TIMELY WARNINGS. 17 being aggrieved in having this power taken away from them, yet they have submitted to your authority, have manifested their obedience to your laws, and have paid your taxes. They have indeed petitioned against the exercise of this power of raising a revenue for this purpose, yet they obeyed before they complained. They are at the lowest point of submission. If you endeavor to press them down one hair's-breadth lower, like a spring they will fly all to pieces, and they will never be brought to the same point again. They have humbled themselves in the hope, in the confidence, that as you are strong you will be merciful; but if you continue to exert your strength, you will find them as sturdy as they have been humble. They will not oppose power to your power-they will not go into any acts of sedition-they will not commit any treason-but they will be impracticable. There have been strange violences and outrages in America-the winds have beaten hard, the storm has been high. The state, like a ship, hath been driven into extreme dangers amidst shoals and breakers, but now all is peace; there is a lull at this moment; now then is the time to refit your rigging, to work out the vessel from amidst these breakers, and to get her under way, in her old safe course, and you may bring her to the harbor that you wish. Matters are now brought to a crisis at which they never will be again; if this occasion is now lost, it is lost forever. You may exert power over, but you never can govern an unwilling people; they will be able to obstruct and pervert every effort of your policy; they will render ineffectual every exertion of your government, and will shut up every source, one after another, by which you should derive any benefit or advantage from them. Take, for example, the duty on painters' colors. Can any one imagine that the people of America are under any necessity of importing this article into that country? Can any one imagine that there is no red or yellow ochre on that great continent? Can any one suppose that a country which abounds with mines of lead, iron, and copper, hath not every color that the art of painting hath produced and used? But if they had but one, and that the poorest pigment that was ever used, if a fancy was taken up at once to call this poor color the color of Liberty, every house, carriage, and ship would be painted with it. In conclusion, as your authority and power has its full effect at this time; as the people have submitted, are paying the taxes, and are at peace; as you have rejected their applications, and renounced their principles; as you are, at this hour, at perfect liberty, and masters of your own motivesthis then is the proper time, the suitable occasion, that you should take to recur only to yourselves, to your own motives, to the principles of commerce, policy and justice. Ex. XII.-REBUKE OF THE BRITISH MINISTERS. COLONEL BARRÉ, WITH regard to our colonies, the conduct of administration has been weak, irresolute, ineffectual, and disgraceful. Acts have been made by one set of ministers to inflame them, which by those who succeeded, have been repeated to appease them. By a third administration, those unconstitutional acts, that had given birth to the most dangerous contention that ever was set on foot, concerning a subject that never should have been brought into debate, were revived, in order to inflame the colonies and drive them to extremity. When they resisted those unwarrantable acts, troops have been sent and quartered in their towns, in direct violation of the law, to dragoon them into a compliance. And now we hear from his Majesty that "the spirit of faction has broken out afresh in some of the colonies of North America, in one of them proceeding to acts of violence, and of resistance to the execution of the law. The capital town of which colony appears, by late advices, to be in a state of disobedience to all law and government; and has proceeded to measures subversive of the constitution, and attended with circumstances that manifest a disposition to throw off their dependence on Great Britain." And now, sir, I appeal to the whole House-I appeal to the things upon that bench-that wretched row of no-ministers, if such a representation was a just one, of the honest, faithful, loyal, and till that moment, as subjects, irreproachable people of the province of Massachusetts Bay? And if not a just representation, how unfit to be proclaimed by the mouth of Majesty throughout all Europe! I will venture to REBUKE OF THE BRITISH MINISTERS. 19 say, sir, that all Europe knows it to be false. With what astonishment, then, must they be struck at the daring iniquity of those by whose advice it was made! To crown all, a governor is sent to cure these disorders, and to reconcile this contradictory system of court policy, who, with vinegar in one hand, and oil in the other, was to mix up a mess, which, if it did not remove the cause, was at least to meliorate the symptoms. These were the astonishing measures by which the prejudices of the people in America were to be removed; but his Lordship was instructed to state the proceedings of parliament as his Majesty's measures, and to explain them according to his own notions of prudence. His Lordship's notions of prudence will, indeed, appear to be very extraordinary, for, in consequence of these instructions, be assured the assembly of Virginia, that his Majesty would sooner lose his crown than preserve it by deceit; intimating, that his Majesty would support the measures of his present wise set of ministers at the hazard of his crown. But, according to the notions which other men have formed of prudence, this declaration was imprudent in itself, and still more imprudent with respect to the situation in which it was made. It was certainly imprudent to involve the measures of his Majesty with those of his ministry; it was still more imprudent, as it was diametrically opposite to the sentiments of the people to whom it was addressed; and it was more than imprudence, it was madness or folly to make any assurance which might lead the people of America to believe that the interposition of any set of ministers could influence the British parliament to impose, or to repeal, any acts of taxation by which the people of America were to be affected. Is it, therefore, to be wondered at, that from such a governor and such instructions, the affairs of America should still remain in a state of distraction? That the colonies, from such politicians and such politics, should conceive the most sanguine hopes of gaining their point, and shaking off their dependence upon the British senate? To impose duties, one season, with the professed purpose of raising a revenue, and to take them off the next, as being contrary to the true principles of commerce, is an instance of weakness and inconsistency, not to be paralleled, but by other measures of the same ministry, with respect to the government of the same people. By this pitiful no-management of these no-ministers, the contest remains undecided; and what they have not been able to accomplish by wisdom and good policy, is to be effected by military force; soldiers are sent over in terrorem, and because capacity is wanting to give lawful authority its full vigor, unlawful violence is to supply the deficiency. Ex. XIII.-FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE“ BOSTON MASSACRE.” * Address delivered in Boston, March 5th, 1771. JAMES LOVELL. WHо are a free people? not those who do not suffer actual oppression; but those who have a constitutional check upon the power to oppress. Chatham, Camden and others, Gods among men, have owned that England has a right to exercise every power over us but that of taking money out of our pockets without our consent. Those I have named are mighty characters, but they wanted one advantage which Providence has given us. The beam is carried off from our eyes by the flowing blood of our fellow-citizens, and now we may attempt to remove the mote from the eyes of our exalted patrons. That mote, we think, is nothing but our obligation to England first, and afterwards Great Britain, for constant kind protection of our lives and birth-rights against foreign danger. We all acknowledge that protection. Let us once more look into the early history of this prov * The 5th of March, 1770, the day on which American blood shed by British hands first flowed in the streets of Boston, was long commemorated in the New England States as a crisis in the struggle for our liberties, and the anniversary did not cease to be regularly celebrated, even after the Fourth of July, 1776, formed a new point of attraction around which all the impulses and memories of patriotism might cluster. The battle of Lexington was but a rekindling, after five years of smothered burning, of the fires which raged so fiercely in 1770. In justice to the British soldiers, it should be remembered that the so-called "massacre" consisted of one volley of musketry, fired by a picket guard of eight men who had been provoked beyond endurance by insults and personal attacks from a disorderly mob, and that the number killed was but five in all. It is to the credit of American candor and moderation, that when these men were tried for murder, all were acquitted but two, who were found guilty of manslaughter in a minor degree, John Adams and Josiah Quincy (honored names!) voluntarily conducting their defence. 66 21 17 ince. We find that our English ancestors, disgusted in their native country at a legislation which they saw was sacrificing all their rights, left its jurisdiction, and sought, like wandering birds of passage, some happier climate. Here at length they settled down. The king of England was said to be the royal landlord of this territory; with him they entered into mutual, sacred compact, by which the price of tenure, and the rules of management, were fairly stated. It is in this compact that we find our only legitimate authority. It is said that disunited from Britain we shall bleed at every vein. I can not see this consequence. The states of Holland do not suffer thus. But grant it true, Seneca would prefer the lancets of France, Spain, or any other power, to the bowstring, even though applied by the fair hand of Brit annia. A brave nation is always generous. Let us appeal, therefore, at the same time, to the generosity of the people of Great Britain, before the tribunal of Europe, not to envy us the full enjoyment of the rights of brethren. And now, my friends and fellow-townsmen, having declared myself an American son of liberty and true charter principles; having shown the critical and dangerous situation of our birth-rights, and the true course of speedy redress, I shall take the freedom to recommend, with boldness, one previous step. Let us show that we understand the true value of what we are claiming. We know ourselves subjects of common law; to that and the worthy executors of it, let us pay a conscientious regard. Past errors in this point have been written with gall, by the pen of malice. May our future conduct be such as to make even that vile imp lay her pen aside. The right which imposes duties upon us, is in dispute; but whether they are managed by a surveyor-general, a board of commissioners, Turkish janizaries, or Russian Cossacks, let these enjoy, during our time of fair trial, the common personal protection of the laws of our constitution. Let us shut our eyes for the present, to their being executors of claims subversive of our rights. Watchful, hawk-eyed jealousy ever guards the portal of the temple of the goddess of Liberty. This is known to those who frequent her altars. Our whole conduct, therefore, I am sure, will meet with the utmost candor of her votaries; but I wish we may be able to convert even her basest apostates. We are slaves until we obtain such redress, through the |