rights, they endeavoured to deprive us of the enjoyments of our religious privileges; to viciate our morals, and thereby render us deferving of deftruction. Hence, the rude din of arms, which broke in upon your folemn devotions in your temples, on that day hallowed by heaven, and fet apart by God himself for his peculiar worthip.

11. Hence impious oaths and blafphemies fo often tortured your unaccustomed ear. Hence, all the arts which idlenefs and luxury could invent, were ufed, to betray our youth of one fex, into extravagance and effeminacyand of the other, into infamy and ruin; and did they not but fucceed too well? Did not a reverence for religion fenfibly decay ? Did not our infants almoft learn to lifp out curfes before they knew their horrid import? Did not our youth forget they were Americans, and, regardless of the admonitions of the wife and aged, fervilely copy from their tyrants, vices which finally muft overthrow the empire of Great Britain? and muft be impelled to acknowledge, that even the nobleft, fairest part of all the lower creatron, did not entirely efcape the curfed fnare? When virtue has once erected her throne within the female breaft, it is upon fo folid a bafis that nothing is able to expel the heavenly inhabitant.

12. But have there not been fome, few indeed, I hope, whofe youth and experience have rendered them a prey to wretches, whom upon the leaft reflection, they would have defpifed and hated, as foes to God and their country; I fear there have been fome fuch unhappy, inftances; or why have I feen an honeft father cloathed with fhame? or why a virstuous mother drowned in tears!

13. But I forbear, and come reluctantly to the tranfactions of that dismal night, when in fach quick fuccefhon we felt the extremes of grief, aftonifhment and rage; when heaven in anger, for a dreadful moment fuffered hell to take the reins; when fatan with his chofen band opened the fluices of New-England's blood, and sacrilegiously polluted our land with the dead bodies of her guikJefs fons.

14. Let this fad tale of death never be told without a tear; Let not the heaving bofom ceafe to burn with a manly indignation at the barbarous ftory, through the long

152 tracts of future time; Let every parent tell the fhameful ftory to his liftening children, till tears of pity glisten in their eyes, and boiling paffion shake their tender frames ; and whilft the anniversary of that ill-fated night, is kept a jubilee in the grim court of pandemonium, let all America join in one common prayer to heaven, that the inhuman, unprovoked murders of the fifth of March, 1770, plouned by Hillsborough, and a knot of treacherous knaves in Boston, and executed by the cruel hand of Preston and his sanguinary coadjutors, may ever ftand on history without a pa

rall 1,

15. But what, my countrymen, withheld the ready arm of vengeance from executing inftant juftice on the vile affaffins? perhaps you feared promifcuous carnage might enfue, and that the innocent might fhare the fate of those who had performed the infernal deed. But were not all guilty? were you not too tender of the lives of those who came to fix a yoke on your neck? but I muft not too feverely blame a fault, which great fouls only can commit.

16. May that magnificence of fpirit which fcorns the low purfuits of malice; may that generous compaffion which often preferves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bofoms of Americans -But let not the miscreant hoft vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No, them we defpifed; we dread but nothing flavery. Death. is the creature of a poltron's brain: 'tis immortality to facrifice ourfelves for the falvation of our country. We fear not death.

17. That gloomy night, the pale faced moon, and the affrighted ftars that hurried thro! the fky, can witness that we fear not death. Our hearts, which at the recollection glow with a rage that four rovolving years have scarcely taught us to restrain, can witnefs that we fear not death; and happy it is for thofe who dared to infult that their naked bones are now piled up an everlafting monument of Maffachufett's bravery. But they retired, they fled, and in that flight they found their only fafety.

18. We then expected that the hand of publie juftice would foon inflict that punishment upon the murderers, which, by the laws of God and man, they had inerited. But let the unbiaffed pen of Robertfon, or perhaps of

some equally famed American, conduct this trial before the great tribunal of fprceeding generations: And tho the murderers may escape the juft refentment of an enraged people; tho drowsy juftice, intoxicated by the poisonous draught prepared for her cup, ftill nods upon her rotten feat,, yet be affnred, fuch complicated crimes will meet their juft" reward.

19. Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villians high and low! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and flings of conscious guilt, pierce thro your favage bofoms? Tho fome of you may think yourselves exhalted to a height that bids deĥance to the arm of human juftice, and others froad yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrify, and build your hopes of fafety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery, and falfehood; yet do you not fometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies? Do not the injured Thades of Maverick, Grey, Caldwell, Attucks, and Car, attend you in your folitary walks, arreft you even in the midst of your debancheries, and fill even your dreams with terror.

10. But if the unappexfed manes of the dead fhould not difturb their murderers, yet furely their obdurate hearts maft fhrink, and your guilty blood muft chill within your rigid veins, when you behold the miferable Monk, the wretched victim of your favage cruelty. Obferve his tot tering knees, which fcarce fuftain his wafted body; fook on his haggard eyes; mark well the deathlike paleness of his fallen cheek, and tell me, does not the fight plant daggers in your fouls.

21, Unhappy Monk! cut off in the gay morn of man. hood from all the joys which fweeten life, doomed to drag on á pitiful exiftence, without even a hope to tafte the pleafures of returning health! yet Monk, thou liveft not in vain: thou liveft a warning to thy country, which fympathizes with thee in thy fufferings; thou liveft an affecting an alarming inftance of the unbounded violence which luft of power, affifted by a ftanding army can lead a traitor to

commit,

22. For us he bled, and now languifhes. The wounds by which he is tortured, to a lingering death were aimed * Persons slain on the fifth of March, 1775.

at our country! Surely meek eyed charity can never beheld fuch fufferings with indifference. Nor can her lenient hand forbear to pour oil and wine into thefe wounds; and to af fuage at leaft, what it cannot heal.

23. Patriotifm is ever united with humanity and com: paffion. This noble affection which impels us to facrifice every thing dear, even life itself, to our country, involves in it a common fympathy and tenderness for every citizen, and must ever have a particular feeling for one who fuffers in a public caufe. Thoroughly perfuades of this, I need not add a word to engage your compaffion and bounty towards a fellow-citizen, who with long protracted anguifh, falls a victim to the relentless rage of our common enemy.

34. Ye dark defigning knaves, ye murderers, parricides! how dare you tread upon the earth, which has drank in the blood of flaughtered innocence thed by your wicked hands! How dare you breathe that air which wafted to the ear of heaven, the groans of thefe who fell a facrifice to your curfed ambition. But if the laboring earth doth not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commiffioned to be the minifter of death; yet, hear it and tremble!

25. The eye of heaven penetrates the darkest chambers. of the foul, traces the leading clue through all the labyrinths which your induftrious follies had devifed: and you, however you might have fcreened yourfelves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands red with the blood of thofe whofe death you have procured, at the tre mendous bar of God.

An ORATION, delivered at the North Church in Hart ford, at the meeting of the Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati, July 4th, 1787, in commemoration of the Independence of the United States. By JOEL BARLOW, Esq. Published by desire of said Society.

I.

Ο

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Society, and Fellow Citizens, N the anniverfary of fo great an event as the birth of the Empire in which we live, none will queftion the propriety of paffing a few moments in contem plating the various objects fuggefted to the mind-by the important occafion.

2. But at the prefent period, while the bleffings claim

ed by the fword of victory, and promifed in the voice of peace, remain to be confirmed by our future exertions; while the nourishment, the growth, and even the existence of our empire, depend upon the united efforts of an extenfive and divided people; the duties of this day afcend from amufement and congratulation, to a ferious patriotic employment.

3. We are affembled, my friends, not to boast, but to realize; not to infiate our national vanity by a pompous relation of past achievements in the council or in the field; but from a modeft retrofpect of the truly dignified part already acted by our countrymen, from an accurate view of our prefent fituation, and from an anticipation of the fcenes that remain to be unfolded; to difcern and familiarize the duties that ftill await us as citizens, as foldiers, and as men,

4. Revolutions in other countries have been effected by accident. The faculties of human reafon, and the rights of human nature, have been the fport of chance and the prey of ambition. And when indignation has burft the bands of flavery, to the deftruction of one tyrant, it was only to impofe the menacles of another.

5. This arofe from the imperfection of that early stage of fociety, which neceffarily occafioned the foundation of empires, on the eastern continent, to be laid in ignorance, and which induced a total inability of forefeeing the improvements of civilization, or of adapting the government to a state of focial refinement.

6. I fhall but repeat a common obfervation, when I remark, that on the western continent the fcene was entirely different, and a new tafk, totolly unknown to the legifla tures of other nations, was impofed upon the fathers of the American empire.

7. Here was a people, thinly fcattered over an extenfive territory, lords of the foil on which they trod, commanding a prodigious length of coaft, and an equal breadth of frontier a people habituated to liberty, profeffing a mild and benevolent religion, and highly advanced in fcienceand civilization. To conduct fuch a people in a revolution, the address must be made to reafon as well as to the paffions. And to reafon, to the clear understanding of thefe vari oufly affected colonies, the folemn addrefs was made.