidence of masculine energy in peril; of decision in policy, and high minded devotion to the interest of humanity, is now considered so much a matter of course, as a proceeding so necessarily required by the situation of affairs, and so naturally growing out of them, that few will be made to understand its boldness and importance, and fewer still to acknowledge either. But let all who regard it with such indifference, or who believe it to have been the natural result of such a vast political commotion, ask themselves if they would have dared, in such a season of terrour and discouragement to make such a proposition, in an assembly of rebels ; or even to vote in favor of it, if another had proposed it; and then, they may be enabled to understand how momentous was the crisis, how eventful the contemplated declaration, and how unlimited the consequences to be apprehended.

All these circumstances should be contemplated, and dwelt upon with seriousness, or justice cannot be done to the actors in those scenes. They were legislators, senators, christians, sober minded men, not

to be stirred to enthusiasm by rhetorical allusion to Greece or Rome; they were not to be hurried into an exterminating and perpetual war, as schoolboys to an exercise. The drama in which they were the actors, was to be played by men in arms, before the universe. They were men who had learned to look on death unmoved, and debate calmly in his presence. It was not desperation, not intemperate desire of vengeance which impelled and supported them; it was the immoveable resolution of men who have determined on martyrdom. As such, the Declaration of Independence was received in Great Britain. We have seen that it had been determined in the British Cabinet, at the commencement of this year, to strike a decisive blow, and by one vigorous campaign to overspread and reduce the whole Colonies at a time. To carry this plan into operation, a body of sixteen thousand foreign troops were to be employed in addition to the British forces. Notice of this measure was soon communicated to the Americans, and served but to excite in them a more determined spirit of resistance; and to give a sanction to their applications for foreign assistance. It took away the character of a domestick struggle from the war, lessened the confidence of the British in themselves, and taught the Colonies to boast that even Great Britain could not hope to reduce them without assistance. The whole of the American Colonies, in furtherance of this new system of war, and as preparatory to some dreadful punishment, had been declared, early in this year, to be out of the royal protection. This step, more than any other, operated upon the passions of the multitude; and turned the eyes of the leading men in America towards their resources. It accustomed them to con