tried deep, without first being fully convinced that her make is strong enough to bear the weather she may meet with, and that she is well provided for so long and dangerous a voyage.

No man, Sir, among us, has denied, or will deny that this province must stake on the event of the present attempt, liberties founded on the acknowledged rights of human nature, liberties that ought to be immortal! The inhabitants of remote countries, impelled by that love of liberty which an all-wise Providence has planted in the human heart, deserting their native soil, committed themselves with their helpless families to the mercy of winds and waves, and braved all the terrors of an unknown wilderness, in the hope of enjoying in these woods the exercise of those invaluable rights, which some unhappy circumstance had denied to mankind in every other part of the earth.

Thus, Sir, the people of Pennsylvania may be said to have purchased an inheritance in its constitution, at a prodigious price; they have not hitherto been disappointed in their wishes; they have obtained the blessings they sought for; and I can not believe, unless the strongest evidence be offered, that they are now willing to part with that which has cost them so much toil and expense.

Ex. II.-PROTEST AGAINST INJUSTICE.

Speech delivered in the British Parliament, 1765.

COL. ISAAC BARRÉ.*

SIR-I have listened to the honorable member who spoke last, with astonishment. Has he forgotten the history of the colonies?—"Will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence, protected by our arms, refuse their mite?"

* Col. Barré, a person of considerable distinction in the British Parliament, was a stanch friend of America throughout our Revolutionary struggle. His claim to a superior knowledge of this country was not unfounded, he having been with General Wolfe during the campaign in Canada, and fought by his side at the siege of Quebec. It was in consequence of a severe wound received in this battle that Col. Barré, after an interval of thirty years, lost his sight, and remained blind for twelve years before his death, retaining, however, the cheerfulness and vivacity which had always characterized him, to the last.

PROTEST AGAINST INJUSTICE.

3

They planted by your care! No; your oppression planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny, to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and among others, to the cruelty of a savage foe, the most subtle, and, I will take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country, from the hands of those who should have been their friends.

They nourished up by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, in one department or another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members of this house, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behavior, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seat of justice; some, who, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice, in their own.

They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defence; have exerted a valor, amidst their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emoluments.

And, believe me; remember I this day told you so, that the same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first, will accompany them still. But prudence forbids me to explain myself further. Heaven knows, I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat; what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart.

However superior to me in general knowledge and experience the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated. But the subject is too delicate; I will

say no more.

Ex. III.-ELOQUENCE OF JAMES OTIS.*

(Supposed Speech in Congress, 1765.)

MRS. CHILD.

ENGLAND may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes, as to fetter the step of freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land, than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another his crown-and they may yet cost a third his most Hourishing colonies.

We are two millions-one-fifth fighting men. We are bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin, we ever were, and ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it is not, and it never can be, extorted.

Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper?" No! America, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, can not exhaust? True, the spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.

We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the faggot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy, forests have been prostrated in our path, towns and cities have grown up as suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population. And

*This spirited composition, although the production of an author of our own times, is inserted here as a successful imitation of the style of Mr. Otis, who was among the most vigorous and eloquent speakers of his day. He was a man of commanding character and versatile talents, and a leader of the popular party in its earlier development. He did not live to take part in the Revolution proper, but was killed by a stroke of lightning in May, 1772.

THE LIBERTY TREE.

5

do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother country? No! we owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her-to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy.

But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money from your gratitude-we only demand that you should pay your own expenses." And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king-(and with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws.) Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne. In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay; if this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege, that rain and dew do not depend upon parliament, otherwise they would soon be taxed and dried.

But, thanks to God! there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies, shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember, that a fire is lighted in these colonies, which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that all the blood of all England can not extinguish it.

Ex. IV.-THE LIBERTY TREE.*

IN a chariot of light from the regions of day,
The goddess of Liberty came;

Ten thousand celestials directed the way,

And hither conducted the dame.

* The "Liberty Tree" was a great elm in Boston, under which the opponents of the Stamp Act were accustomed to assemble. Persons supposed to be in favor of this detested act, were hung in effigy on the branches of this

tree.

A fair budding branch from the gardens above,
Where millions with millions agree,

She brought in her hand, as a pledge of her love,
And the plant she named Liberty Tree.

The celestial exotic struck deep in the ground,
Like a native it flourished and bore;

The fame of its fruit drew the nations around,
To seek out this peaceable shore.

Unmindful of names or distinctions they came,
For freemen like brothers agree;

With one spirit endued, they one friendship pursued,
And their temple was Liberty Tree.

Beneath this fair tree, like the patriarchs of old,
Their bread in contentment they ate,

Unvexed with the troubles of silver and gold,
The cares of the grand and the great.

With timber and tar they old England supplied,
And supported her power on the sea;

Her battles they fought without getting a groat,
For the honor of Liberty Tree.

But hear, oh ye swains, ('tis a tale most profane,)
How all the tyrannical powers,

King, commons and lords, are uniting amain,
To cut down this guardian of ours.

From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms!
Through the land let the sound of it flee;

Let the far and the near, all unite with a cheer,
In defence of our Liberty Tree.

Ex. V.-COLONIAL RESISTANCE DEFENDED.

Speech in Parliament, 1766.

r

LORD CHATHAM.*

SIR, I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily

* William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was one of the greatest of British statesmen and orators. From the time of his earliest remonstrance against the Stamp Act, to the day when he fell in a fit in the House of Lords, and was