Avoid, then, this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, to peace and happiness; for it is your true dignity, to act with prudence and justice. That you should first concede, is obvious from sound and rational policy. Concession comes with better grace and more salutary effects from superior power; it reconciles superiority of power with the feelings of men, and establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude.

Every motive, therefore, of justice and of policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in America, by a removal of your troops from Boston; by a repeal of your acts of parliament; and by demonstration of amicable dispositions towards your colonies. On the other hand, every danger and every hazard impend, to deter you from perseverance in your present ruinous measures. Foreign war hanging over your heads by a slight and brittle thread; France and Spain watching your conduct, and waiting for the maturity of your errors, with a vigilant eye to America and the temper of your colonies, more than to their own concerns, be they what they may.

To conclude, my lords; if the ministers thus persevere in misadvising and misleading the king, I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from his crown; but I will affirm that they will make the crown not worth his wearing; I will not say that the king is betrayed, but I will pronounce that the kingdom is undone.

Ex. XXVII.-ATTITUDE OF AMERICA TOWARDS GREAT

BRITAIN.

Speech in the Continental Congress, Jan. 1775.

JAMES WILSON.

*

AND what, Sir, has been our course hitherto? When our rights were invaded by her regulation of our internal

* Mr. Wilson was a native of Scotland, and emigrated to this country about the time of the first Stamp Act disturbances. He enlisted warmly on the side of the patriots, was appointed a delegate to the Continental Congress, and afterward to the Convention for framing the Constitution. After the Government was established, he resumed the practice of law, which he had pursued on first coming to this country, and became Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.

ATTITUDE OF AMERICA TOWARD GREAT BRITAIN.

43

policy, we submitted to England; we were unwilling to oppose her. The spirit of Liberty was slow to act. When those invasions were renewed; when the efficacy and malignancy of them were 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 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 towards 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.

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. A cargo of 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.

We behold, sir-with the deepest anguish we beholdthat our opposition has not been as effectual as it has been constitutional. The hearts of our oppressors have not relented; our complaints have not been heard; our grievances have not been redressed; our rights are still invaded; and have we no cause to dread that the invasions of them will be enforced in a manner against which all reason and argument, and all opposition of every peaceful kind, will be vain? Our

opposition has hitherto increased with our oppression; shall it, in the most desperate of all contingencies, observe the same proportion?

Let us pause, sir, before we give an answer to this question; the fate of us, the fate of millions now alive, the fate of millions yet unborn, depends upon the answer. Let it be the result of calmness and of intrepidity; let it be dictated by the principles of loyalty, and the principles of liberty. Let it be such as never, in the worst events, to give us reason to reproach ourselves, or others reason to reproach us for having done too much or too little.

Ex. XXVIII.-THE CALL TO ARMS.

HARK! hear ye the sounds that the winds on their pinions Exultingly roll from the shore to the sea,

With a voice that resounds through her boundless dominions? 'Tis Columbia who calls on her sons to be free!

Behold on yon summits where Heaven has throned her,
How she starts from her proud inaccessible seat,
With nature's impregnable ramparts around her,
And the cataract's thunder and foam at her feet!

In the breeze of her mountains her loose locks are shaken,
While the soul-stirring notes of her warrior song
From the rock to the valley reëcho, "Awaken,
"Awaken, ye hearts that have slumbered too long!"

Yes, despots! too long did your tyranny hold us,
In a vassalage vile, ere its weakness was known;
Till we learned that the links of the chain that controlled us,
Were forged by the fears of its captives alone.

That spell is destroyed, and no longer availing,
Despised as detested-pause well, ere ye dare
To cope with a people whose spirit and feeling
Are roused by remembrance and steeled by despair.

Go, tame the wild torrent, or stem with a straw

The proud surges that sweep o'er the strand that confines

them;

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REBELLION AND REVOLUTION. 45

But presume not again to give freemen a law,

Nor think with the chains they have broken to bind them.

To hearts that the spirit of liberty flushes,

Resistance is idle, and numbers a dream;

They burst from control, as the mountain stream rushes
From its fetters of ice, in the summer's warm beam.

Ex. XXIX.-DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REBELLION AND

REVOLUTION.

Speech in Parliament, Feb. 6th, 1775.

JOHN WILKES.

MY LORDS: Whether the present state of the American colonies is that of rebellion, or of a fit and just resistance to unlawful acts of power, to our attempts to rob them of their property and liberties, as they imagine, I shall not declare. But I well know what will follow-nor, however strange and harsh it may appear to some, shall I hesitate to announce it, that I may not be accused hereafter of having failed in duty to my country on so grave an occasion, and at the approach of such direful calamities.

Know, then, that a successful resistance is a revolution, not a rebellion. Rebellion, indeed, appears on the back of a flying enemy, but revolution flames on the breast-plate of the victorious warrior. Who can tell whether, in consequence of this day's violent and mad address to his majesty, the scabbard may not be thrown away by them as well as by us; and whether, in a few years, the independent American may not celebrate the glorious era of the revolution of 1775, as we do that of 1688? The generous efforts of our forefathers for freedom, Heaven crowned with success, or their noble blood had dyed our scaffolds, like that of Scottish traitors and rebels; and the period of our history which does, us the most honor would have been deemed a rebellion against the lawful authority of the prince, not a resistance authorized by all the laws of God and man; not the expulsion of a detested tyrant.

But suppose the Americans to combat against us with more unhappy auspices than those under which we combat

ed against James, would not victory itself prove pernicious and deplorable? Would it not be fatal to British as well as American liberty? Those armies which should subjugate the colonies, would subjugate also their parent state. Marius, Sylla, Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius-did they not oppress Roman liberty with the same troops that were levied to maintain Roman supremacy over subject provinces? But the impulse once given, its effects extended much further than its authors expected; for the same soldiery that destroyed the Roman republic, subverted and utterly demolished the imperial power itself. In less than fifty years after the death of Augustus, the armies destined to hold the provinces in subjection, proclaimed three emperors at once; disposed of the empire according to their caprice, and raised to the throne of the Cesars the object of their momentary favor.

I can no more comprehend the policy, than acknowledge the justice of your deliberations. Where is your force, what are your armies-how are they to be recruited, and how supported? The single province of Massachusetts has, at this moment, thirty thousand men, well trained and disciplined, and can bring, in case of emergency, ninety thousand men into the field; and, doubt not, they will do it, when all that is dear is at stake, when forced to defend their liberty and property against their cruel oppressors. Boston, perhaps, you may lay in ashes, or it may be made a strong garrison— but the province will be lost to you. You will hold Boston as you hold Gibraltar, in the midst of a country which will not be yours; the whole American colonies will remain in the power of your enemies. In the great scale of empires you will decline, I fear, from the decision of this day; and the Americans will rise to independence, to power, to all the greatness of the most renowned states; for they build on the solid basis of general public liberty.

I dread the effects of the present resolution; I shudder at our injustice and cruelty; I tremble for the consequences of our imprudence. You will drive the Americans to desperation. They will certainly defend their property and liberties with the spirit of freemen; with the spirit our ancestors did, and which I hope we should exert on a like occasion. They will sooner declare themselves independent, and risk every consequence of such a contest, than submit to the galling yoke which the administration is preparing for them.

You would declare the Americans rebels; and to your injustice and oppression you add the most opprobrious lan