Mr. Gardiner's ORATION.
AN ORATION, DELIVERED JULY 4, 1785, AT THE REQUEST OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN OF BOSTON, IN CELEBRATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.
BY JOHN GARDINER, ESQ.
BOSTON, PRINTED BY PETER EDES, STATE-STREET.
1785
[Page] At a meeting of the freeholders and other inhabitants of the town of BOSTON, duly qualified and legally warned, in publick town-meeting, assembled at Faneuil-Hall, on Monday the fourth day of July, A. D. 1785, 10 o' clock forenoon, and by adjournment held at the Chapel Church in the afternoon of the same day:
ON a motion, voted, That the gentlemen the Selectmen be, and they hereby are, appointed a committee to wait on JOHN GARDINER, Esq. and, in the name of the town, to thank him for the learned and elegant Oration this day delivered by him, at the request of the town, upon the anniversary of the Independence of the United States of America, in which, according to the institution of the town, he considered the feelings, manners, and principles which led to that great national event; and to request of him a copy thereof for the press.
I GRATEFULLY receive this testimony of attention from the free citizens of the place of my nativity, whose wishes it will ever be my peculiar happiness to gratify with every thing in my power; I therefore readily give a copy of the Oration I delivered yesterday at the Chapel Church, for publication; hoping that the good intentions and sincerity of the author will atone for the imperfections of the work.
TO THE FIRST CITIZEN IN THE WORLD, THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS GEORGE WASHINGTON, ESQ. LATE COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE FORCES OF THE FREE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THIS ORATION, WITH THE MOST AFFECTIONATE RESPECT, IS DEDICATED BY HIS MOST OBLIGED FELLOW-CITIZEN,
AN ORATION.
The address toINDEPENDENCE, in the above lines, and with which the author opened his Oration, is a little altered fromThompson's beautiful poem intitledLIBERTY, part v.
FROM an opinion, perhaps too favourably conceived, too partially entertained, by the free citizens of the place of his nativity, is the PUBLICK SPEAKER of this day, the anniversary of the INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, called upon to address you from this place and * to consider the feelings, manners, and principles which led to that [Page 8] great national event, which we now commemorate; as well as the important and happy effects, whether general or domestick, which have already flowed, and will forever flow from that auspicious epoch.
WHEN he reflects that he is called upon to discuss subjects so extensive,—so affecting, so endearing to his country,—so important, so interesting to the world of mankind at large; and that before an audience so numerous, so respectable, so illustrious as the present, he finds himself not a little agitated with fear; he experiences an awe most unusual; and he trembles lest he disgrace the cause he most wishes to honour: but when he recollects, however, that, upon this occasion, he is to address an assembly of FREE AMERICANS, whose distinguished liberal characteristick is to be ever more ready to applaud than to condemn, his fears must insensibly subside, and decent confidence will re-assume her accustomed seat.
WHOEVER will peruse, with attention, the faithful page of history, will find the same causes invariably producing the same effects.
PUBLICK VIRTUE, or a strong sense of our interest in the preservation and prosperity of the government of which we are members, piety towards GOD, fortitude, justice, temperance, frugality, and industry, have ever led to empire and political grandeur; while, on the other hand, LUXURY, that most baneful and destructive disease of the body politick, hath ever proved, and ever will prove, fatal to PUBLICK VIRTUE, ever blast the fairest constitution, and finally pull down in ruins the strongest empire.
NEITHER the great despotick government, nor the small free republick, can withstand its baleful effects.
* WHENEVER it seizes on the vitals of a State the people become selfish, avaritious, factious, dissipated, rapacious, and effeminate, and [Page 9] all law and discipline, civil as well as military, become neglected and contemned.
AN army of poor, hardy Persians, under CYRUS, invaded and destroyed the once-potent empire of Assyria, then enervated and debased by this worst of all political diseases. In progress of time, the opulent and wide-extended empire of Persia became infected with the same most baleful distemper, and rapidly fell before the arms of the hardy Macedonian Greeks, commanded by ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
THE same fatal disease, in the lapse of time, spread over the Macedonian empire and contaminated its vitals, when, becoming incapable of effectual resistance, that empire fell a prey to the arms of the then all-conquering free-born sons of ROME.
ROME, in her youth and * manhood, the seat of piety, the purest patriotism, simplicity of manners, justice, honour, temperance, frugality, and splendid poverty, in her old age was seized with the same political disease, and, at last, fell a victim to the most infamous, degrading venality and political depravity that ever destroyed a once great and free people. When, after the conquest of Antiochus the Great, luxury was introduced at ROME, the manners of the people soon began to feel its pernicious effects; but when CARTHAGE, her dreaded rival, sunk under the weight of her all-conquering arms, and ceased to exist, an irresistible torrent of corruption overwhelmed the mistress of the world, and prepared her the ready victim of her own corrupt citizens.
ALL veneration for religion, oaths, justice, modesty, and decency, became annihilated; the love of their country, which had enabled the ROMANS to accomplish so many splendid atchievements, was now no more: money, which alone could enable them to satisfy their insatiable, artificial wants, became the sole object of their pursuit: † poverty, which in the virtuous ages of the Republick, had been so truly honourable, [Page 10] was then become reproachful and contemptible; the rich employed their wealth to acquire power, and their power, when acquired, in every species of violence and oppression.
IN her last stage of political depravity all the honours and offices of the State where openly sat up to * sale; and finally, when the ambitious parricide, JULIUS CAESAR, appeared, the PUBLICK LIBERTY and the whole empire became the object of purchase, and the degenerate sons of ROME suffered themselves and every thing to become the property of one of their fellow-citizens.
THE introduction and progress of freedom have generally attended the introduction and progress of letters and science. In despotick governments the people are mostly illiterate, rude, and uncivilized; but in States where CIVIL LIBERTY hath been cherished, the human mind hath generally proceeded in improvement,—learning and knowledge have prevailed, and the arts and sciences have flourished.
IN the justly celebrated city of antient ATHENS, as well as in the other free cities and States of GREECE, where nothing existed to depress or contract its elastick force, the human mind expanded freely, reached the sublimest heights of elevation, and by the most vigorous, the most noble, exertions, produced whatever can do honour to the heart, the head, the hand of man. There, under the invigorating shade of PUBLICK LIBERTY, that other TREE OF LIFE, were brought forth those exquisite works of labour, of art, of learning, and of invention, which for ages charmed the astonished world; even the history of some of which continue to delight the more enlightened of all civilized countries at this very day; while the inimitable surviving works of their Orators, Poets, and Philosophers, afford infinite satisfaction, entertainment, and instruction to the modern world. By her conquest of Greece ROME acquired a knowledge of, and a taste for, the more liberal arts and sciences; nor was it long after her conquest of the polished [Page 11] and enlightened people of that country before she transplanted into Italy most of the noble inventions and improvements of her new subjects. In both countries the arts and sciences continued afterwards to flourish, and in ROME progressively to aspire to true attick beauty and excellence, until that memorable aera in which the mistress of the world, by the unbounded luxury, * venality, and profligacy of her degenerated sons became unworthy longer to enjoy that FREEDOM which is ever the companion of piety, love of our country, frugality, justice, and temperance. At or about that period the improvements of the human mind seem nearly to have reached their meridian altitude. It was not long, however, that they remained even stationary; for immediately after the reign of the deceitful, treacherous, ungrateful, vindictive Octavianus, the second despot Caesar of the fallen Republick, the arts and sciences began to decline their languid heads.
THE horrible despotism of many of the succeeding Emperors coincided to extinguish the glorious flame of emulation, to depress and debase the free spirits of the human race, and to cast a deep gloom upon every thing liberal, great, and noble. THE PUBLICK having become the property of one man alone, no other thought the same, or any thing tending to its glory or exaltation, worthy of his notice or deserving of his attention. The spirits of men were then broken by the wildest misrule, and universal dejection and despondency must have prevailed among all of finer feeling, understanding, and taste. During the reigns of some of the despotick usurpers, if we can credit the † Prince of Historians, "most hideous were the ravages of cruelty at ROME: for there it was treasonable to be noble; capital to be rich; criminal to have sustained honours, criminal to have declined them; and the reward of worth and virtue was quick and inevitable destruction: There the baneful villanies of the informers were not more shocking than their mighty and distinguishing rewards" (for on them were bestowed the most honourable and lucrative offices of the Empire) [Page 12] while "in every station, exerting all their terrors and pursuing their hate, they controuled and confounded all things; slaves were suborned to accuse their masters, freedmen their patrons, and such as had no enemies were betrayed and undone by their friends *." A more masterly, though a more melancholy, picture of an arbitrary, despotick government is not, perhaps, to be produced in any other history or to be met with in any other author whatever: a picture, the features of which we cannot too often contemplate, and from which we may learn to admire, to love, to be enthusiastically attached to that mild form of equal government which we now so happily enjoy, and for which, under the Almighty Disposer of all things, we are more immediately indebted to that most fortunate event, the anniversary of which we this day celebrate, and which every true American ought ever gratefully to commemorate.
IN such a state of things; in such a scene of anarchy, fury, violence, and murder, as we find the unhappy Romans then so fatally experienced, where could the human mind fly for rest, where find repose, where procure shelter, from the black threatening storms of rapine, death, and desolation which were continually bursting in upon every side? In times of such universal publick distress, in times so degrading to the human species, the instinctive faculty of self-preservation must have occupied every thought, must have engrossed the whole attention: no time then could have been spared for, could have been devoted to, study and calm reflection; no time could have been indulged in the pursuit of valuable knowledge or of any laudable attainment. In the reigns of Titus, Nerva, Trajan, and the two Antonines, indeed, the gloom dispelled, and nature once more began to look gay and to rejoice, and with the reviving spirit of † publick liberty, ‡ eloquence, and the [Page 13] arts and sciences began to lift up their dejected heads. But, alas! these days of sunshine were short and fleeting. A tumultuous, unbridled, military government soon succeeded, when every thing appeared as dark, or, if possible, more dark and gloomy than before. Life was as insecure, and agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, finding no patrons, no protection, dwindled away, decayed, and sunk into universal neglect.
INFAMOUS as the British Nabob-makers in the East,—the military despots made and unmade Emperors, and in one instance, the Praetorian guards compelled the Roman people to submit to a state of degradation which sunk them to the level of the vilest slaves, and even to the level of the brute creation. The ROMANS had formerly sold themselves: this miserable privilege was now denied to them. The military villains of the * Praetorian bands openly sat up the ROMAN EMPIRE at publick auction, and struck off the same to Didius Julianus, a rich, voluptuous, worthless citizen, as the highest bidder; and thus openly disposed of themselves and the whole Roman world at a publick sale.
EARLY in the fourth century of the Christian AEra, in the reign of the contemptible Emperor Honorius, an innumerable multitude of barbarians from the savage wilds of the north of Europe †, like a vast flood of waters, broke in upon and over-ran the immense, unwieldy empire of ROME. Ignorant of letters, they were incapable of any considerable degree of knowledge or reflection, and of course were strangers to all useful science and to the liberal arts. Dark thick clouds of Gothick night soon obscured the fair face of science, and enveloped every trace of the polite arts, and the European world sunk gradually into ignorance, stupidity, and superstition; nor did a ray of pure literary light gleam forth again in the lapse of some hundred years.
[Page 14] ABOUT that memorable period when William the bastard, Duke of Normandy, invaded and * conquered England, by the death of HAROLD and the defeat of the English at the battle of Hastings, gleams of scientifick light began to beam through the Gothick cloud and to illuminate the European world. By that conquest, the vanquished nation were put into a situation of receiving the rudiments of science and of cultivation, and of emerging from their former barbarous and rude state of manners. Gradual and flow, however, was the progress of human knowledge and improvement, even in the other parts of the European world until the fourteenth century, when the great designs of that benevolent Being who ruleth over all, began to ripen into birth. In this remarkable century, literature suddenly diffused itself through most parts of † Europe, gun-powder, the art of printing, and the mariner's compass were invented, LUTHER appeared in Germany, and a reformation in religion took place; and, at last, towards the close of that century, ‡ CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS discovered the great southern, and SEBASTIAN CABOT the great northern continent, of this new world, AMERICA.—For times of greater freedom however, of nobler improvement, and of more perfect knowledge was reserved the particular discovery of this happy land, the place of our nativity.
THE cruel civil wars that preceeded the voyage and discovery of Cabot had deluged ENGLAND in blood, and had rendered her people ferocious and savage; nothing truly noble, truly great and praise-worthy was then to be found in that distracted country. Degrading to humanity and to reason was the direful contest! a people, by nature intended to be free and happy, are there seen tearing out one another's entrails, without remorse employing the sword, and alternately exercising § the axe and the halter upon each other, in the [Page 15] worst of all causes,—in the cause of tyranny: not, like the free-born sons of ATHENS and of SPARTA, gloriously braving death in the cause of freedom and of their country *; but contending, with malice and rancour implacable, to set a despot of the one house or of the other family upon the disputed throne. Had the calm, mild voice of unerring REASON been duly heared, the poor, ignorant, deluded people would have receded from the disgraceful contention convinced that to them, the consequence of the brutal conflict, slavery, was the same, whether a tyrant of the House of York or of Lancaster prevailed. But, alas! their minds were then debased by slavery †; their understandings were clouded with ignorance, bigotry, and error. Villenage, that bitterest fruit of feudal policy, was then still in full force in ENGLAND: freedom was then unknown in that unhappy kingdom. KING and subject, LORD and vassal, RELIGIOUS CLERGY and prophane laity were then the principal distinctions of men. By tenure the Lord was bound to attend the KING in his wars for a certain number of days, ‡ and, in like manner, by a similar law of bondage, was the wretched vassal compellable to follow and serve his LORD in those wars.
UPON the 22d day of August, in the year 1485, the Earl of Richmond, afterwards known by the name of KING HENRY THE VII. fought at Bosworth Field, and by the defeat and slaughter of the merciless tyrant and bloody usurper § RICHARD the III. cleared his way to a throne, to which he had no perfect, legal title; in a few months after he married the Princess ELIZABETH, the heiress of the House of York, eldest daughter of the deceased King, EDWARD the IV. and thereby forever closed the bloody contest between the ‖ red and the white rose. From this marriage proceeded a Princess, by the name of Margaret, who in 1502 intermarried with James, King of Scotland, in right of whom, after a lapse of an hundred and eighteen years, succeeded to the crown of ENGLAND one of the most pedantick, ridiculous, contemptible, ‖ infamous tyrants that ever abused, that ever disgraced a throne.
[Page 16] IN the reign of HENRY the VII. commerce began to lift her head in England, the arts and sciences to bud, and manufactures to be encouraged; a revolution in the manners of the people began to take place and paved the way for a revolution in the system of government; the Commons, who had been generally in a state of ignorance and dependance upon their feodal Lords, began to be enlightened by science, and the whole kingdom to entertain a more just opinion of the dignity and rights of mankind. But it was not till the reign of the famous Queen ELIZABETH, who mounted the throne in 1558, that commerce was known to flourish, learning to grow into general esteem, and the Protestant religion to be really established in that kingdom. Bright and, in general, happy was the distinguished long reign of that * affable and popular Queen, who, by her vigorous exertions in the cause of LIBERTY enabled the oppressed States of Belgia to throw off the intolerable yoke of the bigotted tyrant, PHILIP the II. of Spain, and fully to establish then independence. The introduction and progress of freedom attended the introduction and progress of science, of arts, manufactures, and commerce, and the fair tree of LIBERTY now first began to blossom in ENGLAND; Virginia was discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh and was attempted to be settled, and the land we now dwell in was found out by Gosnold. No Sovereign ever held the sceptre in ENGLAND who appears to have gained such an universal ascendency over the affections of the people as ELIZABETH, nor any of their Monarchs so sincerely and affectionately to have loved that people.
UPON her decease succeeded JAMES the VI. of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, by Lord Darnley, her husband, as generally asserted, though, as some suppose, by the Italian fiddler † David Rizzio. Dismal and humiliating to the English was the contrast between their late affable, magnanimous, native-born Queen and this ungracious, timid, despicable pedant from the north: violent were the animosities of some of the great men and Nobles of the English nation towards this conjurer of a King and those swarms of his countrymen [Page 17] which he transplanted into his new dominion, suddenly elevated to places of power and profit, and to titles of the highest honour and distinction. The vain disposition of the pedantick Monarch, who imagined himself possessed of inexhaustible learning and of never-failing judgment, prevailed upon him to join the impious, sycophantick * lordlings of the church, and from a Judge to turn a personal, loquacious, and furious advocate against the Dissenters, then denominated Puritans, of whom were our enlightened, manly ancestors. After having argued as an advocate, and as a Judge determined, against those men who knew that the liturgy of the church of England was little more than mere translation of the old Popish mass-book, and that too many of the forms and foppish ceremonies of the Roman church was retained in the church of their native country, JAMES issued two proclamations, the one commanding Jesuits and Popish Priests to leave the kingdom; in which, however, he intimated that he would have a regard to tender consciences; the other enjoining the Puritans to a strict conformity to the established church, and in which he gave them no hope of any, the least indulgence. Weak as was this contemptible Monarch, he had so much sense, however, as to know that prelacy in a monarchical government is ever an useful engine, a strong prop, of its maker and master, the King; nor was he so destitute of reflection as to forget that the Bishops were daily complimenting him with unlimited power, while the Dissenters opposed his king-craft, nonsensical tenets of passive obedience and non-resistance, with the doctrines of law and the indubitable right of liberty of conscience in matters between GOD and their own souls. The intolerant zeal of a tyrannical † high priest, supported by arbitrary principles of an impolitick King, soon produced a severe prosecution of the Puritans, and many families, among whom were the first of our pious ancestors, were compelled to fly from their friends, their relations, and their native land, and to seek for liberty and rest in foreign countries. The first church of our ancestors with their venerable pastor took refuge in Holland where, finding the manners of the people more licentious than they thought [Page 18] consistent with true piety, after a few years residence, they first formed the resolution of seeking an asylum from royal and prelatick tyranny in the wilds of this new world. Having a firm reliance upon the goodness and mercy of their GOD, they embarked for Hudson's River, committed themselves to the raging element of the sea, and resolutely determined to live or to die FREEMEN. Their manners, formed by letters and a religious education, and exercised in the schools of affliction and oppression, were pious, simple, frugal, decent, patient, resolute. HE who neither slumbers nor sleeps,—HE who directeth all things in the heavens and in the earth, covered them with HIS almighty wings, and in his wisdom decreed that this then dreary wilderness should receive the determined fugitives.—Strong to labour and patient of fatigue, the dark, thick woods of the ancient forest fell before them, and the country around them soon began to blossom like the garden of Eden. Conscious of the grateful duties they owed to their Common Parent and Benefactor, they soon regulated the publick offices and ceremonies of religion, and, sensible that the manners of a free people depend greatly upon knowledge and publick instruction, they wisely instituted publick free schools for the education of youth in every part of their settlement, the benefits of which we all feel the effects of even at this very memorable day. Thus began the settlement of this country, not by fellow-subjects sent out under the authority, patronage and protection of the parent-state, but by an oppressed, a persecuted sect of christians, who had been compelled to fly their native country and seek for shelter and protection, first in foreign States, and afterwards in the wilds of this then uncultivated land.
ENGLAND, for THE KINGDOM OF GREAT-BRITAIN did not then exist, had no hand in the settlement, contributed nothing towards its expenses, and was so far, as a nation, from protecting the then infant settlements of NORTH-AMERICA, that, jealous of our growing strength, by Royal proclamation *, numbers who were eager to enjoy the natural rights of man, with all their numerous families, were then prohibited from leaving that Kingdom; and in the subsequent [Page 19] reign of the priest-led, uxorious, dissembling, execrable tyrant CHALES the I. many, intending to embark for this Commonwealth, were stopt by the prerogative writ of ne exeat regno. By the vigour of their own free minds, and by the unremitting diligence of their own labourious hands, was this our native country entered upon, subdued, and possessed by our resolute, pious, and free ancestors, who, sick of the tyranny of Kings, Priests, and Nobles here flew for rest; and much dissatisfied with the cruel, unjust, English-Gothick law of discent, determined to interweave some of the juster laws of the Jewish Republick with the fairer parts of the Common Law of England, and thereby form a system of jurisprudence, better adapted to promote EQUALITY, and a more equitable distribution of property among the fellow-citizens of the same free State *.
IT does not appear that we received any assistance from ENGLAND in our bloody wars with the Savages, that she afforded us any protection or troubled herself much about us until the reign of the prodigal, profligate, royal idol CHARLES the II. Then the country had so increased in people and in commerce that it attracted the rapacious eyes of the ministerial harpies, who soon discovered an anxious inclination to quarter their hungry minions upon, and to draw a revenue from, the descendants of those very persons whom the tyranny and bigotry of English Kings and of English Bishops had driven from their native country and cruelly compelled to seek an asylum in the then uncultivated wilderness of America.
THE infamous Edward Randolph came over from ENGLAND in the year 1676; but because the independent FREEMEN of this country, conscious of their own dignity, received him not with all that humble submission with which slaves receive their haughty master, he immediately conceived, and ever after retained, a most inveterate hatred to the people and to the government of this Commonwealth, wrote to his abandoned Sovereign, his Ministers and Bishops, made several voyages to ENGLAND and back again; like many of his more modern [Page 20] brethren, most grossly misrepresented the actions of our manly ancestors and of their Government in church and state; wrote and talked, and worked, and wriggled himself into places of profit and trust; associated with a few unprincipled traitors who then disgraced this their native country; nor ever ceased his vile, malicious labours until he had overturned the then mild, equal government of MASSACHUSETTS*; and in the stead thereof procured and arbitrary tyranny to be here established. His iniquitons, base triumphs, however, lasted not long; for, in less than three full years, the false accuser and his despot friend, the royal Governour, Sir Edmond Andross, by the stern hand of unrelenting justice, were hurled headlong from their new seats of lawless power and avarice.
THE sacred fire of liberty was smothered for a while nor shewed abroad its chearing light, but still it was not quite extinct: in former days it had been carefully preserved, and highly cherished by our virtuous ancestors, and it had been seen to flame most bright before the leyes of their well instructed descendants. The annihilation of their chartered rights by the tyrant JAMES the II. the last male Monarch of the detested house of Stuart that disgraces the annals of English history, the restrictions of their trade, the restraint of the publick press, and the oppressions, exactions, and insolence of the new exotick Governour, of the unprincipled Randolph, and of the other royal minions, rouzed the people into action and kindled up the dying sparks of PUBLICK LIBERTY, which soon burst forth with irresistable violence and withered all those enemies of FREEDOM and of MASSACHUSETTS.
UPON the 18th day of April, 1689, the inhabitants of this country suddenly rushed to arms, under the conduct of the gallant young † NELSON marched to the citadel, and there compelled the tyrant, Andross, to surrender up the fort and government at discretion, together with Randolph and all the traitors who had fled there for protection.
A REVOLUTION, unknown to them, had two months before taken [Page 21] place in England, and the Prince and Princess of Orange, with the approbation of the nation, had stept into the vacant throne of the vagrant tyrant JAMES the II *.
THE new King and Queen granted us a new † charter, our country again flourished and increased, the manners of our forefathers were preserved, and the rising generation imbibed and cherished the same independent spirit of freedom which had so conspicuously distinguished their virtuous ancestors, the publick seminaries of learning were protected and encouraged, and the whole body of the people were instructed in letters and in the rudiments of useful knowledge.
THE same causes still produce the same effects,—and the manners and principles of our people, formed by the same modes of education, thank GOD! even at this day, are nearly similar to those of their great forefathers.
IN no part of the habitable globe is learning and true useful knowledge so universally disseminated as in our native country. Who hath seen a native adult that cannot write? who known a native of the age of puberty that cannot read the bible? In what other land do the common country people who bring their produce to the daily markets, so readily calculated, and by a memoritor arithmetick so duly ascertain the various prices of the numerous commodities they vend? Where are the people who so universally interest themselves in all publick political matters as our fellow-citizens at large, and our hardy yeomanry in particular? Who are better acquainted with the various, daily transactions of the earth than the whole body of this people? Who debate more freely? Who, in general, conclude more justly?—and to whom are we indebted for these invaluable advantages, for the distinguishing characteristick of a knowing and enlightened people? Under GOD, we certainly derive all these benefits from the piety, wisdom, and prudence of our renowned forefathers, who, sensible that the manners and principles of a people depend upon education, took care, by the establishment [Page 22] of publick schools, to instruct every one in the knowledge of letters, religion, and civil liberty.
FROM the time of the new charter nothing happened among us so material as to merit our particular attention at present. In the succeeding reign of Queen ANN, the last of the Stuart name that filled the English throne, an event, however, of the greatest importance to US and to the ENGLISH took place. In the fifth year of the reign of that Queen a statute passed for the * union of the two kingdoms of ENGLAND and SCOTLAND; by the fourth article of which, it is declared that "ALL the subjects of the united kingdom shall have full freedom of trade and navigation to any port within the united kingdom, and the dominions thereto belonging; and that there should be a communication of all other rights which belonged to the subjects of either kingdom."
BY this article our tender, nursing mother, as she has been most falsely and impudently called, without consulting our legislative bodies, or asking the consent of any one individual of our countrymen, assumed upon herself to convey, as stock in trade, one full undivided moiety of all the persons and all the estates and property of the FREEMEN of AMERICA to an alien who will prove an harsh, cruel, and unrelenting stepmother. Then, too much blinded with foolish affection for that country whose oppressions had forced our stern, free-minded progenitors into these remote regions of the world,—into an howling and a savage wilderness,—like children, not yet attained to the years of reason and discretion, who inconsiderately suppose their parent ever in the right, our predecessors sat quiet under the arbitrary disposition, nor once murmured aloud at the unnatural, and to us iniquitous, transaction.
OUR new parent, GREAT-BRITAIN, then made our † Kings, appointed our Governours, and kindly sent many of her needy sons to [Page 23] live upon the fruits of our toil, to reap where neither she nor they had sown, and to fill the various offices which she had generously created here, for her and their own emolument. Every twentieth cousin of an ale-house-keeper who had a right of voting in the election of a member of Parliament was cooked up into a gentleman, and sent out here, commissioned to insult the hand that gave him daily bread. Although greatly displeased with these injurious proceedings we submitted to the harsh hand of our unfeeling, selfish step-mother, nor once remonstrated against these her unjust, her cruel usurpations.
GREAT-BRITAIN involved herself in a war with Spain and France, and, considered as a part of her property, we became entangled with her enemies, with whom we had no reasonable cause of dispute. Out of revenge to her, those enemies annoyed our trade, and, from the then formidable harbour of Louisbourg, the French threatened annihilation to our fishery.
IN that critical, and by us unsought for, situation, OUR COUNTRY flew to arms, and with a small determined host of hardy men, unexperienced in the more regular rules of war and of modern attack, in less than three months, compelled the veteran soldiers of France to surrender their once supported impregnable fortress to the resolute, persevering yeomanry of New-England *.
IN the conquest of Cape-Breton, the undaunted, bold, enterprising spirit of our stern forefathers appeared eminently displayed in their intrepid sons: AMERICA rejoiced, MASSACHUSETTS gloried in her children, and the European world stood astonished at the unexpected, great event.
OUR good and tender-nursing step-mother soon discovered her paternal regard for her darling offspring, and shortly after that conquest, without condescending even to ask or sollicit our consent, restored to her enemy the well-known DURKIRK of NORTH-AMERICA. It may [Page 24] be asked, by what right did GREAT-BRITAIN so arbitrarily dispose of the conquest of our arms? By the same right which she afterwards so openly avowed, so arrogantly ENACTED, that "SHE had a right to bind AMERICA in all cases whatever *." A right by which all our lives, our liberties, and our properties were asserted to be at her lawless disposal, at her merciless domination; by which she could transfer or sell every person in AMERICA and all their estates to the Sultan of the East, the Emperor of Morocco, or to any other despot of the Asiatick, or of the European, world.
SUPPOSING that MASSACHUSETTS was a colony originally sent out, supported and protected by GREAT-BRITAIN, which I do not, I cannot, admit; yet it by no means follows that she could legally or honestly exercise, the right she had assumed over us. "Colonies" say the † Corcyrean Embassadors to the Athenians, "are not sent out to be the SLAVES, but to be the EQUALS of those that remain behind;" and Flaminius the Roman Pro-consul of Greece, in the Senate of Rome, after his return from his government, tells the Embassadors of King Antiochus that "colonies were not sent into AEolis and Ionia to be held in slavery by Kings but to spread that ancient nation over the world ‡. How different were the notions and declarations of those illustrious ancients, in regard to colonies, from those entertained and ENACTED by our late ungracious step-mother!
EARLY in the reign of GEORGE the II. the British Parliament passed an act "for the more speedy recovery of debts in his Majesty's plantations in America," whereby a new species of evidence, unknown to the common-law of ENGLAND, was introduced here, and an ex parte affidavit or deposition of any hired or perjured villain was made to bind the property and the person of every American on this side the Atlantick, while none other than the viva voce testimony of the witness himself present in the open court of law in ENGLAND, could be admitted to establish any fact or demand against a native or even a foreign resident in that [Page 25] country *. Our manufactures were soon injuriously restricted, the free use of the common element, water, was prohibited to us, and the working up our own raw materials also in some cases was denied to us: injuries and oppressions great and grievous, but, when compared with the intolerable badges of slavery enacted in the succeeding tyrannical reign, light and trifling.
IN 1756, another war was declared by GREAT-BRITAIN against FRANCE, excited by a number of clamourous, interested British merchants, who had been accumulating enormous fortunes from the tobacco trade, the fur trade, and the trade of the southern colonies, as they were then denominated.
AMERICA joined hand in hand with her harsh step-mother, and, assisted by the superiour abilities of one great † statesman, enabled her to carry her flag triumphant throughout the four quarters of the globe. Before this war closed, the good old King died, full of years and full of glory, when the bright days of Britain began to darken, and were soon to be obscured with clouds, and storms, and tempests which were to shake her Empire to the centre.
A YOUNG, proud Monarch, of puny genius and of pigmy talents, with an unfeeling heart and an unrelenting obstinacy, succeeded GEORGE the II. who now determined to raise his minion of the detestable House of Stuart, to the first offices of the State, and permit him to ride over the heads and disgrace the persons of the ablest Counsellors and of the noblest families in ENGLAND. Every true whig and friend to the revolution of 1688 was soon marked out, and devoted as a publick enemy, almost every officer of government in ENGLAND was changed in the space of a few months, and in less than three years a venal Parliament was bribed, most openly, to sanctify a shameful peace.
[Page 26] LIKE all his family, an enemy to PUBLICK LIBERTY, the tyrant minion turned his baleful thoughts toward this fair land of native freedom, resolved to blast the fruits of all our great-forefather's care. It is true indeed that the indignation of the English e'er long compelled the wretch to quit his publick station, to fly from open day, and skulk behind the throne.
THERE sheltered and protected from the storms of patriots and of injured FREEMEN he provoked his royal pupil, and all his base, mean tools of power to plunder us by act of Parliament, and boldly to assert that we were not entitled to any sort of right but what our selfish step-dame might be pleased to give us. Finding that you called aloud for law and justice, and insisted on the rights of free Americans, by * Governours of his own choice and of his own country, and by a standing army he determined to subjugate AMERICA to a most lawless domination.
THE dire effects of the standing army quartered in this town you all but too well remember!
THE night of the fifth of March, 1770, is a night much to be remembered!—It was a night of horror and of the blackness of darkness! The innocent, unarmed inhabitants of this peaceful though muchinjured town then fell victims to the brutal violence of the mercenary slaves of GEORGE the III.—To every species of insult, at last was added this infernal outrage. Methinks, I realize the terrors of that night!—I see your streets contaminated with murder and with blood! methinks, I hear the confused noise of small-arms, rage, and tumult! I see the base, savage-ruffian drive the remorseless steel through the warm brain-pan of the lovely, hapless youth—the fallen, dying Maverick! [Page 27] methinks I hear the quick, shrill shrieks of matrons and of maids, while "groans the sad earth, resounds the rattling sky."
BUT, lo! appears the matchless, dauntless patriot, ADAMS, the stern, determined father of our glorious revolution, surrounded by a noble band of brave compatriots of this insulted town.
HUSHED is the spreading tumult!—Instant they form a firm, long line of march.—In sullen silence, as they pass the British guards, "deliberate valour breathes in every soul" and thoughts of deep revenge fire every manly breast. To the solemn temple of their GOD the slow procession moves—and there,—
'Tis there resolved that "every British troop shall instantly retire." None dares to disobey:—the appalled military cut-throats fly the town, and peace and order once again resume their ancient seats.
NEW modes of extortion are soon again devised in BRITAIN, and a more numerous military force is sent from thence to awe you into submission.
THE pure flame of liberty, left brightly burning by our first forefathers, now kindles up anew. Close to the muzzles of the cannon of their men-of-war, the devoted tea is thrown into the ocean, and the insolent tyrants and traitors of the new-fangled Board of Customs fly for safety and hide their miscreant heads among the British troops. GREAT-BRITAIN shuts your port,—deprives you of that common † element which the kind Parent of the Universe made for all, and vainly tries to desolate the seat of publick virtue; and still to irritate you more, destroys, like JAMES the II. of the tyrant Stuart's race, each chartered right.
[Page 28] YOUR feelings now are all alive: and you, ye virtuous sons of freedom, BOWDOIN, HANCOCK, ADAMS!—* HANCOCK, ADAMS, BOWDOIN!—illustrious names! for ever-honoured, ever-dear! withdraw from the polluted town, and meet your new-formed Senate in the fields.
SOON the willing freemen train to arms, resolved to save their country, or perish in the great attempt †.
AT last the flames of open war burst forth. The mercenary troops in darkness march for CONCORD, and unprovoked discharge their murdering arms upon our unoffending countrymen. Rage and revenge then fired each firm, undaunted breast. Our hardy yeomen rush to fight; and, though but poorly armed, they drive the foe. "Percy, and Douglass" the supposed "confident against the world in arms ‡" are soon compelled to fly, and hide their vanquished heads within this town.
FROM every part the sons of freedom quit the plough, and, with their rusty swords and long-unpolished guns, march eager to surround the vaunting, though late vanquished, foe.
BUT soon the deadly contest wears a darker face.—From their beleaguered garrison the Britons now pour forth, to drive our raw militia from their slender lines near Bunker's gently rising hill §. Now, now, ye virtuous sons of great forefathers, forget not whence ye sprung! shine forth!—in native valour shine!—remember, and avenge your slaughtered brethren!
BUT see!—In all the dazzling pomp of military parade the embattled foe draws near! their silken banners wave resplendent to the sun! their burnished arms gleam dreadful through the field! from sea,—from [Page 29] land, their furious cannons roar, discharging iron thunderbolts; while bursting bombs in deadly shivers fly around the slender, threatened lines: and thick, dark clouds of volumned smoke and vast, broad sheets of rushing flame and sparkling fires, from close adjoining, desolated Charlestown, rise.—Amid this solemn, dreadful scene, with more than Spartan valour steeled, intrepid still our vengeful yeomen stand! they mock at fear and are not affrighted, neither turn they their BACKS FROM THE SWORD *.
Now, almost hand to hand, the foes, too confident, display their dreadful front; "full of deliberate valour bent on daring battle."—At once five hundred fiery messengers of death, from freedom's sons sure aim'd, fly thick amid the bold assailants. In heaps on heaps the regulated [...] now fall! The proud invaders stop:—they pause.—Again like rattling rail, but barbed with fire, the deadly bullets fly.—The Britons break,—and slow retire. Shame, rage, and fell revenge recall their foiled, their shattered troops.—Again they form,—they march deliberate, resolved to storm the lines.—Another, and another storm of vengeful fire bursts on them:—again, they feel the leaden, fiery death:—they bleed, they drop;—again they break;—they fly.—Once more their bold, intrepid chiefs recall their galled, disordered troops, and make one desperate effort more.—Again the battle bleeds; nor do fair freedom's sons give way till their whole stock of ammunition's quite expended.
REGARDLESS of his precious life, disdaining shameful flight, the illustrious † WARREN falls, his country's hero and his country's pride!—What though within these hallowed walls his mouldering relicks lie, without a sculptured stone to mark the spot, yet shall his fame be known, his memory live, to latest ages!
‡ To pay superiour honours to those who have devoted their lives [Page 30] in fighting for their country is a debt of justice. The eloquence of a MORTON, within this sacred temple, hath been exerted in this noble cause, and he hath commemorated, in manly strains of eloquence, the exalted character, and the glorious death of the heroick WARREN; but as the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men, WARREN'S fame, HIS glorious actions are deposited in universal remembrance, far superiour to marble monuments, local inscriptions, or funeral eulogiums.
THE daring intrepidity of such young troops though so poorly armed, so meanly clothed, and the dreadful, desolating slaughter experienced from them in the late battle induced the haughty sons of Britain to think more favourably of those whom they had hitherto been taught to despise as timid dastards in the field of war.
* ADAMS and HANCOCK are soon after this singled out and proscribed by name.—Illustrious friends of liberty, rejoice!—distinguished patriots, hail!—whene'er, in future times, the faithful page of history shall unfold, your names shall shine resplendent as the planets, while every generous mind will shrink abhorrent from the spiteful, impotent proscriber.
AND now, to wound your feelings to the very quick, the barbarous despoilers seize your sacred temples †; religion is prophaned.—The sacred fane where oft your pious fathers met to worship the kind GOD of their salvation is polluted;—where trod, in holy reverence, the pious feet of the devout christian, now resounds the rattling hoofs of training horses and the sharp, keen lash of torturing whips; where grateful hymns and loud hosannas had oft ascended to the immortal King, now, from her hellish trump, PROPHANITY poured forth her horrid oaths, and vile obscenity re-echoed all around. The publick faith of treaty, is basely violated by ‡ GAGE, and your fellowcitizens are oppressed, insulted, plundered, imprisoned.
[Page 31] THUS, my fellow-citizens! were your feelings tortured, and your rights invaded and retrenched beyond a coward-sufferance *.
THANK GOD! "the smiling dawn of happy day presents a prospect clear †." Seeing our besieging troops possessed of the heights of Dorchester, and dreading the just vengeance of a people driven mad by oppression, the brutal sons of violence for ever quit the town;—they leave our shares and fly for Halifax.
NOT many months after this flight, the enemy covered the seas with his ‡ fleets, and transported a vast army of native and of foreign mercenaries to desolate our country.
ONE knows not which most to execrate,—the base, unfeeling despot of Hesse, who sold his wretched people, or the blind, vindictive, obstinate, despotick dealer in human flesh who purchased those military slaves for the truly laudable purpose of butchering his subjects, and of irradicating from AMERICA every trace of PUBLICK LIBERTY.
BUT the great, the important day is come; let the world of man rejoice! Congress declare, and their illustrious President, the late proscribed HANCOCK, our beloved townsman, proclaims, that "we abjure the British tyrant, and that AMERICA is sovereign, free, and independent!"
O GLORIOUS act of noblest free-born souls; which soon will give peace, liberty, and safety to our much-injured country, and here will open a secure asylum for all the oppressed of every nation under heaven!
TIME will not permit me now to particularize all the brilliant actions, [Page 32] all the great events of the war, nor to attempt the splendid characters of all your heroes, statesmen, patriots.
THE incredible long difficult march of your army through the eastern part of this State, and through the before-untrodden wilderness into Canada; the masterly retreat of your army, conducted by our beloved Chief, from Long-Island without the loss of a man, though attempted within musket shot of the superiour army of the enemy furnished with two hundred pieces of brass artillery; the defeat and capture of the Hessians at Trenton and at Princeton, at a time so critical; the defeat and intire capture of the two British armies, at Saratoga and York-Town, with the infernal cruelties and savage * murders which so long disgraced the British arms and nation will prove proper subjects, hereafter, for the pens of the Historian and the Poet.
THE memories and the fall of the excellent MONTGOMERY and of the gallant MERCER will be had in everlasting remembrance by every friend to LIBERTY and of AMERICA: nor will the names of LINCOLN, † KNOX, STEUBEN, GATES, and GREEN be ever obliterated from the brightest rolls of fame. While, like the sun, will shine to latest time the great, the mighty WASHINGTON; in whom we view the Scholar, Statesman, Hero, Patriot, Philosopher, and Christian; who by the most admirable policy disbanded his brave, unpaid, virtuous army, and induced them readily to return again into the body of their fellow-citizens; after which, with the magnanimity of CINCINNATUS, our beloved GENERAL retired from his exalted publick station to the calm, happier, though less splendid scenes of private, rural life:
How often must we turn the volumes of history before we can meet with even one good, one amiable, benevolent crowned head, the friend of freedom, and the friend of man. How then must we be charmed to view our great, our good, magnanimous Ally of FRANCE, [Page 33] in whom shines forth each splendid virtue which can grace a crown! Brave, liberal, just, humane; the tender, kind, indulgent father of a gallant, generous, lively, polished people, and the firmest friend of our UNITED STATES. Long may he reign!—long may he live! an honour to the Royal Race, the ornament of Europe, and still a publick blessing to mankind.
AMONG his Nobles none shine with more resplendent lustre than our late-adopted fellow-citizen, the brave, the truly amiable MARQUIS LE FAYETTE, who in the cause of PUBLICK FREEDOM and our deep-injured country drew his manly sword, left all the delicacies of his native land, his beauteous confort, and his darling offspring, to combat and to conquer in the dread fields of death, by the great side of our illustrious Chief.
THE Britons being vanquished in AMERICA, the peace took place, and our late abjured King was forced most solemnly to acknowledge us sovereign, free, and independent.
WE soon began to enjoy the blessings of a free, unrestrained trade, the whole European world seemed anxious to enter into our ports and to court our friendship, while "every man sat down under his own vine and his own fig-tree and there was none to make him afraid."
BUT elated with success and blinded by prosperity, we too soon began to relax in our manners, and to adopt the luxury, the follies, the fashions of that nation which so lately we had every reason to detest *, and madly to enter into a boundless import of her manufactures in preferrence to those of our allies and friends.
DISSIPATION and extravagance immediately pervaded all orders of our people, and so ridiculous was the triumph of folly among us that even our country-girls in their market-carts, and upon their panniered horses, rode through our streets with their heads deformed with the plumes of the ostrich, and the feathers of other exotick birds †.
[Page 34] SUCH a sudden depravity, such a rapid degeneracy of our manners hath plunged us deep in debt and difficulty, stript us of our cash, and brought us into great contempt. Above three millions of dollars have been exported since the peace from this State alone to GREATBRITAIN; and what have we to shew for such an enormous sum of money? It is good for us, perhaps, to have been in trouble. The kind GOD of our fathers, who bringeth good out of evil, hath suffered us, for the better, perhaps, to be so early infected with this mad rage of folly and extravagance. Poverty must soon compel us to reflect, and, I hope and trust to amend. If we do not, we already know the consequence,—inevitable and certain political destruction. No Empire or State hath yet been found so strong as to bear up against the deadly streams of universal luxury: we, therefore, can have no reason to suppose that the youth of our constitution is so very vigorous as to throw off the effects of that disease which hath long since tumbled into dust the greatest Empires, the most powerful States of the universe *. Let us then, my fellow-citizens! determine, from this day, individually, to amend, to retrench every unnecessary, every useless expense, and save our country! Let us recur to the principles and to the plain, frugal manners of our pious ancestors. AMERICANS! approve yourselves men of wisdom, as you have convinced the whole world that you are men of valour. Let me intreat, let me conjure you, my countrymen! by your religion; as you love your liberty, your wives, and your posterity, to shake off immediately this pernicious, this unmanly, this destructive vice, so unworthy of yourselves, the dignity of your country, and the glory of your great forefathers! Let the great and the opulent, from this auspicious day set the bright examples of true frugality and of decent oeconomy. Let our legislature enact † sumptuary laws to check the progress of our present evils. Ye honoured Fathers of our land! your country hath invested you with fullest powers to save the State, and you must answer to GOD and to that country for a faithful discharge of the important, sacred trust committed to you. If the thoughtless and voluptuous, heedless of themselves, their families and country, will still persist in their pernicious course of luxury [Page 35] and dissipation, make their follies contributory to the necessities of the State. Let every article of needless dress, and shew, and vain expense be taxed—and highly taxed; from thence derive a fund, if no other can be found, to pay that debt which honour, justice, and humanity must blush to find unpaid. Discharge the debt which gratitude must hide her modest, decent head to see so scandalously, so long neglected. Pay, pay your brave, your late invincible, disinterested, patriotick army! The necessity of FREEMEN and of honest MEN now presses hard upon us. The disgrace of past misconduct and of dishonour to a freeman is the most urgent necessity *. How infamous does that man appear in the impartial eyes of ALL who, having it in his power, refuses or willfully neglects to pay his lawful debts? who but would contemn the base, dishonourable wretch, that wished to cheat his honest, bona fide creditor? if this be so, how can we shew our hardened faces to our noble, virtuous, manly sons, who freely left their all to combat death, and wounds, and every comfort of domestick life, to save us and our threatened country? this debt, my fathers! then discharge the first.
BANISH luxury; invest your great amphyctionick Council †, your CONGRESS, with full, but specified powers to regulate your trade, and all the important, great concerns of your young, rising Empire, and ALL, yes, ALL will yet be well. Our commerce, numbers, manufactures, arts, and glory then will soon increase, and our late stepmother, who now so haughtily contemns us, again shall dread our power. If we make a right use of our natural advantages we soon must be a truly great and happy people. When we consider the vastness of our country, the variety of her soil and climate, the immense extent of her sea-coast, and of the inland navigation by the lakes and rivers, we find a world within ourselves, sufficient to produce whatever can contribute to the necessities and even the superfluities of life. Every article of commerce and almost every article of luxury, now imported from abroad, may be produced in one part or another of this our great, [Page 36] our wide extended Empire. These, among many other, then are some of those blessings which must for ever flow, if we are wise and prudent, from this auspicious epoch, which we celebrate this day.
AND now, my brethen! let us for ever cherish that heart-felt affection, that enthusiastick love of our country which should continually warm the hearts of FREE CITIZENS, and which enabled those celebrated sons of ancient Greece to work such wonders for their native land.
LET us cherish all that's great, and just, and liberal; and banish, for ever banish from our hearts * ENVY, that passion of the low, uncultivated mind, nor grieve because our neighbour's richer, or more splendid than ourselves.
LET us cheerfully open our arms to the industrious, and to the oppressed, of every nation, tongue, and kindred, nor deny to any what THE LORD OF ALL hath made, has given for UNIVERSAL GOOD. AS HE hath given peace, liberty, and safety to US, let us extend the same to ALL.
BUT, in particular, let US cherish the great duties of piety and † religion, convinced that every good and perfect blessing we enjoy is the free gift of that great King who reigns above.
CONVINCED, that with HIS own right hand and holy arm HE hath gotten us the victory; Let the sweet incense of grateful adoration rise in every heart; and let the lips of every of us pronounce, Not unto us, O Lord! not unto us, but unto thy great name be glory. The GOD of hosts, even the GOD of our Fathers raised up for us, our great and magnanimous ALLY, and HE also raised up for us, from among our brethren, such glorious heroes, patriots, statesmen! these were all instruments in HIS paternal hand for bringing on, and perfecting, that great event, the anniversary of which we now commemorate. Wherefore [Page 37] let every of us say,—Blessed be the name of GOD for ever and ever; for wisdom and might are HIS, and HE changeth the times and the seasons; HE removeth Kings and sitteth up Kings; HE giveth wisdom to the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding *. THE MOST HIGH ruleth in the kingdom of men, end giveth it to whomsoever HE will †.
ERRATA.
After the word nativity in the third line of the Oration, add of the learning and abilities of the man. In page 16, for Robert Earl of, read Henry Stuart Lord.
Page 21, for in our native country, read this, our native country, and in the same page for memoritor, read memoriter. In page 23, for supported impregnable fortress, read supposed impregnable fortress.
All other errours of the press or author, it is hoped will be overlooked.
APPENDIX.
No. 1.
IT is the observation of Pluturch, that the ROMANS, in the virtuous ages of their Republick, had such respect to religion, that they made all their affairs to depend solely on the will of the Gods; that even in their greatest prosperities they never suffered the least contempt or neglect of the ancient [...] and ceremonies, perfectly convinced that their uniform submission to the Gods contributed much more to the stability and prosperity of their State than all the successes of their arms. The instances of the noblest patriotism among them are almost innumerable. Caius Mucius Scaevola, the Decii, and Quintus Curtius are, among others, most astonishing; and during the first five hundred years of ROME, we often meet with characters of the most shining and exalted virtue.
No. 2.
How noble does the Roman Embassador, Fabricius, appear in his celebrated conferrence with King Pyrrhus, where he tells the King that the information he had received relative to his poverty was true; tells him that an house of mean appearance and a small spot of ground from which, by his own labour, he supported himself, was his whole estate: at the same time, he informs Pyrrhus, that his poverty renders him by no means less considerable in his country, nor in the least degree unhappy; that fortune supplies him with whatever nature actually requires, and that if he was without superfluities, he was without any desire for them; that with superfluities it was true he should be in a better situation to assist the needy, the only advantage for which the rich are to be envied; that small however, as were his possessions he could nevertheless contribute somewhat towards the support of the State and the assistance of his friends. As to honours, he tells the King that, poor as he was, his country placed him upon a level with the wealthiest of her citizens: that ROME acknowledged no qualifications for great employments but virtue and ability. FRABRICIUS then enumerates the great offices to which, notwithstanding his poverty he was eligible, and then goes on to inform the King, that his poverty did not affect his consequence in the Senate; that his countrymen honoured him for that very poverty which Pyrrhus considered as disgraceful, &c. and when the great Quinctius Cincinnatus was called to the Dictatorship, the deputies from the Senate found him following the plough at his little sabine farm.
No. 3.
THE Praetorian bands were a body of guards, amounting to near fifteen thousand men, distinguished by double pay, and by privileges superiour to the soldiers of the legions. They owed their institution to that crafty tyrant Augustus, who stationed only three cohorts (about fifteen hundred) of these guards in the capital, during his reign; but the dark, unrelenting monster Tiberius afterwards assembled the whole corps at Rome, and there fixed them in a permanent camp, well fortified and advantageously situated. After the murder of the cruel, dissolute Emperor Commodus, by his favourite concubine Marcia, on the 31st of December, A. D. 192, the virtuous Pertinax was elected and acknowledged Emperor, to whom the Praetorian bands took the oath of allegiance; after which, and before the expiration of eighty-seven days, some hundreds of these lawless ruffians, at noon-day, marched towards the Imperial Palace, where there companions upon guard immediately threw open the gates and joined them in the assassination of their excellent Prince, whose head, after dispatching him with many wounds, they cut off, fixed upon a lance, and carried in triumph to their camp. Incredible as it may appear, even in these moments of horror, Sulpicianus, the father-in-law of the murdered Pertinax, then in their camp, was so dead to decency, humanity, and all sense of publick virtue that he began to treat with these flagitious, military cut-throats for the vacant throne; when the more avaritious of the Praetorians, apprehensive that, in a private contract they should not obtain the highest price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of, to the best bidder, by publick auction. Julianus outbid Sulpicianus; the former promising to each soldier six thousand two hundred and fifty drachms (about two hundred and sixty-six pounds lawful money) while the other offered only five thousand drachms (a little better than two hundred and thirteen pounds lawful money.) To Julianus they then immediately threw [Page ii] open the gates of their camp, declared him Emperor, took the oath of allegiance to him, placed him in the centre of their ranks, surrounded him on every side with their shields, and proceeded with him through the deserted streets of Rome in close order of battle to the Senate, who dared not to resist, but pretended great satisfaction at the happy revolution, and acknowledged him Emperor.
See GIBBSONS's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
No. 4.
IT is obvious to observe how the word CONQUEROR affects the English, and what pains some of their writers have taken to shew, that William I. ought not to be considered as an absolute conqueror of the nation, but rather as the conqueror of King Harold, with whom he disputed the title to the crown of that kingdom, Among these is the learned and ingenious Sir MARTYN WRIGHT; from whose very excellent Introduction to [...] Law of Venures I shall here makes a considerable extract, and that principally because that valuable treatise is, I believe, in the hands of very few on this side the Atlantick. Page. 61 of that work it is said," Though it is true that the possessions of the Normans were of a sudden very great, and that they received most of them from the hands of William I. yet it does not follow, that the King took all the lands of England out of the hands of their several owners, claiming them as the spoils of war, or as parcel of a conquered country but on the contrary it appears pretty [...] from the history of those times, that the King either had, or pretended title to the crown, and that his title, whether real or pretended, was established by the defeat of Harold, which amounted to an unquestionable judgment in his favour. He did not therefore treat his oppposers as enemies, but as traitors, agreeably to the known laws of the kingdom, which subjected traitors not only to loss of life, but of all their possessions; so that this King, thus intitling himself to the lands of all such as had, or did afterwards oppose him, might well reward his followers in the manner he did, and that this must have been the case appears from the nature of the pleas held and determined at Pinenden, and Sharnburn, and by every other evidence of the time of this King, and of his immediate successors.
"As William I. did not claim, or possess himself of he lands of England as the spoils of conquest, so neither did he tyrannically and arbitrarily subject them to a feudal dependance; but as the feudal law was at that time the prevailing law in Europe, and "was then, says Sir Henry Spelman, conceived to be the most absolute law for supporting the royal estate, preserving union, confirming peace, and suppressing incen diaries and rebellions." William I. who had always governed by this policy, might probably recommend it to our ancestors, as the most obvious and ready way to put them upon a foot with their neighbours, and to secure the nation against any future attempts from them, and might probably propose laws agreeable thereto, as such quae ad utilitatem Anglorum, & ad [...] Pacem tuendam Efficacissimae videbantur; and it can be no wonder that such of our ancestors, as then composed the Commune Concilium of the nation, under the sense they then were of the strength and progress of this policy, should consent to it, establishment, and readily concur in a law effectually penned for that purpose: we find accordingly, among the laws of William I. a law enacting the feudal law itself, not co nomine, but in effect; inasmuch as it requires from all persons the same engagements to, and introduces the same dependance upon the King as supreme Lord of all the lands in England, as were supposed to be due to a supreme Lord by the feudal law: so that it clearly enacts the foundation at least of all the deductions and glosses, that are now treated as part of that law. The law I mean is the LII. law of William I. which runs thus, STATUIMUS UT OMNES LIBERI HOMINES FOEDE [...]EET SACRAMENTO AFFIRMENT, QUOD INTRA ET EXTRA UNIVERSUM REGNUM BRITANNIAE VAILIELMO [...]UO DOMINIO FIDELES ESSE VOLUNT, TERRAS ET HONORES ILLIUS FIDELITATE UNIQUE SERVARE CUM E [...], ET CONTEA INIMICOS ET ALIENIGENAS DEFENDERE.
"THE [...] of the law are absolutely [...] and proper to establish [...] policy with all its consequence [...] require that all [...] should expressly engage and [...], that they would become [...] as such be [...] William as then Lord, in respect of the dominion upon the then known feudal notion residing in a [...].
"2dly. THAT they would, in consequence of their becoming his vassals or tenants, every where faithfully maintain and defend his their Lord's [...] and [...], as well as person, and give him all possible aid and assistance against his enemies, whether foreign or domestick.
[Page iii] "THE manner of penning this law, is not less observable than the terms of it, for though it begins, as many other laws of this King, with the word Statuimus in the first person plural, according to the present stile and Language of Kings, without express mention of the commune concilium; yet we cannot possibly doubt its concurrence: because the King himself, being as it seems but one of more, is mentioned in the body of the law itself as a third person spoken of, and as such plainly distinguished from the many speaking in the beginning or enacting part of the law, viz. Statuimus ut omnes affirment Quod WILLIELMO DOMINO SUO Fideles esse volunt, terres et Honores ILLIUS ubique servare cum EO."
CAMDEN, who is quoted by Wright, asserts that the English were dispossessed of their hereditory estates by William I. and the lands and farms divided among his soldiers, but with this reserve, that they should do homage to him and his successors; and the Lord Verutam, also quoted by Wright, asserts that the conqueror got by right of conquest all the land of the realm into his hands in demesn, taking from every man all estate, tenure, property, and liberty of the same except religious and church lands, and the lands of Kent. But now let us hear Sir William Blackstone's opinion of the conquest by William the Bastard.
"THE nation at this period seems to have groaned under as absolute a slavery, as was in the power of a warlike, an ambitious, and a politick prince to create. The consciences of men were enslaved by four ecclesiasties, devoted to a foreign power, and unconnected with the civil state under which they lived: who now imported from Rome for the first time the whole farrago of superstitious novelties, which had been engendered by the blindness and corruption of the times, between the first mission of Augustine the monk, and the Norman conquest; such as transubstantiation, purgatory, communion in one kind, and the worship of saints and images; not forgetting the universal supremacy and dogmatical infallibility of the holy see. The laws too, as well as the prayers, were administered in an unknown tongue. The ancient trial by jury gave way to the impious decision by battle. The forest laws totally restrained all rural pleasures and many recreations. And in cities and towns the case was no better; all company being obliged to disperse, and fire and candle to be extinguished, by eight at night, at the sound of the melancholy curfeu. The ultimate property of all lands, and a considerable share out of the present profits, were vested in the King, or by him granted out to his Norman favourites; who, by a gradual progression of slavery, were absolute vassals to the crown, and as absolute tyrants to the commons. Unheard of forfeitures, talliages, aids and fines, were arbitrarily extracted from the pillaged landholders, in pursuance of the new system of tenure. And, to crown all, as a consequence of the tenure by knight-service, the King had always ready at his command an army of sixty thousand knights or milites: who were bound upon pain of confiscating their estates, to attend him in time of invation, or to quell any domestick insurrection. Trade, or foreign merchandize, such as it then was, was carried on by the Jews and Lombards; and the very name of an English fleet, which King Edgar had rendered so formidable, was utterly unknown to Europe: the nation consisting wholly of the clergy, who were also the lawyers; the barons, or great lords of the land; the knights or soldiery, who were the subordinate landholders; and the burghers, or inferior tradesmen, who from their insignificancy happily retained, in their socage and burgage tenure, some points of their ancient freedom. All the rest were villains or bondmen."
BLACK. COM. vol. 4. p. 411, 412.
"ANOTHER violent alteration of the English constitution consisted in the depopulation of whole countries, for the purposes of the King's royal diversion; and subjecting both them and all the ancient forests of the kingdom, to the unreasonable severities of forest laws imported from the continent, whereby the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the death of a man." It was a fixed maxim in this reign, according to Mr. Hume, as well as in some subsequent, that no native of the island should be advanced to any dignity ecclesiastical, civil or military; that not contented with those large forests, which the former Kings possessed in all parts of England; he resolved to make a new forest near Winchester, the usual place of his residence: and for that purpose, he laid waste the country in Hampshire for an extent of thirty miles, expelled the inhabitants from their houses, seized their property, even demolished churches and convents, and made the sufferers no compensation for the injury. At the same time he enacted new laws, by which he prohibited all his subjects from hunting in any of his forests, and rendered the penalties much more severe than ever had been inflicted for such offences. The killer of a deer or boar, or even of a hare, was punished with the delinquent's eyes; and that at a time, when the killing of a man would be atoned for by paying a moderate fine or composition. And the same author asserts that the conqueror divided all the lands of England, with very few exceptions, except the royal demesnes, into baronies, and that he conferred these, with the reservation of stated services and payments, on the most considerable of his adventurers. It appears [...] from Hume, that the heart of William the Conqueror was hardened against all compassion towards [Page iv] the people; and he scrupled no measure, however violent or severe, which seemed requisite to support his plan of tyrannical administration. Sensible of the restless disposition of the Northumbrians, he determined to incapacitate them ever after from giving him disturbance, and he issued orders for laying entirely waste that fertile country, which, for the extent of sixty miles, lies between the Humber and the Tees. The houses were reduced to ashes by the merciless Normans, the cattle seized and driven away, the instruments of husbandry destroyed; and the inhabitants compelled either to seek for a subsistence in the southern parts of Scotland, or if they lingered in England, from a reluctance to abandon their ancient habitations, they perished miserably in the woods from cold and hunger. The lives of an hundred thousand persons are computed to have been sacrificed to this stroke of barbarous policy." After all this let English pride continue to assert that their nation was not ever actually conquered by William the Bastard.
No. 5.
"IT was by accident only, that King Henry VII. had not a considerable hand in those great naval discoveries, by which the present age was so much distinguished. Columbus, after meeting many repulses from the courts of Portugal and Spain, sent his brother Bertholomew into England, in order to explain his projects to Henry, and crave his protection for the execution of them. Henry invited him to England; but his brother, in returning to Spain, being taken by pirates, was detained in his voyage; and Columbus, meanwhile, having obtained the countenance of Isabella, was supplied with a small fleet, and happily executed his enterprize. Henry was not discouraged by this disappointment: he fitted out Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian, dwelling in Bristol; and sent him westwards in 1498 in search of new countries. Cabot discovered the main land of America towards the sixtieth degree of northern latitude: he sailed southwards along the coast, and discovered Newfoundland, and other countries: but returned to England, without making any conquest or settlement. Elliot and other merchants in Bristol made a like attempt in 1502 The King expended fourteen thousand pounds in building one ship called the Great [...]. This was, properly speaking, the first ship in the English navy. Before this period, when the prince wanted a fleet, he had no other expedient but hiring ships from the merchants."
"BUT though this improvement of navigation, and the discovery of both the Indies, was the most memorable incident that happened during this or any other period, it was not the only great event by which the age was distinguished. In 1453, Constantinople was taken by the Turks; and the Greeks, among whom some remains of learning were still preserved, being scattered by these barbarians, took shelter in Italy, and imported, together with their admirable language, a tincture of their science and their refined taste in poetry and eloquence. About the same time, the purity of the Latin tongue was revived, the study of antiquity became fashionable, and the esteem for literature gradually propagated itself throughout every nation of Europe. The art of printing, invented about that time, facilitated extremely the progress of all these improvements: the invention of gun-powder changed the whole art of war: mighty innovations were soon after made in religion, such as not only affected those states that embraced them, but even those that adhered to the ancient faith and worship: and thus a general revolution was made in human affairs throughout this part of the world; and men gradually attained that situation, with regard to commerce, arts, and sciences, government, police, and cultivation, in which they have ever since persevered."
HUME's Hist. vol. 3. p. 427, 428. Octav. printed in 1767.
No. 6.
COLUMBUS made four voyages to America; the first in 1492, the second in 1493, the third in 1497, according [...] authors, but according to others in 1498: it was in this third voyage that he discovered the continent—of which great discovery, Doctor Robertson gives the following beautiful account:—"On the first of August (1498) the man stationed in the round top surprised them with the joyful cry of land. They stood towards it and discovered a considerable island, which the admiral called [...], a name it still retains. It lies on the north coast of Guiana, near the mouth of the Orinoco. This river, though only of the third or fourth magnitude in the New World, far surpasses any of the streams of our hemisphere. It [...] body of water, and rushes into it with such impetuous force, that when [...] an uncommon height, their collision occasions a swell and agitation of the [...] formidable. In this conflict, the irresistable torrent of the river so [...] many leagues with its flood. Columbus, before he could perceive [Page v] the danger, was entangled among those adverse currents, and tempestuous waves; and it was with the utmost difficulty, that he escaped through a narrow streight; which appeared so tremendous, that he called it La Boca del Drago. As soon as the consternation which this occasioned permitted him to reflect upon the nature of an appearance so extraordinary, he discerned in it a source of comfort and hope. He justly concluded, that such a vast body of water, as this river contained, could not be supplied by any island, but must flow through a country of immense extent, and of consequence, that he was now arrived at that continent, which it had long been the object of his wishes to discover. Nor was he mistaken; for it amply answered his expectations." Columbus made his fourth and last voyage in 1502, just one hundred years before Gosnold discovered this country.
No. 7.
WE meet with this preamble to a law enacted at the very beginning of the reign of Richard II. says Mr. Hume; "Whereas divers persons of small garrison of land or other possessions do make great retinue of people, as well of esquires as of others, in many parts of the realm, giving to them hats and other livery of one suit by year, taking again towards them the value of the same livery or percale the double value, by such covenant and assurance, that every of them shall maintain other in all quarrels, be they reasonable or unreasonable, to the great mischief and oppression of the people, &c. This preamble contains a true picture of the state of the kingdom. The laws had been so feebly executed, even during the long, active, and vigilant reign of Edward III. that no subject could trust to their protection. Men openly associated themselves, under the patronage of some great man, for their mutual defence. They had public badges by which their confederacy was distinguished. They supported each other in all quarrels, iniquities, extortions, murders, robberies, and other crimes. Their chieftain was more their sovereign than the King himself; and their own band was more connected with them than their country. Hence the perpetual turbulence, disorders, factions, and civil wars of those times: hence the small regard paid to a character or the opinion of the publick: hence the large discretionary prerogatives of the crown, and the danger which might have ensued from the too great limitation of them. If the King had possessed no arbitrary powers, while all the nobles assumed and exercised them, there must have ensued an absolute anarchy in the state." "The scaffold, as well as the field, streamed incessantly with the noblest blood of England, spilt in the quarrel between the two contending families whose animosity was now become implacable."
HUME's Hist, vol. 3.
No. 8.
DARIUS the Persian, having determined to subdue Greece, sent two Embassadors into that country to demand earth and water from every state. Such as preferred their safety to their liberty submitted; but the noble Republicks of Athens and of Sparta, who had known and happily experienced the sweets of freedom, disdained to acknowledge any tyrant. Instead of offering up earth and water, as demanded, in token of their submission, they threw one of the Heralds into a well, and the other into a ditch, desiring them to take earth and water from thence; thus adding to insult, mockery. DARIUS appointed Datis and Artaphernes his Generals, and sent them away, to invade Greece, with a fleet of six hundred ships and an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men; with instructions to give up Athens and the little city of Eretria to be plundered; to burn all the houses and temples of those cities, and to lead away all their inhabitants into slavery. To oppose this prodigious armament, after even arming their slaves, the whole Athenian force did not exceed ten thousand men; but every man was a soldier and preferred the safety, freedom and glory of his country to his life. At the famous battle of MARATHON, only ten miles from their city, under Militates and nine other subordinate Generals, two of whom were the very celebrated Aristides and [...], did this small army with an almost irresistible fury rush in upon the Persians, who at the first onset considered them rather as madmen than as soldiers, and after a fierce and obstinate resistance, broke through the ranks and entirely defeated the Barbarick army, pursuing them to their ships, of which they took seven, and burned several others, and driving multitudes of the enemy into the sea. Memorable was the death of Cyndaeyrus, brother of AEchyllus the poet, who, as the Persians were attempting to push off one of their vessels from the shore, laid hold of the prow with his right hand, which the Persians on board immediately lopped off; he then seized it with his left hand, which they also cut off; at last, in a rage, he seized it with his teeth, and held on till he expired covered with wounds. An Athenian soldier, by the name of Eucles, immediately after the battle, though covered with blood and wounds, quitted the field, and can to carry the glorious news of the victory to his fellow-citizens. He had just strength enough to reach [Page vi] Athens, where he threw himself into the door of the first house he came to, and uttering these words, "Rejoice! we triumph!" instantly expired. DARIUS, irritated and outrageously incensed at the disgraceful defeat in the plains of Marathon, issued orders throughout his extensive dominions for fresh preparations, determined to take signal vengeance on Greece; but a revolt in Egypt, and dissention among his sons retarded his operations until death put an end to his projects.
HIS son, XERXES the great, who inherited all the animosity of his father against the GREEKS, succeeded Darius, and invaded Greece, with the greatest army that ever took the field.
THE whole army, according to Goldsmith, might be said to amount to two millions and an half, which with the women, slaves, and suttlers, always accompanying a Persian army, might make the whole above five millions of souls. To withstand this incredible host; the whole combined force of Greece did not then exceed eleven thousand two hundred men.
AT the narrow pass called the Streights of Thermopylae LEONIDAS, with only six thousand men, withstood the innumerable host of Xerxes for two days; and when, by means of the deserter Epialtes, a Trachinian, a secret path was found that led through the defiles of the mountains, through which the King sent twenty thousand men to fall upon the determined, desperate forlorn hope of the Greeks in the rear, yet did LEONIDAS refuse to fly. As soon as he was apprised of his situation, he dismissed all his troops but his Spartans, amounting to three hundred men, and about seven hundred Thespians and Thebans. With this regiment, as they might be called, did he, in the dead of the night, break into the Persian camp, devoting himself and his whole corps to a glorious death, hoping however to surprise the King and astonish the whole host of barbarians with the intrepidity and resolution of that enemy which they had come so far to contend with—dreadful was the slaughter made that night by the Greeks, the smallness of whose numbers was not discovered but by the dawning light of the morning; when they were surrounded by the Persians, who, fearing to fight hand to hand, flung their javelins at them from every quarter and at last overwhelmned this desperate little band, tired and fatigued with the slaughter of their enemies. By the hands of this little body, of only a thousand, it is said that Xerxes lost that night twenty thousand men! LEONIDAS fell early in the night; and his Spartans so defended his body that they piled a mountain of the slain upon him. Xerxes, having afterwards demolished and burned Athens, which had been deserted by its citizens, soon met with a total defeat, in a great naval engagement in the narrow seas at Salamis, from the Greeks commanded by Themistocles, the Athenian General. Astonished at this overthrow and fearing lest the Greeks should break down the immense bridge which he had built over the Hellespont, and thereby cut off the retreat of his army, he retired with the main body of his army, and the remains of his fleet, leaving three hundred thousand of his troops behind him under Mardonius, his General, who were afterwards totally overthrown at the famous battle of Platea; where Mardonius was killed. Above an hundred thousand of the vanquished were shortly after cut to pieces in their camp by the Greeks, who, determining to rid their country of those invaders, refused to give quarter to any. Miserable was the fate of that part of the army led off by Xerxes. After having expended all their provisions, they were compelled to live upon herbs and to eat even the leaves and bark of trees. Broken down and dispirited with disgrace, fatigue, and famine, the pestilence at last overtook them; they fell down by the way, and many were destroyed by vultures and by beasts of prey. The remains of the Persian fleet was afterwards totally destroyed by the Greeks at MYCALE.
🝆 For the sake of the younger part of the community, and of those who are of that class which are called the unlearned, hath the author been so full in this and in many other of the notes in this appendix.
No. 9.
PERSONAL SLAVERY, according to Mr. Hume, was more general in England than in any other country in Europe. The mutinous peasants under Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, &c. amounting to an hundred thousand men, among other things, demanded of King RICHARD the II. the abolition of slavery, and a fixed rent on lands instead of services due by villenage, to which the King complied; although [...] after, in the same year, 1381, the low people were reduced to the same slavish condition as before.
See HUME's Hist. v. 3.
No. 10.
RICHARD the III. caused his two young nephews to be murdered in the Tower: Edward the V. and his brother the Duke of York, were smothered, when asleep in their beds, in the Tower of London by the assassins, Slater, Dighton and Forest, while Sir James Tyrrel, whom the usurper had commissioned with this tragical business, stood outside of the door of the bed-chamber.
No. 11.
James Stuart, commonly called James the I. immediately upon hearing of the death of the Queen, and of his being proclaimed King in England, began his journey from Edinburgh for LONDON. Great was the concourse of people who were every where brought together by idleness, curiosity, or interest to see their new sovereign. His fears were immediately affected, and he published a proclamation forbidding such a tumltuous resort. His ignorance of the law of England and the high idea he had conceived of his present power betrayed him into the absurd violence of hanging a thief without trial, upon his arrival at Newark.
MRS. MACAULAY mentions his exposing his pedantry to all Europe in his publications. Among other of his contemptible, pedantick, ridiculous compositions and publications is the following dedication, which is transcribed from his works:—
"To the honour of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ The Eternall Sonne of the Eternall Father, The onley Theanthropos Mediator and Reconciler of Mankind, In Signe of Thankfulness, His most humble, and most obliged Servant, James By the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Doeth Dedicate and Consecrate This his Declaration."
He also published a treatise concerning witches which he intitled Demonology. In the second year of his reign he gave the royal assent to "An act against conjuration, witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked spirits." By this act the penalty for practising conjuration or invocation, whereby any person is killed or lamed, declaring, by witchcraft, where any thing is hidden, procuring unlawful love, &c. is, for the second offence, felony. In a dispute with the House of Commons relative to a matter of privilege, in the case of Sir Francis Goodwin, he tells them that they derived all matters of privilege from him, and by his grant. He afterwards sent them a message, "that he commanded them as an absolute King to confer with the Judges" who in those days had given their opinion against the Commons. The House complied with the insolent command, but the ridiculous tyrant, who was present at the conferrence, had little cause for triumph. The Commons produced such a multitude of precedents to justify their right to judge of returns, that the royal conjurer compromised the matter with them, and, in his own way and language, acknowledged their right. He told them that "he granted it royally as King James sweetly and kindly out of his good nature. In one of his speeches to his Parliament he says, "Kings are in the word of God itself called Gods, as being his vice-gerents on earth; and so adorned and furnished with some sparkles of divinity." All history however shews that out of a million of these Gods there is scarcely one that is not of the infernal kind. From history Kings in general appear nothing more than scourges of the human race, [...] better than splendid robbers and royal butchers.
[Page viii] IN another speech, this ridiculous creature tells the Parliament, "that as to dispute what GOD may do is blasphemy, so is it sedition in a subject to dispute what a King may do in the height of his power." Having considered a few of the follies and pedantick absurdities of this monarch, we will now take a view of the darker and more infamous parts of his character. He was the first crowned head in England that ever was adulated with the impious title of Sacred Majesty: and it was James the I. assisted by the spiritual gentry, the Bishops, who attempted to ram down the throats of the people the monstrous doctrines of divine, indefeasible right, passive obedience, non-resistance, &c. That he was scandalously fond of Somerset and afterwards of Buckingham, even Mr. Hume, the apologist for the House of Stuart, does not deny; for he confesses that James loved the former with so profuse a passion and unlimited an affection, as left no room for any rival or competitor; and he admits that Lord Hay was apprized of the King's passion for youth and beauty and exterior appearance; and yet Mr. Hume says that the passion of James seems not to have contained in it any thing criminal or flagitious. And, in his character of this strange creature, he says, that James never discovered any tendency, even the smallest, towards a passion for any mistress. Robert Garr, an handsome Scots youth was made known to the King through Lord Hay, when, by means of an unruly horse, he got his leg broken: The King ordered him into his own palace and to be attended constantly by his own physicians; and he often visited him during his confinement. On his recovery, James made him a knight and a gentleman of the bedchamber, and in a short time afterwards he was made Treasurer of Scotland, Viscount Rochester, a Privy Counsellor, a Knight of the Garter, and at last Earl of Somerset. In a few years the courtiers contrived to bring another handsome youth, George Villiers, afterwards created Duke of Buckingham, to supplant Somerset in the King's affections. Somerset and his wife, the infamous lady Essex, having procured Sir Thomas Overbury to be basely and most inhumanly poisoned in the Tower of London, the King was informed of the fatal secret; whereupon she affected more than usual attention to Somerset, with whom he retired to Theobalds, having commanded Lord Chief Justice Coke, and Sir Francis Bacon, the Attorney-General to take upon themselves the prosecution; telling my Lord Chief Justice Coke that Somerset and his wife had made him a pimp, to carry on their bawdry and murder; and therefore commanded him to examine the affair with strict scrutiny, and to spare no man whatsoever; adding, "GOD's curse be upon you and your's if you spare any of them, and God's curse be upon me and mine, if I pardon any of them." Lord Chief Justice Coke issued his warrant against Somerset to apprehend him for the murder of Overbury, whom in the most base, treacherous, and cowardly manner he had caused to be poisoned in meats, tarts, jellies and even in salt, all sent to him by Somerset as from his best friend. James Franklin, one concerned, confessed that one Mrs. Turner came to him from the Countess of Somerset, and wished him from her to get the strongest poisons he could for Sir Thomas Overbury; that accordingly he bought seven, viz. aqua sortis, white arsenick, mercury, powder of diamonds, lapis costitus, great spiders, and cantharides. All these not destroying him, one Weston was employed, who mixed Rasalgar in his broth, gave corrosive sublimate of mercury and white arsenick to be mixed up in the tarts and jellies sent to him, and last administered a glister to Sir Thomas, poisoned with corrosive sublimate, which carried him off. On the 5th of May, 1613, Somerset, then Lord Viscount Rochester, sent a letter to Sir Thomas, in which was a white powder, desiring Sir Thomas to take it, informing him that it would make him more sick; but that he need not be afraid as he would make it a means of his delivery, and for the recovery of his health. The poor, unsuspecting man, never dreaming of such treachery, but conceiving it a friendly potion, took the powder, which proved to be white arsenick "whereupon his sickness grew more violent and vehement, and his languishment increased." See State Trials vol. 1. p. 327, 346, 347. The Lord Chief Justice's warrant was actually served upon Carr Earl of Somerset, while James, who according to Mrs. Macaulay, had an unseemly way of lolling on his favourite's neck, was indulging himself in that posture. Somerset exclaimed against the outrage, arresting him in the King's presence; but James could not be prevailed on to remit it; and feigning an entire ignorance of the affair; cried, "nay, man, if Coke sends for me I must go;" then, after the most affectionate farewel, as soon as Somerset was carried off, he exclaimed "Go, and the deel go with thee, for I will neere see thy face more." See Mrs. Macaulay's Hist. vol. 1. p. 89. Sir Jarvis Elwes, Lieutenant of the Tower, Mrs. Turner, Richard Weston, and James Franklin, were all severally tried, on separate indictments, for the poisoning and murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, were all found guilty, were all executed, and in their last moments confessed the fact. Somerset's Countess plead guilty; himself, after a fair trial, was found guilty, and sentence of death passed upon them; but James, notwithstanding his solemn execration, pardoned them, and they enjoyed a pension of four thousand pounds sterling per annum.
THE Countess of Somerset had been married while she was a child to Robert, the young Earl of Essex. [...]. Mrs. Macauley's Hist. vol. 1. p. 85. After the marriage, but before cosummation, he went abroad [Page ix] on his travels. Upon his return home, he pressed for the possession of his privileges: she, attached to the glittering fortune of her paramour, Somerset (then Lord Viscount Rochester) refused; not without hope, by means of such conduct, to regain her freedom. "A process was commenced by the Countess against her husband for insufficiency. James, who condescended to be a party in all the intrigues of his favourites, interested himself so warmly in the affair, that a divorce was obtained on this plea, though Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, had declared very strongly against it. The divorce was followed by the marriage of lady Frances and the Viscount; and kept with such ostentation by the court, that the city of London complimented them with an invitation to dinner. The bridegroom was made on this occasion Earl of Somerset." "SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, a man of some abilities, who had devoted his talents to the fortune of Somerset, had been the friend, the adviser, and the manager of all his business, depending on the freedom and sacredness of such a connection, exclaimed strongly to him against the folly and infamy of the match, Somerset had the weakness to tell his mistress; Overbury, from that hour, was doomed to destruction, and, on the first trivial pretence which offered, flung into prison. In this state, rage and despair drew from him some indiscreet threatenings, which alarmed the fears of Somerset. He was conscious that Overbury was a formidable enemy, from the nature of the secrets he had been entrusted with. Self-preservation concurred with resentment; the murder of Overbury was determined and perpetrated."
MACAULAY's Hist. v. 1. p. 86, 87.
SOMERSET persuaded the King to appoint Overbury Embassador for Russia, and then persuaded Overbury to refuse to go, though he was no way averse to the employ. In those dark days of tyranny this was deemed a contempt of majesty, for which Overbury was committed close prisoner in the Tower. Somerset made him believe that his appointment was owing to his enemies who wanted to remove him out of the kingdom, and thereby prevent his further rise, and assured him that if he would refuse the employ he should soon be released from the Tower and restored to favour. Unsuspicious of any treachery the credulous Overbury gave full and ready credence to the base, perfidious, inhuman Somerset. He was committed to the Tower for a contempt of the King's majesty. Immediately the Lieutenant and other officers of the Tower were charged, and Sir Jarvis Elwes, the tool of Somerset, was appointed the Lieutenant. All the victuals, wines, &c. for the prisoner's use, were sent from Somerset's house to the unsuspecting man; but the soup, the tarts, the jellies, and even the very salt was poisoned.
See State Trials, vol. 1. p. 325, 326.
HENRY, Prince of Wales, dying suddenly, was supposed to have been carried off by poison, with the privity and approbation of his father and of Somerset, that father's pathick, and that Overbury was one of the instruments made use of on that occasion. HENRY was adored by the populace, and had drawn all the younger and more splendid of the nobility into his train. See the tragical History of the Stuarts. When Somerset was about to be tried for the truly infamous murder of Overbury, Sir Anthony Weldon relates; that Sir George More came to tell him he must prepare for his trial on the morrow; Somerset refused to appear, and said, "the King durst not bring him to trial." On More's informing the King of these expressions, he burst into tears, and intreated him to use his utmost skill to soothe the prisoner, by whatever means, into temper and submission. See the notes in Macanlay's Hist. vol. 1. p. 91. Lord Chief Justice Coke, in his charge to the grand-jury, touching Overbury's murder, observed that "poisoning was a vice of foreign growth; that it was but lately that their tables in England were made snares unto them: and he added, "I wish that sweet babe Prince Henry may have had fair play for his life!". For these and other expressions made use of by the Lord Chief Justice, at the trial of Overbury's murderers relative to the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, he was shortly after removed from his post. See the tragical Hist. of the Stuarts and State Trials, vol. 1. p. 347. the note at the conclusion of the arraignment of Sir Thomas Monson, Kt. for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, 4th December, 1615. Sir Thomas Monson was not tried, but after his arraignment was remanded. Sir Anthony Weldon tells the following story on the subject of this remand:—The King being at the game of maw, said, "To morrow comes Tom Monson to his trial." "Yea, said the King's card-holder; where if he does not play his master-prize, your Majesty shall never trust me." This so run in the King's mind, continues the author, as the next game he said he was sleepy, and would play out that set next night. The gentleman departed to his lodging; but was no sooner gone but the King sent for him; what communication they had I know not (yet it may be can more easily guess than any other) but it is most certain, next under GOD, that gentleman saved his life; for the King sent a post presently to London, to let the Chief Justice know he would see Monson's examination and confession, to see if it were worthy to touch his life for so small a matter. Monson was too wise to set any thing but fair in his confession; what he would have stabbed with, should have been ( [...]) at his arraignment. Weldon, p. 10 p, & seq. See MACAULAY's Hist, in the notes, vol. 1. p. 92, 93.
[Page x] JAMES having got rid of Somerset, now indulged his abominable passion uncontrouled, for the handsome, young Villiers, by him created Duke of Buckingham, who, in his letters, addresses this compound of royalty, folly, and villainy with the familiar titles of "dear dad and gossip," and, as appears in the notes of Mrs. Macaulay's History, vol. 1. p. 256, wrote the following curious letter to his King—"Were it not that you might think me an incroacher upon your goodness, I should make a proposition for you to stay ten days at Theobalds, by which doing you might have the company of your sweet son, without whom we should neither play at cards, goffe, not sit up for does at Huntingdon; whereas, if you stay at Theobalds but these ten days, you might have to wait on you not only a found son, but a servant within and without as clean as a shilling. But if these reasons were not, I pray your sowship how can you spend those ten days better in any other place." MSS. in Brit. Mus. fol. 7987, n. 106.
THE reader is referred to letters published by Sir David Dalrymple, 1762, p. 26, for another of the same sort, but much more grossly familiar."
AFTER this, what credit can we give to Mr. Hume's assertion that the passion of James seems not to have contained in it any thing criminal or flagitious?
No. 12.
THE people used to salute their Queen with shouting aloud, "GOD save Queen Elizabeth!" to which she always returned, "GOD save you, my good people."
To prove the assertion as to the revolution in the manners of the English, &c. I shall here quote two passages from Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. 4. p. 426, 427.
"THE great revolutions that had happened, in manners and in property, had paved the way, by imperceptible yet sure degrees, for as great a revolution in government: yet, while that revolution was effecting, the crown became more arbitrary than ever, by the progress of those very means which afterwards reduced its power. It is obvious to every observer, that, till the close of the Lancastrien civil wars, the property and the power of the nation were chiefly divided between the King, the nobility, and the clergy. The commons were generally in a state of great ignorance; their personal wealth, before the extension of trade, was comparatively small; and the nature of their landed property was such, as kept them in continual dependance upon their feudal lord, being usually some powerful baron, some opulent abbey, or sometimes the King himself. Though a notion of general liberty had strongly pervaded and animated the whole constitution, yet the particular liberty, the natural equality, and personal independence of individuals, were little regarded or thought of; nay even to assert them was treated as the height of sedition and rebellion.
"BUT when learning, by the invention of printing and the progress of religious reformation, began to be universally disseminated; when trade and navigation were suddenly carried to an amazing extent, by the use of the compass and the consequent discovery of the Indies; the minds of men, thus enlightened by science and enlarged by observation and travel, began to entertain a more just opinion of the dignity and rights of mankind. An inundation of wealth flowed in upon the merchants, and middling rank; while the two great estates of the kingdom, which formerly had [...] the prerogative, the nobility and clergy, were greatly impoverished and weakened. The Popish [...], detected in their frauds and abuses, exposed to the resentment of the populace, and stripped of their lands and revenues, stood trembling for their very existence. The nobles, enervated by the refinements of luxury, (which knowledge, foreign travel, and the progress of the politer arts, are too apt to introduce with themselves) and fired with disdain at being rivalled in magnificence by the opulent citizens, fell into enormous expences: to gratify which they were permitted, by the policy of the times, to dissipate their overgrown estates, and alienate their ancient patrimonies."
No. 13.
DAVID RIZZIO, according to Buchanan, was born at Turin in Savoy; the son of a poor man who got a poor subsistence by teaching the first grounds of musick. He followed into Scotland Morettius, the Embassador of the Duke of Savoy: being left by the Embassador, he applied to the Queen's musicians to be admitted into their society, upon trial, where he performed so well that he was retained as one of her majesty's band. He soon grew into great favour, and was consulted upon matters of State, and was soon [Page xi] flattered and courted by the Nobility who even attended his levee with great adulation. He applied to Henry Stuart Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lenox, who was to marry the Queen and whom Rizzio induced to believe that he was the means of the Queen's fixing her eye upon him for her husband. According to Buchanan, the Queen's marriage with HENRY, and his private recourse to her was now much talked of, as well as the too great familiarity between her and David Rizzio, who procured the marriage between Mary and Lord Darnley to be hastened; though the Scots were not for it, and the English were very much against it. The marriage took place on the 29th July, 1565, and gave great offence not only to the Nobility but also to the Commons. Rizzio's power and authority with the Queen increased daily, and she soon discovered evident symptoms of disgust towards her husband, who, left he might interrupt her private pleasures, was obliged to go away into the country in a very cold, severe season. Rizzio was then admitted to sit at her table in a small room, and sometimes she would even eat with him at his lodgings. The sumptuousness of his furniture, his apparel, and the number and quality of his horses far surpassed those of the poor, despised, insulted, rejected, [...]minal King. Buchanan, an excellent scholar, a native of Scotland, and the tutor or preceptor of Mary's only son, James the I. of England, is the author that justifies me in these assertions. Suspicions of a disagreeable nature, upon his return to Edinburgh, were infused into the ears and breast of the uxorious, young King, who, being informed one day, that Rizzio was gone into the Queen's bed-chamber, was determined to see with his own eyes and to judge for himself. He therefore made for that bed-chamber; but coming to a door of which he himself had the key, he found it bolted on the inside; an incident he had never before experienced. He knocked, but no answer was returned. Enraged at this insult upon his honour, he now turned his thoughts to vengeance. Having communicated to some of his domesticks his determination to cut off this base, insolent reptile, they approved of the measure. Elizabeth, Queen of England, having sent a very long, obliging letter to the Queen, Mary, one day, began to read the same to many of her Nobles who were present, when this impudent, low fellow, Rizzio, stood up and ordered her to "read no more, she had read enough, she should stop." None present dared to reprove him for such his outrageous insolence; as they were well acquainted with his imperious temper, and were but too sensible that he had several times rebuked even the Queen herself with more severity than her husband had ever presumed to exercise towards her. Shortly after, when the Queen one night was at supper, in a small room with the Countess of Argyll and Rizzio, the Earl of Morton and a great number of his friends at the same time walking in an outer chamber, the King went out of his own chamber, by a private way, up to the room where the Queen, Rizzio, and the Countess were at supper, followed by Lord Ruthven armed, and four or five more. The Queen, upon their entering the room, was surprised, especially to see the ghastly figure of Ruthven, who had just risen from a long and dangerous sickness, in armour, and asked "what was the matter?" Ruthven commanded Rizzio to "rise, and come out; for the place he sat in was not fit for him." The Queen immediately rose and interposed her body to protect Rizzio. The King took her in his arms and bade her not be afraid, that they meant her no harm, but added that the death of that villian was resolved on. He was hau'ed into the next room, and from thence into the outer chamber, where he was dispatched with many wounds; which, however was contrary to what had been first intended, which was to have hanged him up in publick. This is according to Buchanan's account. Mr. Hume mentions other circumstances attending the assassination of Rizzio. He says that "Rizzio, aware of his danger, ran behind his mistress, and seizing her by the waist, called aloud to her for protection; while she interposed in his behalf, with cries, and menaces, and entreaties. That the impatient assassins, regardless of her efforts, rushed upon their prey, and by overturning every thing which stood in their way, increased the horror and confusion of the scene; that Douglass, seizing Henry's dagger, stuck it into the body of Rizzio, who, screaming with fear and agony, was torn from Mary by the other conspirators, and pushed into the antichamber, where he was dispatched with fifty-six wounds." Mary had promoted Rizzio to the office of Secretary; and, according to Buchanan, had intended to have raised him up to the degree of the Nobles. She soon found another paramour in the profligate Earl of Bothwell, whom she raised to the highest power, and after having scandalized herself with him in the most infamous manner, she caused poison to be administered to her husband, who was retiring to his father at Glasgow, being incapable any longer to submit to the contempt and indignities Mary continually exercised towards him. The poison not effectually destroying him, it was rumoured that he intended to fly the kingdom and go to France, which induced this cruel, wicked woman first of all to write to him letters full of love and tenderness, then to visit him at Glasgow where she caressed him with every shew of affection; persuaded him to be carried back to Edinburgh in a litter; that as the palace was too noisy for a sick person, and that he should reside in a solitary house within the city, where she caused her bed to be put into a chamber below his. In the evening of the night of her husband's murder, which we shall shortly relate, she came to him with a large retinue, spent several hours with him, often kissed him, pretended every tender mark of the purest conjugal love towards him, and, in token of her [Page xii] affection, gave him a ring before she departed.—Under pretence of attending the marriage of one of her servants she returned to her palace, and there, according to the tragical history of the Stuarts, had a ball. Bothwell soon after went disguised to the house where the poor, young, sick King lay, and by means of the key of the bed-chamber which had been given to him by the Queen, he with his associates softly entered the room where the unhappy Henry lay asleep.—They immediately seized him by the throat and strangled him, as they did one of his servants who lay near him; then they carried their bodies into an adjacent garden; and then set fire to a large quantity of gun-powder, lodged for that purpose, which blew the house to pieces. After this, she procured Bothwell to get divorced from his wife and to marry her, against the universal sense of her kingdom. Vengeance at last overtook her; she was obliged to fly into England, where she was afterwards tried, condemned, and beheaded for a conspiracy against Queen ELIZABETH. Such, from History, appears to have been Mary Stuart Queen of Scots, the mother of King James the I. of England; such was the stock from whence have sprung the succeeding Monarchs of Great-Britain: and yet Mary and her son James, were, according to the nonsensical, bigot-cant of the times; the LORD'S ANOINTED, though to the eye of a Republican, from their abominable actions, they will seem justly to merit the title of THE DEVIL'S ANNOINTED. The sycophantick bishops and courtly adulators of JAMES the I. used to call him the Solomon of the age; the Spanish Embassador observed that might be true, for "he certainly was the son of David."
No. 14.
THE Puritans presented a petition to James the I. signed, among others, by seven hundred and fifty clergymen, praying a reformation of sundry of the articles of the established church. It was on the hearing of this petition that James, from Judge, turned advocate. The hearing was at Hampton Court, and among other extraordinary flashes of reasonable argument, he told them that presbetery agreed as well with monarchy as God with the Devil; that he would not have Tom, Dick and Will meet to censure him and his council." After he had answered, in his way, the objections urged by the presbyterian ministers, he added "If this be all your party hath to say, I will make them conform themselves, or else I will harrie them out of the land, or else do worse; only hang them, that's all." Great were the triumphs of the courtiers and high-churchmen on this occasion; and infamous, if not blasphemous, was the adulation of some of them. The Lord Chanceller Egerton cried out, that "he had often heard that the royalty and the priesthood were united, but that he never saw it until now." But what was that to the holy man, the most Right Reverend Father in God, his Grace Archbishop Whitgift? He said, "he verily believed that the King spoke by the Spirit of God!"—What spirit was in the mouth of this infamous Prelate at that moment? Even Charity herself cannot hesitate to say there was a lying spirit in his mouth.
No. 15.
"BANCROFT had succeeded Whitgift in his archbishoprick. He was so zealous a persecutor of the Puritans, that many families were obliged to leave their country for foreign abodes."
"RICHARD BANCROFT, the great persecutor of the Puritans, carried his violence such a length, that the number of families which had determined to seek refuge in * Virginia, were numerous enough to cause a jealousy of their power in that colony, and were detained in England by a proclamation.
MACAULAY's HIST. [...].
No. 16.
THE ABBE RAYNAN, in his History of the BRITISH SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH-AMERICA, says,
In this fatal crisis, most of the Puritans were divided between submission and opposition. Those who would neither stoop to yield, nor take the pains to resist; turned their views towards North-America, to seek for that civil and religious liberty which their ungrateful country denied them. The enemies of their peace attempted to shut this retreat against these devout fugitives, who wanted to worship God in their own way in a desert land. Eight ships that lay at anchor in the Thames ready to sail, were stopped; and Cromwell is said to have been detained there by that very king whom he afterwards brought to the scaffold. Enthusiasm, however, stronger than the rage of persecution, surmounted every obstacle; and that region of America was soon filled with Presbyterians. The comfort they enjoyed in their retreat, gradually induced all [Page xiii] those of their party to follow them, who were not attrocious enough to take delight in those dreadful catastrophes which soon after made England a scene of blood and horror. Many were afterwards induced to remove thither in more peaceable times, with a view to advance their fortunes. In a word, all Europe contributed greatly to increase their population. Thousands of unhappy men, oppressed by the tyranny or intolerant spirit of their sovereign, took refuge in that hemisphere."
No. 17.
IN ENGLAND, the eldest son succeeds to the whole of the real estate, or lands held by his father in FEE, so that it is by no means uncommon there to see the eldest son possessed of a great, perhaps an enormous estate, and all the other children, though equally deserving, in mean, and sometimes in very indigent circumstances. It most commonly happens however, that between persons of considerable fortune who are about to intermarry, a settlement of the estate is made, in which care is taken to encumber or charge the estate with a certain sum for the younger children of the intended marriage.—This sum is seldom more than equivalent to two or three years nett proceeds, or clear income of the estate: of course, if there are a numerous family of younger children, there will be extreme inequality between each of such children and the elder brother. Doctor Price in his "OBSERVATIONS on the IMPORTANCE of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION, and the means of making it a benefit to the world;" under the section of an unequal distribution of property observes, that "the tendency of this," (the right of primogeniture) "to produce an improper inequality, is very obvious. This disposition to raise a name, by accumulating property in one branch of a family, is a vanity no less unjust and cruel, than dangerous to the interests of civil liberty; and no wise state will encourage it" Many a vain fool and many an unnatural parent in England, as well as in other countries where real estate are devisable by will, having an unfettered property, leave the bulk, and sometimes the whole of their estate to the eldest son, or to a favourite child, without regard to humanity or the laws of equity and natural justice. The law of inheritance introduced here by our republican ancestors, was not the law of discent and of inheritance, for ages, established in the monarchical country they had left. After the Romans had been obliged to leave their province of Britain in order to support their tottering empire, the Scots and Picts invaded and ravaged the country, and drove the into the woods and mountains. Vain was their application to AEtius the Roman General: even their letter, inscribed the groans of the Britons, could not prevail upon him to send a detachment to their assistance, while the dreadful Attila was in the empire. The Scots and Picts paying them a second visit, as disagreeable as the first, by the advice of Vortigern, the chief of their Princes, they sent into Germany and invited over the Saxons, who were a branch of the ancient Visigoths, to defend them; assigning to them the beautiful and fertile isle of Thanet in Kent, for their residence. The strangers soon dispossessed the Britons of the very country they had been invited over to defend against the Barbarians of the north, driving such as escaped the sword, into the mountains of Wales. The AEra of the Saxons first coming into England according to some authors, was in the year of Christ 124; though Mr. Hume fixes it 24 years later.—The Northern conquering nations, of which the Saxons were a branch, brought with them their feudal or military policy which they established in the countries they subdued. This military policy "was devised as the most likely [...] to secure their new acquists, and were large districts or parcels of land given or allotted by the conquering General, to the superiour officers of his army, and by them dealt out in less parcels to the inferiour officers, and most deserving soldiers: these allotments or portions of victory naturally engaged such as accepted them to defend them; and as a part could not be preserved independent of the whole, [...] as well as receivers, were mutually and equally concerned to defend the whole; but as [...] be done in a tumultuary way, order, and to that end a military subordination was necessary, and therefore such receiver was supposed, in consequence of his acceptance of any portion, to oblige himself as long as he held it, to attend to, and enter into measures for the security and defence of the whole, when [...] he required by his benefactor or immediate superiour, and was likewise supposed to be [...] as his commander or leader, for his attendance, and a faithful discharge of his duty [...] or superiour was likewise subordinate to, and under the command of his benefactor or [...], and so upwards to the prince or chief himself. Thus a proper military subordination was naturally and rationally enough inferred and established; and an army of Feudataries were, as so many stipendiaries, always on foot, ready to muster and engage in the defence of their country: so that the feudal returns of fealty, or mutual fidelity, and aid were not originally ex pacto, but seem to have been politic, or rather natural, consequences drawn from the apparent necessity, these warlike people were under, of maintaining their ground with the same spirit, and by the same means they had got it. But as the Princes of Europe were every day more and more alarmed by [Page xiv] the progress of the northern standard, many of them went into this or a like policy, as the strongest intrenchment; and in imitation of it, they, reserving the dominium or propriety of the lands they gave, parcelled out some of their own possessions or territories under an express fealty, engaging their beneficiaries or feudatories, to make them like returns of fidelity and aid, as followed from the design and nature of an original feud, from whence the feudal obligations probably began to be considered as renders, or services of render: calculated for the benefit of the proprietary, who was, in respect of the dominium or propriety remaining in him, from henceforth called dominus.
THE feudal policy having obtained thus far, the few countries that had not [as above] gone into it confederated themselves prince and people, as lord and feudatary, to stand by and assist each other in cases of common danger and concern: in consequence whereof, and of the fealty expressed or implied in such confederacy, every man's possession was considered as a FEUD or stipend, and became as such a pledge or security for the due observance of his fealty; so that the feudal policy thus hinted, and thus advanced, was now become the military policy of the western parts of the world; and military aid or service (as now called) was understood to be the real or fictitious terms of all propriety or possession in Europe."
WRIGHT'S TENURES, p. 7, 8. 9, 10, 11. 12, 13.
IT is difficult, according to Wright, to determine precisely the time when FEUDS or tenures were first brought into England; lord Coke, the Judges of Ireland, in the case of tenures, Mr. Selden, Nathaniel Bacon, and others are of opinion that tenures, were not brought into England by the Conqueror, but that they were common among the Saxons: and he cites Saltern de antiquis Britan. Legibus, and Sir William Temple, who agrees that the feudal laws were all brought into Europe by the ancient Goths, and by them settled in all the provinces of the Roman Empire which they conquered, and among the rest by the Saxons in England, &c.
FEUDS, being a military policy, neither women nor priests were originally permitted to, or could become tenants or feudataries, because the stipulation of holding or enjoying the FEUD, was upon condition of performing a service purely military, of defending in person, and by arms, the land or FEUD whenever it should be attacked; and this the delicacy and imbecility of the fair sex, and the religious profession of the priesthood forebade. And that females in particular, could not enjoy or hold a proper FEUD is clear from many authors, and particularly from Wright, who, in his tenures, folio 178, says, "As to the preference of males it must be remembered, that females could not by the feudal law succeed to a proper FEUD; because they were unequal to the duties or services, for the sake of which it was chiefly created. And if it be farther observed, that it is ex pacto, or by the custom of particular countries, that they are even at this day admitted to succeed to any; it cannot seem strange, that the feudal preference given to males should prevail with us: because as feud, fee, and tenure, are synonimies, and import but one and the same policy, such preference is plainly agreeable to the nature of tenures and highly reasonable." It is highly probable that all proper FEUDS might originally, upon the death of the father, descend to all the sons equally, as gavelkind lands in the county of Kent in England, do at this day, because the greater the number of the feudataries, the more likely was the FEUD to be defended and preserved. That the tenure of gavelkind is of feudal original, I think, there can be no doubt, as well because of the males inheriting before, or in exclusion of, the females, as its having been the general tenture of the kingdom of England at the Conquest: and that so it was, is fully established by Lord Chief Justice Holt, who [...] delivering the opinion of the Court in the case of Clement versus Scudamore says, "That it appears (though Coke be of a contrary opinion) that all the lands in England before the Conquest, and for some time after, were generally gavelkind." And he refers to Lamb. Saxon Law 167, &c. "But soon after the Conquest (adds that great, learned, and honest Chief Justice) for the better strength and support of the crown, knight service tenure was introduced, and the course of descent altered, and the whole made descendible to the eldest son, to the intent that their tenants in knight-service who by their tenure were to wait on the King in his wars, might do it with more dignity and grandeur: so, in this instance the ancient Saxon law was then altered."—See 6th Modern Reports, fol. 120. Lord Chief Justice Holt seems to give the true reason why the course of descent was altered in England by the Conqueror, viz. That the pride of the King might be indulged by being attended in his wars by tenants capable of sustaining and displaying dignity and grandeur. The English lawyers give also another, and which is a very plausible reason, why the eldest son ought to have enjoyed the FEUD or whole estate. The eldest son (say they) was soonest able to do the duties of the feud, and was compellable to do those duties; as he was obliged to do the duties and to bear the burthen of the feud, it seems but reasonable that he should enjoy [Page xv] the benefits, the perquisites of the feud. I acknowledge that there seems to be some semblance of reason in this: but for what reason is the right and privileges of primogeniture still continued and now in force in England, seeing that all feudal tenure and military services have been so long abolished; that the common law declares that cessante causa cessat effectus, and cessante rations lagis cessat etiam ipsa lex? The only reasons that can be given, I should suppose, are, that it was the usage of their fore-fathers; that it is very proper in a monarchical government, and that even an unfeeling fool has a right to dispose of his own as he sees fit, and of sacrificing nature to vanity, if he thinks proper so to do.
OUR manly ancestors knew that equality was equity; and their principles were truly republican; but believing the Mosaical law to be of Divine institution, they thought themselves obliged in conscience to make some distinction between the eldest son and all the other children: they therefore assigned to the eldest son a double portion of all his father's estate, real and personal, in conformity to the 17th verse of the 21st of Deutronomy. In the abstract of the code of laws prepared for the Commonwealth of the Massachusetts-Bay, printed in London in 1655, and republished in the 3d vol. of Hutchinson's Hist. p. 161, &c. chap. iv. sect. v. "inheritances are to descend naturally to the next of the kinne, according to the law of nature delivered by GOD;" and cites Numb; 27. 7. to 11.
VI. "If a man have more sonnes then one, then a double portion to be assigned and bequeathed to the eldest sonne, according to the law of GOD," &c.
FEARING that the explicit enacting of these laws might give umbrage to the monarchical kingdom of England, which then claimed a jurisdiction over them, in the GENERAL LAWS of the Massachusett's colony, revised and published by order of the GENERAL COURT in October, 1658, they wisely omitted to specify these particulars. They begin their law-book as follows:
"FORASMUCH as the free fruition of such liberties, immunities, priviledges, as humanity, civility, and christianity call for, as due to every man in his place and proportion, without impeachment and infringement, hath ever been, and ever will be, the tranquility and stability of churches and commonwealth, and the denyall or deprival thereof, the disturbance, if not ruine of both.
"IT is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, That no mans life shall be taken away, no mans honour or good name shall be stained, no mans person shall be arrested, restrained, banished, dismembred, nor any wayes punished; no man shall be deprived of his wife or children, no mans goods or estate shall be taken away from him, nor any wayes indamaged, under colour of law, or countenance of authority, unless it be by virtue or equity of some express law of the country warranting the same, established by a General Court, and sufficiently published; or in case of the defect of a law, in any particular case, by the word of GOD. And in capital cases, or in cases concerning dismembring or banishment, according to that word, to be judged by the General Court." Where, by the word of GOD, they clearly designated the Mosaical law. And, in fact; the law of inheritance and of discent in this country has ever been to all the children, in equal distributive parts, except the eldest son, who has always received his double portion. The father also inherits the son here, which is not the case in England; for there he is excluded from succeeding to his son's inheritance. The reason of this exclusion is purely feudal as appears from Wright's tenures, fol. 180 to 186.
No. 18.
RANDOLPH came from England to Massachusetts, with a letter from King Charles the II. "to the Governor and Magistrates of the town of Boston," for so was the letter directed; and with copies of petitions and complaints from, Mason and Gorges, about the extent of their patent line: and he had directions from the lords of trade to enquire into the state of the colony: in other words, to act as a spy. For all the particulars of this inimical genius, we refer the reader to Hutchinson's History of Massuchusetts Bay. In his letter to King Charles the II. among other things, he complains, that the Governour and all the Council but three continued covered while the king's letter was reading, whereas he had pulled-off his hat as soon as the letter was begun to be read, and his example was followed by the three only. He mentions in this letter, that one day, when he was paying a visit to the Governour, be observed to the Governour, that he had taken notice, since his arrival in Boston, of several ships haring came in from Spain, France, the Streights, Canaries, and other parts of Europe, contrary to his Majesty's laws of trade, &c. "That the Governour freely declared to him that the laws made by his Majesty and his Parliament, obligeth them in nothing but [Page xvi] what consists with the interest of that colony." In the same letter he mentions a discourse between himself and Josiah Winslow, Esq. Governour of New Plymouth, wherein, according to Randolph, Governour Winslow expressed his great dislike of the "magistrates of Boston to your Majesty's royal person, and your subjects under their government," &c. "That during my stay at Boston I made acquaintance with severall of the chief inhabitants and some of the magistrates and did particularly informe myself of the humour, disposition and affections of the people, and found the principal inhabitants, some whereof are the chief officers of the militia, and the generality of the people, complaining of the arbitrary government and oppression of their magistrates and doe hope your Majestie will be pleased to free them from this bondage by establishing your own royall authority among them and govern them according to your Majesties lawes. And many of the better sort did intreat me to represent this their condition to your Majestie, not daring publickly to expresse their desires or complaint by petition, because of the severity and arbitrary proceedings of their rulers, and that many of them have been sufferers for petitioning formerly." After this he returned to England, and in 1678 came back again with a commission as Inspector and to make seizures, and bring informations for breaches of trade. He went back again the next winter to renew his complaints, and returned in 1681, with a commission as Collector, and Surveyor, and Searcher of the customs in New-England. In April, 1681, he had the insolence to set up a protest on the Exchange in Boston, against the acts of the Court. He afterwards brought to Boston the King's letter of the 21st of October, 1681, complaining "that the Collector had not been able to execute his office to any effect." It was therefore required, "that fit persons be sent over, without delay, to answer these complaints, with power to submit to such regulations of government as his Majesty should think [...]it." Very pretty indeed! Agents were accordingly sent to England; but Randolph followed them. The Governour had desired him to do nothing to the prejudice of the colony. He promised "that if they would make a full submission to his Majesty, he would endeavour to procure his Majesty's royal pardon, and the continuance of their privileges, so far as that they should have liberty of conscience and the free exercise of their religion, and that no money should be raised without the consent of the people." What impudence, what insolence in this low fellow!
HE exhibited to the Lords of the Privy Council articles of high misdemeanor against a faction in the General Court, sitting 15th February, 1681. After this Randolph had the audacity to return, and brought with him the death-warrant of the government, a quo warranto, in 1683. The charter was vacated the following year by judgment being entered up for the King, and the country in a manner deprived of all government until 1686, when the Rose frigate, in the month of May arrived from England with a commission to Joseph Dudley as President, and to divers others of the Council to take upon them the administration. On the 19th day of December, 1686, Sir Edmund Andross arrived at Nantasket, in a fifty gun ship, commissioned by James the II. Governour of New-England, and he appointed among other vultures, the incendiary Randolph, to be of his Council; whom he also appointed licenser of the press. Sir, Edmund, against the wills of the proprietors, made use of a meeting-house to perform the service of the church of England in; and he threatened to shut up that meeting-house, and to punish any man who gave two pence towards the support of a non-conformist minister, if he was refused the use of that meetinghouse. Randolph had the insolence to reprove and threaten the Governour of Plymouth for exacting taxes from the Quakers for the support of the ministry in that Colony. Several congregations had agreed to set apart days of thanksgiving on account of James's proclamation for a general religious toleration. The tyrannical Governour forbade them. He told them they should meet at their peril, and that he would send soldiers to guard their meeting-houses; swearing upon the Evangelists (libro tacto) a thing never known here, and not in practice ever after, and which was then introduced by the Governour and his associates, and such as refused so to take an oath in that mode were fined and imprisoned. The fees of office were multiplied and were also extortionate. Randolph was made Secretary, and he farmed his office to West, who extorted larger fees than even Randolph had exacted of West, of whom he once complained, when he was his deputy, that he ran away with a hundred pounds a year of his dues. The charter being vacated, the people were told that they had now no right to their lands and that they must petition and take out patents for their estates. The like hath since been practised in other parts of the British dominions. Enormous fees were demanded for these patents by their pacious Governour and his associates; and with four or five of his Council Sir Edmund Andross laid what taxes he pleased. Petitions were presented to the King and his Ministers against these proceedings, and for liberty to have an House of Representatives, but as little regard was paid by James II. and his Ministry to those petitions, as by George III. and his Ministry, to the petitions preferred a few years since by Congress and by several of the Legislative Bodies of the late Colonies. In a letter to the Bishop of London, Randolph advises the fining sufficiently of Danford and Richard's (two of the faction as he calls them) by the King, "and well if they escape so, they can go to work for more." He [Page xvii] presses the Bishop "to send over able and sober Ministers, that we (himself and his brethren of the church of England) will contribute largely to their maintainance, but one thing will mainly help when no marriages hereafter shall be allowed lawful but such as are made by the ministers of the church of England. In a letter to the Earl of Clarendon he says, "His Majesty's quo warranto against their charter and sending for Tho. Danforth, Sam. Nowell, a late factious preacher and now a magistrate, and Da [...]. Fisher and Elisha Coke, deputies, to attend and answer the articles of high misdemeanures I have now exhibited against them." &c. "will make the whole faction tremble." Again, in the same letter, "I humbly beseech your Lordship that I may have consideration for all my losses and money laid out in prosecuting seizures here in 1680." Again, "My Lord I have but one thing to remind your Lordship, that nothing their agents can say or do in England can be any ground for his Majesty to depend upon." And in the same letter, "Their forces are very inconsiderable, more for shew than service. I will engage with five hundred of his Majesty's guards to drive them out of the country." Forgetting what he had said in his answer to several heads of inquiry concerning the state of New-England in 1676; wherein he set forth, to the fourth quere proposed by the Lords of the Committee of Council for Trade and Plantation, "that they have no standing army, but their trained bands are twelve troops of horse and six thousand foot; each troop consisting of sixty horse besides officers, are all well mounted and completely armed with back, breast, head-piece, buffe coat, sword, carbine, and pistols, each troop distinguished by their coats. The foot also are very well furnished with swords, muskets, and bandaliers." "Their late wars have hardened their infantry, made them good firemen, and taught them the ready use of their arms;" and also admits that their whole force is equal to forty thousand men. Yet this incendiary, who wished to desolate Massachusetts, could drive them out of their country; that is, could with the greatest case drive the whole forty thousand men, among whom were these six thousand seven hundred and twenty good firemen, completely armed, and who knew the ready use of their arms, out of this country with only five hundred of his Majesty's guards. This naturally brings to our recollection the assertion of the vain boaster who a few years since made the Commons of Britain believe that he could go through America with five thousand British troops. Attempts have been made with bodies of British troops much more numerous, who have delivered up themselves and their arms to these despised Americans. In a letter to the Arch-bishop of Canterbury Randolph mentions it having being said in the Privy Council by some noble Lords in their (our country's) favour "that provided they might have liberty of conscience in matters of religion, they would voluntarily submit to have one of their meeting-housen to be disposed of by the President and Council for the use and exercise of the religion according to the church of England," and that this was said, in answer to a motion, made by the Arch-bishop, that one of their meeting-houses in Boston should be ordered to be set apart for that purpose." And in the same letter he "humbly represents to HIS GRACE, that the three meeting-houses in Boston might pay twenty shillings a week apiece, out of their contribution towards the defraying our church charges; the same being less per annum than each of their ministers receive." I shall quote no more of his letters but refer the reader to the appendix in the 3d vol. of Hutch. Hist. where, if he loves New-England, or regards the natural rights of men, he will find his breast swell with indignant resentment against this middling, selfish, base, tyrannical wretch.
No. 19.
MR. John Nelson, a young gentleman of Boston; he was of a good family, and a near relation to Sir Thomas Temple.
HUTCH. HIST.
No. 20.
THE Proclamation of William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, King and Queen of England, &c. is dated 15th February, 1688, as appears from Parliamentary Debates, vol. 11. p. 264, 265.
No. 21.
THE new charter, of King William and Queen Mary, bears date the 7th day of October, in the third year of their reign.
No. 22.
THE armament sailed from Nantasket Road, in the bay of Boston, on the 24th of March, 1745; and the island of Cape-Broton with its before-supposed unpregnable fortress of Louisbourgh surrendered on the [Page xviii] 17th day of June following. The army consisted of three thousand two hundred and fifty men, exclusive of commission officers, from Massachusetts; of five hundred and sixteen, including officers, from Connecticut; and three hundred and four from New-Hampshire; three hundred from Rhode-Island did not arrive until after the place had surrendered. Our man knew nothing of regular approaches, they took the advantage of the night, and when they heard Mr. Bastide (an engineer in the British service) propose zigzags and epaulements they made merry with the terms and went on void of art, in their own natural way.
HUTCH. Hist.
N. B. In what may relate to New-England, Hutchinson is followed substantially, though, perhaps, not every where in the same form of words.
No. 23.
BY the Declaratory Act, as it hath been called, the Parliament of Great-Britain enact "That the Colonies and Plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependant upon the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Great-Britain; and that the King's Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons of Great-Britain, in Parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great-Britain, "in all cases whatsoever."
No. 24.
THE act of the British Parliament—For the more easy recovery of debts in his Majesty's plantations and colonies in America passed in the year 1732, the V. Geo. the II. By this statute it is enacted that after the 29th day of September in that year, "in any action or suit then depending or thereafter to be brought in any court of law or equity in any of the said plantations, for or relating to any debt or account, wherein any person residing in Great-Britain shall be a party, it shall and may be lawful to and for the plaintiff or defendant, and also to and for any witness to be examined or made use of in such action or suit, to verify or prove any matter or thing by affidavit in writing, upon oath, unless Quakers, and then upon solemn affirmation before the Mayor or Chief Magistrate of any city, borough, &c. in Great-Britain, where or near to which the deponent or affirmant shall reside and certified and transmitted under the common seal of such city, &c. shall be allowed to be of the same force and effect, as if the deponent or affirmant had appeared and sworn or affirmed the matters contained in such affidavit or affirmation viva voce in open court, &c."
IT is true there is a clause in this act for the punishment of persons who should be guilty of perjury in such affidavits or affirmation. But what benefit could accrue to an American from that clause? How could he convict the party of perjury? He could not do it without carrying his witnesses to Great-Britain, there indicting the criminal, and there producing his witnesses face to face, in open court. It may be a question whether the late revolution has not worked an annihilation of that act of Parliament here. It is a matter worthy the attention of every legislature of the UNITED STATES whether all evidence so takest ought not to be admissible in all our courts until Great-Britain shall enact a law of reciprocity, and admit in all her courts, at home and abroad, similar evidence taken here, as equal to the viva voce testimony of witnesses attending in open court
No. 25.
BY the Boston port-bill nothing was to be water-borne within the harbour. It is better known among us, perhaps, by the name of the starvation-act than by any other name.
No. 26.
HIS Excellency James Bowdoin, Esq. our present worthy Governour, was at one time President of the Provincial Congress at Cambridge, and was also President of the Convention for forming our present most admirable Constitution; Mr. Hancock was President of the first Provincial Congress, he was President of [...] second national Congress; and he signed the glorious Declaration of Independence, hath been elected Governour [Page xix] of this Commonwealth from the time of our present happy Constitution to the last year, when his health compelled him to resign.—At present, he is one of the Representatives for the town of Boston, and was lately chosen one of the Delegates in Congress from this State. Mr. Samual Adams or the honourable Samuel Adams, Esq. is known by character, throughout the world. He was in the Provincial Congress and in the great national Congress, and he generated the Declaration of Independence. He has been President of the Senate ever since the new Constitution until the present year, when he resigned, and took a seat in the Privy Council of this State.
No. 27.
THE battle was really fought on Breed's Hill, which is much lower than Bunker's Hill; and indeed the rising of the ground is so gentle that you scarcely can perceive it. One would have thought from the account published, ten years ago in the London Gazette, that it had been an high, steep mountain, and that the intrenchments were amazingly strong. A rail sence ran across the field;—the new troops pulled up another rail sence, and fixed that parallel to the first sence, at about two feet distance, and filled up the vacancy between with new-mown hay which was making in the field. This was the tremendous breastwork. The redoubt in which Doctor, or rather General, Warren was killed, was behind, at a little distance from the breast-work, and was not finished. About five hundred Americans was the number actually engaged, and they killed and wounded near fifteen hundred of the enemy. I have had it from British officers, who were present, that they never saw so severe a fire while it continued. The Yankies had no proper muskets, their pieces were not of the same bore and not one in twenty had a bayonet. There were several farmers there who had never before seen or heard a cannon fired, and this can be proved by incontestable evidence, if necessary.—Though many had leather shoe-strings and wore leather aprons, yet they were all good marksmen, and could hit their bird even upon the wing.
IT is astonishing that our raw militia should so resolutely stand the terrible cannonade and bombardment of the Britons, from the Somerset of 64 guns, their frigates the Lively and the Glasgow, from their gunboats in Mistick river and Charles's river, and from their battery of heavy cannon and bomb-battery on Copse Hill. There appears to have been a capital mistake or error committed on both sides. It now seems to have been a piece of madness in our men to have crossed the peninsula in order to take possession of a place where there was no water, and where they might be surrounded and have their retreat completely cut off; and on the other side we cannot account for the conduct of the British in attacking, as they did, when they might have completely secured the peninsula, and compelled every man in twenty-four hours to have surrendered without firing a shot; as they had neither water nor provisions.—But it was to be otherwise:—and we now see, and acknowledge with gratitude, the over-ruling providence of that gracious Being who humbleth the proud, and turueth into foolishness the wisdom of the wise.
No. 28.
GENERAL Warren being a free-mason, was reared after the flight of the British to Halifax, by the brotherhood, and was brought to Boston, and re-interred there, in the Chapel Church, then called the King's Chapel, when Brother MORTON pronounced his funeral oration.
No. 29.
SEE General Gage's curious proclamation, excepting from his general pardon those wicked rebels, SAMUEL ADAMS and JOHN HANCOCK.
No. 30.
THAT beautiful, elegant, new meeting-house in Brattle Square was made use of as a barrack by the British, the Old-North meeting-house was pulled down and used for fire-wood, and that noble, spacious building the Old-South meeting-house, by General Burgoyne, was turned into an hypodrome or riding-school, although, as it is asserted, a carpenter of the town offered to erect as large or a larger building for that purpose, without expence to the British government, if the General would spare that meeting-house. The General perhaps had a particular dislike to that meeting-house, as the annual Oration on the massacre of the Fifth of March, 1770, had been regularly delivered there, and the town-meeting was adjourned to that [Page xx] meeting-house when it was resolved that all the British troops should quit the town. It was curious enough to transport a regiment of horse from Britain, and then to be under the necessity of sending upwards of three thousand miles for their provisions, America not furnishing oats or hay to these strangers; and this might fret the General. He might be vexed also at the borrish Yankies who would not permit him to exercise his horses out of the town. Whatever might be his provocations, it is however with regret that truth obliges us to condemn a gentleman of General Burgoyne's knowledge and learning in this scandalous and barbarous transaction, and in so wantonly burning the deserted town of Charlestown. The fact is undeniable that there was not one American militia man in that town at the time it was sat on fire, by a carcass thrown from Copse-Hill (where General Burgoyne commanded) upon the meeting-house of that wantonly-destroyed, ancient town. Every one of the inhabitants but one had quitted the town early in the morning, when they found the men of war began to fire upon Breed's-Hill, and he, a poor ideot, who, as an object of charity resided in the Alms-House, was the only person left in the town when the meeting-house was sat on fire, and the whole place then nearly destroyed. It might have been sport and a fine sight to the British General, but it was ruin and an heart-beaking appearance to the numereous, helpless proprietors and inhabitants, many of whom then lost their all. About twenty houses only escaped the flames that day, and those were set on fire and destroyed by the humane Britons on the next day, Sunday. When Titus, the Roman General, besieged Jerusalem he, though an Heathen (as Josephus tells us) repeatedly and earnestly entreated the Jews to let him save their temple; but they refused to hear; they first sat fire themselves to the galleries of their temple, and most obstinately persisted to resist every effort of Titus, until the Romans were at last compelled to destroy that glorious building. Even the barbarous Goths, under their King Alaric, when they sacked Rome, A. D. 410, shewed a regard to humanity and religion; they respected the churches as holy and inviolable sanctuaries; and they received with reverential awe the consecrated plate and ornaments. If the Britons wished to irritate and exasperate the New-England men, there was no method so effectual for that purpose as that of destroying and polluting their places of publick worship.
No. 31.
DURING the siege of Boston General Gage entered into treaty with the inhabitants of the town, and agreed that if they would deliver up their arms to him they might go out with their goods and effects. He received the arms and then refused to comply with the terms, availing himself of the pitiful evasions and contemptible little, lawcraft of a since fugitive conspirator.
No. 32.
THE insults which many of the inhabitants received from the officers and soldiers of the British army, and from many of the Tories who have now the modesty to shew their fronts among those very people, cannot be very readily forgot. Among the rest, that polished and most amiable, upright patriot and clergyman, the late most worthy Dr. COOPER, was insulted in the open street by a British officer. The death of this divine orator was universally lamented.
No. 33.
THE British nation will not believe that near 10,000 Americans were destroyed in their infernal prisonship, the Jersey, at New-York, that the surgeon of the prison-ship at Rhode-Island was paid half a guinea ahead for those who were buried, and that of course he pocketted as many half guineas as he could, nor will they credit the murder of Beelar's light horse, in cool blood; although they do believe that the Savages [Page xxi] killed Miss Mc Crea. These Savages, I think General Burgoyne says, in his pompous proclamation, he had under his command, and threatens to let them loose.
No. 34.
GENERAL LINCOLN, from a country gentleman, in the late war became an excellent officer, of the greatest suavity of manners, of most intrepid courage and unshaken patriotism. General KNOX, from a very reputable bookseller in Boston, turned out as great an artillery officer as appeared in any army or nation engaged in America during the war, and is now the Secretary at War of the United States. To General STUBEN, America is greatly indebted for instructing her officers and soldiers; the Baron was an Aid to the King of Prussia, and is perfectly well skilled in tacticks. General GATES is well known as the Conqueror of Burgoyne; and as to General GREENE, he is acknowledged to be one of the first officers on the Continent; like King William the Third, he was more to be dreaded after a defeat than before a battle.
No. 36.
ALTHOUGH the nation, which have totally changed their manners within the last thirty years, is detested in America; yet truth must acknowledge that there are many most excellent individuals in Great-Britain; justice must [...] they have among them many characters truly great, illustrious, and exalted, which do honour to human nature; who are warm friends and bold assertors of the unalienable rights of mankind, and who are entitled to our veneration and regard.
No. 37.
IN a drizzling, rainy day, the last fall, three country girls rode through the town, one in a green-cart with vegetables, having a plume of feathers nodding over her head; another, dressed in a like ridiculous, absurd manner, was riding [...] horse with provisions to sell in her panniers; and the third, upon her pannied horse, had her head di [...]uised by a garland of foreign, artificial flowers.
No. 38.
"FOR as luxury is contagion from its very nature, it will gradually descend from the highest to the lowest ranks, till it has ultimatel infected a whole people. The evils arising from luxury have not been pecular to this or that nation, by equally fatal to all wherever it was admitted. Political philosophy lays this down as a fundamental and i [...]ontestable maxim, that all the most flourishing States [...] their ruin, sooner or later, to the effects of luxy; and all history, from the origin of mankind, confirms this truth, by the evidence of facts, to the higst degree of demonstration."
MONTAGE's Reflections on the rise and fall of the ancient Republicks, chap. 5.
No. 39.
"AT Rome, besides the general stitutions, the Censors prevailed on the magistrates to enact several particular laws to preserve the srugali of women. This was the design of the Fannian, Licinian, and Oppian laws. We may in [...], see [...] great ferment the Senate was in, when women insisted upon the revolution of the Oppian lay. The abrogation of this law is fixed upon by Valerius Maximus as the period from whence we may late the lxury of the Romans."
MONTESQ. Spirits of Laws. vol. 1. chap. xiv.
A VERY considerable revenue might be raised by taxing luxurious dress: for instance, the use of silks, gauzes, &c. If the owner if: coach, orchariot is made to pay sour or five pounds a year to the State, for the liberty of indulging [...], ought not every wearer of a silk gown, silk cloak, silk stockings, gauzes, feathers, &c. to pa [...] inproportio? the wearers of gold and silver lace, excepting officers, soldiers, and sailors, might well [...] to pay something for the liberty of appearing singular. Our wise forefathers had two laws, then made in 651, the other in 1662, to restrain excess in apparel; whereby [Page xxii] "persons wearing ribbons, or great boots (leather being so scarce a commodity in this country) lace, points, &c. silk hoods, or scarfes the Selectmen shall have power to assess such persons so offending in any of the particulars abovementioned in the country rates, at two hundred pound estates." Massachusetts Colony Laws, fol. 5, 6. "The poorer a State is, the more it is ruined by its relative luxury; and consequently the more occasion it has for relative sumptuary laws."—Montesq. Spirit of laws, vol. 1. chap. 5. The luxury of superstition, as far as relates to mourning, is again beginning to spread among us. Thank GOD I it is chiefly among the Tories and the despisers of a republican government that we see the [...]able garb of external sorrow now re-assumed. Would it be amiss to tax their insolence; to lay a smart tax upon all mourning but the scarfe or crape round the arm and black ribbons? Montesquieu, vol. 2. chap. 7. treating of the luxury of superstition says, "nor is it proper for religion to encourage expensive funerals. What is more natural, than to take away difference of fortune in a circumstance, and in the very moment, which equal all fortunes?"
No. 40.
THE Court or Great Council of the Amphistyons was instituted by Amphistyon the third King of Athens, and consisted of deputies or delegates from twelve States of Greece; each of which sent two deputies. According to Archbishop Potter they held their court or assembly at Trer [...]pyla; but according to the writers of the Universal History it was held at Delphos. Goldsmith saith, that this Council was the chief bond of union with Greece, and was appointed to be held twice a year at [...] to deliberate for the publick good. All offences against religion, all instances of impiety and profanation, all contests between the Greecian States and cities came under the particular cognizance of the Amphictyons, who had a right to determine, to impose fines, and even to levy forces, and to make waragainst those who offered to rebel against their sovereign authority.
See GOLDSMITH's Greecian Hist. vol. 1. jol. 10, 11.
No. 41.
No persons have suffered more from this base passion, envy, than our [...]e excellent army. An honest, rough, awkward tradesman or farmer who went into the army, returns from the same, a well-dressed gentleman, of easy carriage and of address far superiour to his old neighbors and acquaintances; and this hath excited in the minds of the more base and contracted this little [...] passion, which hath operated strongly to keep them out of their just dues.
No. 42.
ALTHOUGH I am sorry to differ in opinion with any gentleman who I regard, yet I must say I shall ever continue to think that the strict observation of the Sabbath, in [...] country, hath had, and ever will have, a very great influence upon the manners of the people; the greater part of whom have no other day for reading and for gaining instruction. The Sabbath was or [...]ned to be a day of rest for man and beast, and also of religious duties and exercises for the former Our forefathers kept it strictly; our own immediate parents observed it religiously; from the fir settlement of the country to this day, the Legislature of this Commonwealth hath enacted that it [...] be observed attentively. Surely no gentleman of sense and reflection would wish to insult the [...] of an infinite majority of the community; no good citizen would wilfully attempt to trample up the laws of his country. Those laws say, the Sabbath shall not be spent in publick riot and dissipa [...], but decently and in publick worship. Therefore, no gentleman that reflects one moment on these [...]ings, would wish to shew the example of turning it into a day of frolicking and idle diversion; and no forgner tht is informed that it is against the laws of that country which protect him in his life, liberty, an property will attempt to violate that day.
ERATUM.
Page fourth, paragraph third, line first, For sixteen thousand men, rd six thousand men.