despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the crea ture of a poltreon's brain; 'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death.

17. That gloomy night, the pile faced moon, and the affrighted stars that hurried thro' the sky, can witness that we fear not death. Our hearts, which at the recollection glow with a rage that four revolving yes have scarcely taught us to restrain, can witness that we fear not death; and happy it is for those who dared to insult, that their naked bones are not now piled up an everlasting monument of Massachusett's bravery. But they retired, they fled, and in that flight they found their only safety.

18. We then expected that the hand of public justice would soon inflict that punishment upon the murderers, which by the laws of God and man, they had merited. But let the unbiassed pen of a Robertson, or perhaps of some equally famed American, conduct this trial before the great tribunal of succeeding generations; and tho' the murderers may escape the just resentment of an enraged people; tho' drowsy justice, intoxicated by the poisonous draught prepared for her cup still nods upon her rotten seat, yet, be assured, such complientca crimes will meet their just reward.

19. Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villains high and low ! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and stings of conscious guilt, pierce thro' your savage bosoins? Tho' some of you may think yourselves exalted to a height that bids defiance to the arm of human justice, and others shroud yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrisy, and build your hopes of safety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery and falsehood; yer do you not sometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies? Do not the injured shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks, and Car,* attend you in your schtury walks, arrest you even in the midst of your debaucheries and fill even your dreams with terror?

20. Bet if the unappeased manes of the dead should not disturb their murderers, yet surely your obdurate hearts must shrink, and your guilty blood must chill with your rigid veins, when you behold the miserable Monk, the wastered victim of your savage crucity. Observe his tottering Andes, * Persons slain on the fifth of March, 1770.

which scarce sustain his wasted body; look on his haggard eyes; mark well the deathlike paleness of his fallen cheek, and tell me, does not the sight plant daggers in your souls ?

21. Unhappy Monk! cut off in the gay morn of manhood from all the joys which sweeten life, doomed to drag on a pitiful existence, without even a hope to taste the pleasures of returning health! yet Monk thou livest not in vain; thou livest a warning to thy country, which sympathizes with thee in thy sufferings; thou livest an affecting, an alarming instance of the unbounded violence which lust of power, assisted by a standing army, can lead a traitor to commit.

22. For us he bled, and now languishes. The wounds by which he is tortured to a lingering death, were aimed at our country! Surely meek eyed charity can never behold such sufferings with indifference. Nor can her lenient hand forbear to pour oil and wine into these wounds; and to assuage at least what it cannot heal.

23. Patriotism is ever united with humanity and compassion. This noble affection, which impels us to sacrifice every thing dear, even life itself, to our country, involves in it a common sympathy and tenderness for every citizen, and must ever have a particular feeling for one who suffers in a public cause. Thoroughly persuaded of this, I need not add a word to engage your compassion and bounty toward a fellow citizen, who with long protracted anguish, falls a victim to the relentless rage of

our commen enemy.

24. Ye dark designing knaves, ye murderers, parricides! how dare you tread upon the earth, which has drank in the blood of slaughtered innocence shed by your wicked hands! How dare you breathe that air which wafted to the car of Heaven, the groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your cursed ambition. But if the laboring earth doth not expand his jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet hear and tremble !

25. The eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; traces the leading clue thro' all the labyrinth which your industrious follies had devised and you, however you might have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands red with the blood of those whose death you have procured, at the tremenduous bar of God.

An ORATION, delivered at the North Church in HARTFORD, at the meeting of the Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati, July 4, 1787, in commemoration af the Independence of the United States, By JOEL BARLOW, Esq. Published by desire of said Society. Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Society, and Fellow-Citizens.

ON N the anniversary of so great an event as the birth of the empire in which we live, none will question the propriety of passing a few moments in contemplating the various objects suggested to the mind by the important occasion.

2. But at the present period, while the blessings claimed by the sword of victory, and promised 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 extensive and divided people; the duties of this day ascend from amusement and congratulation, to a serious patriotic employment.

3. We are assembled, my friends, not to boast, but to realize; not to inflate our national vanity by a pompous relation of past achievements in the council or in the field; but from a modest retrospect of the truly dignified part already acted by our countrymen, from an accurate view of our present situation, and from an anticipation of the scenes that remain to be unfolded; to discern and familiarize the duties that still await us as citi. zens, as soldiers, and as men.

4. Revolutions in other countries have been effected by accident. The faculties of human reason, and the rights of human nature, have been the sport of chance and the prey of ambition. And when indignation has burst the bands of slavery, to the destruction of one tyrant, it was only to impose the manacles of another.

5. This arose from the imperfection of that early stage of society, which necessarily occasioned the foundation of empires, on the eastern continent, to be laid in ignorance, and which induced a total inability of foreseeing the improvements of civilization, or of adapting the government to a state of social refinement.

6. I shall but repeat a common observation, when I remark, that on the western continent the scene was entirely different, and a new task, totally unknown to the legislators of other nations, was imposed upon the fathers of the American empire.

7. Here was a people, thinly scattered over an extensive territory, lords of the soil on which they trod, commanding a prodigious length of coast, and an equal breadth of frontier;

a people habituated to liberty, professing a mild and bener lent religion, and highly advanced in science and civilization To conduct such a people in a revolution, the address must made to reason as well as to the passions. And to reason, b the clear undersanding of these variously affected colonies, the solemn address was made.

8. A people thus enlightened and capable of discerning the connection of causes with their remotest effects, waited no the experience of oppression in their own persons; which they well knew would render them less able to conduct a regula Opposition.

9. But in the moment of their greatest prosperity, when every heart expanded with the increasing opulence of the British American dominions, and every tongue united in the praises of the parent state and her patriotic king, when many circumstances concurred which would have rendered an ignorant people secure and inattentive to their future interests; at this moment the eyes of the American Argus were opened to the first and most plausible invasion of the colonial rights.

10. in vain were we told, and perhaps with the greatest truth and sincerity, that the monies levied in America were all to be expended within the country, and for our benefit :Equally idle was the policy of Great Britain in commencing her new system by a small and almost imperceptible daty, and that upon a very few articles.

11. it was not the quantity of the tax, it was not the mode of appropriation, but it was the right of the demand, which was called in question. Upon this the people deliberated; this they discussed in a cool and dispassionate manner; and this they opposed in every shape that an artful and systematic ministry could devise, for more than ten years, before they assamed the sword.

12. This single circumstance, aside from the magnitude of the object, or the event of the contest, will stamp a peculiar glory on the American revolution, and mark it as a distinguished era in the history of mankind: that sober reason and reilection have done the work of enthusiasm, and performed ue miracles of gods.

13. In what other age or nation, has a laborious and agricultural people, at ease upon their own farms, secure and distant from the approach of fleets and armies, tide waiters and

mp masters, reasoned before they had feit, and from the tes of duty and conscience, encountered dangers, distress

and poverty, for the sake of securing to posterity, a government of independence and peace?

14. The toils of ages, and the fate of millions, were to be sustained by a few hands. The voice of unborn nations called upon them for safety; but it was a still, small voice, the voice of rational reflection. Here was no Cromwell to enflame the people with bigotry and zeal, no Cæsar to reward his followers with the spoils of vanquished fees, and no territory to be acquired by conquest.

15. Ambition, superstition and avarice, these universal torches of war, never-illumined an American field of battle. But the permanent principles of sober policy spread through the colonies, roused the people to assert their rights, and conducted the revolution.

16. Whatever praise is due for the task already performed it is certain that much remains to be done. The revolution is but half completed. Independence and government were the two objects contended for: and but one is yet obtained. To the glory of the present age, and the admiration of the future, our severence from the British empire was conducted upon principles as noble as they were new and unprecedented in the history of human actions.

17. Could the same generous principles, the same wisdom and unanimity be exerted in effecting the establishment of a permanent federal system, what an additional lustre would it pour upon the present age! a lustre hitherto unequalled; a display of magnanimity for which mankind may never behold another opportunity.

18. The presentfis justly considered an alarming crisis; perhaps the most alarming that America ever saw. We have contended with the most powerful nation, and subdued the bravest and best appointed armies; but now we have to contend with ourselves and encounter passions and prejudices more powerful than armies, and more dangerous to our peace. It is not for glory, it is for existence, that we contend.

19. The first great object is to convince the people of the importance of their present situation; for the majority of a great people, on a subject which they understand, will never act wrong. If ever there was a time in any age or nation, when the fate of millions depended on the voice of one, it is the present period in these states. Every free citizen of the American empire ought now to consider himself as the legislator of half mankind,