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sonable cause for it? Did they even disclose any uneasiness, when a reasonable cause for it was first given? Our rights were invaded by their regulations of our internal policy. We submitted to them: we were unwilling to oppose them. The spirit of liberty was slow to act.

When those invasions were renewed; when the efficacy and malignancy of them was attempted to be redoubled by the stamp act; when chains were formed for us; and preparations were made for riveting them on our limbs, what measures did we pursue? The spirit of liberty found it necessary now to act; but she acted with the calmness and decent dignity suited to her character. Were we rash or seditious? Did we discover want of loyalty to our sovereign? Did we betray want of affection to our brethren in Britain? Let our dutiful and reverential petitions to the throne; let our respectful, though firm remonstrances to the parliament; let our warm and affectionate addresses to our brethren and (we will still call them) our friends in Great Britain, let all those, transmitted from every part of the continent, testify the truth. By their testimony let our conduct be tried.

As our proceedings, during the existence and operation. of the stamp act, prove fully and incontestably the painful sensations that tortured our breasts from the prospect of disunion with Britain; the peals of joy which burst forth universally, upon the repeal of that odious statute, loudly proclaim the heartfelt delight produced in us by a reconciliation with her. Unsuspicious because undesigning, we buried our complaints and the causes of them in oblivion, and returned, with eagerness, to our former unreserved confidence. Our connexion with our parent country, and the reciprocal blessings resulting from it to her and to us, were the favourite and pleasing topics of our public discourses and our private conversations. Lulled into delightful security, we dreamed of nothing but increasing fondness and friendship, cemented and strengthened by a kind and perpetual communication of good offices.

Soon, however, too soon, were we awakened from the soothing dreams! Our enemies renewed their designs against us, not with less malice, but with more art. Under the plausible pretence of regulating our trade, and, at the same time, of making provision for the administration of

justice, and the support of government, in some of the colonies, they pursued their scheme of depriving us of our property without our consent. As the attempts to distress us, and to degrade us to a rank inferior to that of freemen, appeared now to be reduced into a regular system, it became proper, on our part, to form a regular system for counteracting them. We ceased to import goods from Great Britain. Was this measure dictated by selfishness or by licentiousness? Did it not injure ourselves, while it injured the British merchants and manufacturers? Was it inconsistent with the peaceable demeanour of subjects to abstain from making purchases, when our freedom and our safety rendered it necessary for us to abstain from them? A regard for our freedom and our safety was our only motive; for no sooner had the parliament, by repealing part of the revenue laws, inspired us with the flattering hopes that they had departed from their intentions of oppressing and of taxing us, than we forsook our plan for defeating those intentions, and began to import as formerly. Far from being peevish or captious, we took no public notice even of their declaratory law of dominion over us: our candour led us to consider it as a decent expedient of retreating from the actual exercise of that dominion.

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But, alas! the root of bitterness still remained. The duty on tea was reserved to furnish occasion to the ministry for a new effort to enslave and to ruin us; and the East India Company were chosen, and consented to be the detested instruments of ministerial despotism and cruelty. cargo of their tea arrived at Boston. By a low artifice of the governor, and by the wicked activity of the tools of government, it was rendered impossible to store it up, or to send it back, as was done at other places. A number of persons, unknown, destroyed it.

Let us here make a concession to our enemies: let us suppose, that the transaction deserves all the dark and hideous colours in which they have painted it: let us even suppose (for our cause admits of an excess of candour) that all their exaggerated accounts of it were confined strictly to the truth what will follow? Will it follow that every British colony in America, or even the colony of Massachusetts' Bay, or even the town of Boston, in that colony, merits the imputation of being factious and sedinous? Let

he frequent mobs and riots, that have happened in Great Britain upon much more trivial occasions, shame our calumniators into silence. Will it follow, because the rules of order and regular government were, in that instance, violated by the offenders, that, for this reason, the principles of the constitution, and the maxims of justice, must be violated by their punishment? Will it follow, Decause those who were guilty could not be known, that, therefore, those who were known not to be guilty must suffer? Will it follow, that even the guilty should be condemned without being heard-that they should be condemned upon partial testimony, upon the representations of their avowed and imbittered enemies? Why were they not tried in courts of justice known to their constitution, and by juries of their neighbourhood? Their courts and their juries were not, in the case of Captain Preston, transported beyond the bounds of justice by their resentment: why, then, should it be presumed, that, in the case of those offenders, they would be prevented from doing justice by their affection? But the colonists, it seems, must be stripped of their judicial, as well as of their legislative powers. They must be bound by a legislature, they must be tried by a jurisdiction, not their own. Their constitutions must be changed their liberties must be abridged: and those who shall be most infamously active in changing their constitutions and abridging their liberties, must, by an express provision, be exempted from punishment.

I do not exaggerate the matter, sir, when I extend these observations to all the colonists. The parliament meant to extend the effects of their proceedings to all the colonists. The plan, on which their proceedings are formed, extends to them all. From an incident of no very uncommon or atrocious nature, which happened in one colony, in one town in that colony, and in which only a few of the inhabitants of that town took a part, an occasion has been taken by those, who probably intended it, and who certainly prepared the way for it, to impose upon that colony, and to lay a foundation and a precedent for imposing upon 11 the rest, a system of statutes, arbitrary, unconstitutional. ppressive, in every view, and in every degree subver sive of the rights, and inconsistent with even the name, of freemen WILSON.

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OUR bugles sang truce-for the night cloud had lower'd
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roam'd on a desolate track;
'Twas autumn-and sunshine arose on the way

To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields, traversed so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine cup, and fondly I swore From my home and my weeping friends never to part; My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er,

And my wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart.

Stay, stay with us-rest, thou art weary and worn;
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay-
But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.
CAMPBELL.

52.-EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH OF PATRICK HENRY, ON THE EXPEDIENCY OF ADOPTING THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION, DELIVERED IN THE CONVENTION OF VIRGINIA, JUNE 5, 1788 MR. CHAIRMAN,—I am much obliged to the very worthy gentleman for his encomium. I wish I were possessed of talents, or possessed of any thing, that might enable me to elucidate this great subject. I am not free from suspicion : I am apt to entertain doubts: I rose yesterday to ask a

question, which arose in my own mind. When I asked that question, I thought the meaning of my interrogation was obvious: the fate of this question and of America may depend on this. Have they said, we, the states? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation: it is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing--the expression, we, the the people, instead of, the states of America. I need not take much pains to show, that the principles of this system are extremely pernicious, impolitic, and dangerous. Is this a monarchy, like England-a compact between prince and people; with checks on the former to secure the liberty of the latter? Is this a confederacy, like Holland—an asso ciation of a number of independent states, each of which retains its individual sovereignty? It is not a democracy, wherein the people retain all their rights securely. Had these principles been adhered to, we should not have been brought to this alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated government. We have no detail of those great considerations which, in my opinion, ought to have abounded before we should recur to a government of this kind. Here is a revolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain. It is as radical, if, in this transition, our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states relinquished. And cannot we plainly see, that this is actually the case? The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change so loudly talked of by some, and inconsiderately by others. Is this tame relinquishment of rights worthy of freemen? Is it worthy of that manly fortitude that ought to characterize republicans? It is said eight states have adopted this plan. I declare that if twelve states and a half had adopted it, I would, with manly firmness, and in spite of an erring world, reject it.

You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government. Is it necessary for your liberty, that you should abandon those great rights by

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