WHEN I consider the important occasion from which this anniversary derives its origin, and the respectable cha­racters that have exerted themselves to perpetuate its his­tory, I confess there is an unusual security in my feelings; since no mistaken effort of mine can injure an institution, founded on so memorable an [...] supported by names so justly claiming the applause of posterity.

WHILE I rely then, upon that honesty of intention, which is it­self the best apology for its errors, permit me to employ the present hour, which your united voices have annually made sacred to the commemoration of our country's wrongs, in recapitulating the most injurious of her sufferings, among which that on the tragical fifth of March is by no means the least, and in recounting the blessings [Page 6]which have followed from measures as really disgraceful to those who adopted them, as they were intentionally destructive to those against whom they were levelled.

A NATION falling from those great principles of justice and virtue which had made her respectable; subverting the boasted improvements of her arts to the savage purposes of revenge; with venality and corruption entrenched on her cabinet; affords a specta­cle too serious for the amusement of the beholder. He turns for relief to the annals of those people whose masculine virtues have obstinately, will he not say wisely? resisted the refinement of a civilized world. But from the misfortunes of such a nation much is to be learned. As she is hurried onwards by the vortex of that immeasurable gulph in which empires sink to rise no more, let her serve us as a signal to avoid the first impulse of its resistless tide.

TO trace Great Britain through the whole progress of her ambi­tion in this country, would be to step back to a very early period: for, long before she avowed her system of colonial slavery in the Stamp-Act, the liberties of our ancestors had endured the most a­larming innovations from her throne. Without cause and with­out notice she had invalidated their charters; laid impositions upon their trade; attempted a most dangerous influence over their in­ternal government, by endeavouring to make it independent of the people;—and all this with the same confidence as though her po­licy and foresight, and not her persecutions, had settled them on this side the Atlantic.

[Page 7] BUT the full display of her despotic policy was reserved to add accumulated disgrace to the inglorious reign of the Third George. Then, intoxicated with the idea of taxing America, she slumbered upon the tottering pillars of her own constitution; the hand of slavery rocked her at she lied on the giddy height; falshood gilded her visions and bound her senses with the enchantment of success; while her blind ambition alone remained awake, to misdirect the ordinary assistance of fortune, and to make her fall equally certain and complete.

THE genius of Britain once interred, the first spectre which shot from its tomb was the Stamp-Act. This promulgation of a scheme so repugnant to the fundamental principles of the late Eng­lish constitution, announced the fall, but did not obliterate the me­mory of that much respected system in this country. America saw the act bore not a single feature of its reputed parent, and hav­ing detected its illigitimacy, effectually resisted its operation. But, as though conviction must ever be productive of obstinacy, Britain desisted not to rend in pieces the charters of her colonies, which served to remind her of the violence she committed on her own. Her administration affecting to realize the fables ^* of its minions whose very fears were as subservient to its purposes as their hopes were dependant on its venality, and making pretence of trespasses which, if real, the laws were open to punish, unmasked its true de­signs, [Page 8]by quartering an armed force in this metropolis in a time of peace.

WHERE was the citizen whose indignation did not flush at this undisguised attack on his liberties? the soldiers pride too grew sanguinary at the idea of contempt from the people he himself had been taught to despise; and, as though Heaven designed to effect its greatest purposes by the sacrifice of what men conceive to be the dearest objects of its guardianship, the lives and rights of ci­zens were delivered over to the scourge of military rancour.

^‡ VENERABLE patrons of freedom, wherever your country may lie! boast not that the reason and speculative truths of this our com­mon cause armed an extensive world in support of its justice. Turn to the tragedy we commemorate as imprinted by the bloody hand of the tyrant, and view the highest outrage his power could com­mit, or the forbearance of humanity [...]. There [...] of slaughtered citizens were offered at the [...]ine of cursed [...]. —What can we add to their memories through whose wounds their country bled; whose names are handed round the globe with the great occasion on which they fell; and whose tomb shall ever stand a basis to the [...] pillar in the temple of freedom? Heaven has avenged their fall by realising the prophecy of the indignant American, as he vented his anguish over their rankling blood. ‘These are indeed my country's wounds, ^* but oh! [Page 9]said he, the deep and tremendous restitutions are at hand; I see them with a prophetic eye this moment before me. Horrors shall be repaid with accumulation of horror. The wounds in America shall be succeeded by deep-mouth'd gashes in the heart of Britain: The chain of solemn consequences is now advanc­ing. Yet, yet my friends, a little while, and the poor, forlorn One, who has fought and fallen at the gate of her proper habitation for freedom, for the common privileges of life, for all the sweet and binding principles in humanity, for father, son and brother, for the cradled infant, the wailing widow, and the weeping maid; yet, yet a little while and she shall find an avenger. In­dignant nations shall arm in her defence. Thrones and princi­palities shall make her cause their own, and the fountains of blood that have run from her exhausted veins shall be answered by a yet fuller measure of the horrible effusion—blood for blood and desolation for desolation; O my injured country! my mas­sacred America!’

MELANCHOLLY scene! the fatal, but we trust the last effect in our country of a standing army quartered in populous cities in a time of peace.

BRITAIN having thus violated the greatest law nations or in­dividuals can be held by, to use the language of the ancients, threw a veil over the altars of her gods whom she was too haughty to ap­pease. Would to heaven, for her sake, we too had a veil to hide from the eye of justice, the ashes of our desolated towns, and the [Page 10]tracts which her ravages have imprinted through every quarter of our once peaceful land.

IF ^† "every act of authority of one person over another for which there is not an absolute necessity is tyrannical," and if tyran­ny justifies resistance, to have remained inactive under these inju­ries had been a kind of political stoicism, equally inconsistent with the laws of nature and of society. On such principles arose the memorable declaration of July 1776. A declaration which at once gave life and freedom to a nation; dissolved a monopoly un­natural as unjust; and extended the embraces of our country to the universe. A declaration which heaven has since ratified by the successful event of her arms. For, when we consider the number of her victories; the disadvantages under which they were obtained; with the chain of important consequences which depended upon the very moment of their decision; who but must acknowledge, after allowing to our military actors every thing he­roism can claim, that there appeared peculiar marks of more than human assistance? The surrender of entire armies to a power which they affected to look upon rather as an object of their chains than of their swords, was a degree of glory no enemy that ever pas­sed the Roman yoke afforded to that republic. Hapless Britain! for even those whom you injure must pity you, how has fortune added acrimony to her fickleness, in chusing for a scene of your [Page 11]disgrace that climate where, in a late war, she so loudly vaunted the invincibility of your arms!

AMERICA once unfettered, nobly relied upon the uprightness of her cause and the bravery of her sons. But, as though the vir­tues of one crown were to apologise for the merciless cruelty of another, a monarch, equally wise in council as brilliant and power­ful in arms, met her in an alliance which must ever enliven her gratitude; exalt the honor of France; and, we trust too, promote the interest of both.

AMONG the advantages which have arisen from these great events to the people of Massachusetts, that of securing their lives, their liberties, and property, the great object of all civil govern­ment, by a constitution of their own framing, is not to be account­ed the least. Dismembered from a government, which had long stood by the exactest balance of its powers even against the corrup­tion of its ministers, they found themselves accustomed to princi­ples, which age had stamped with authority, and patriots sealed with their blood. The cause of their separation had taught them the avenues through which despotism insinuates itself into the community, and pointed out the means of excluding it. Under these circumstances they produced a system which, we trust, ex­perience will evince to be an improvement ^* upon the best man­kind have hitherto admired. The quick return of all delegated power to the people from whom it is made to spring, and the check [Page 12]which each part of the government has upon the excesses of the other, seem to warrant us in placing on it all the confidence human laws can deserve. But,

LET us not trust to laws: an uncorrupted people can exist without them; a corrupted people cannot long exist with them, or any other human assistance. They are remedies which at best always disclose and confess our evils. The body politic once dis­tempered, they may indeed be used as a crutch to support it a-while, but they can never heal it. Rome, when her bravery conquered the neighbouring nations, and united them to her own empire, was free from all danger within, because her armies being urged on by a love for their country would as readily suppress an internal as an external enemy. In those times she made no scruple to throw out her kings who had abused their power. But when her subjects fought not for the advantage of the Commonwealth; when they thronged to the Asiatic wars for the spoils they produced, and pre­ferred prostituting the rights of citizenship upon any barbarian that demanded them, to meeting him in the field for their support; then Rome grew too modest to accept from the hands of a dictator those rights which she ought to have impaled him for daring to invade. No alteration in her laws merely, could have effected this. Had she remained virtuous, she might as well have expelled her dictators as her kings. But what laws can save a people who for the very purpose of enslaving themselves, chuse to consider them rather as councils which they may accept or refuse, than as precepts [Page 13]which they are bound to obey? ^* with such a people they must ever want a sanction and be contemned.— ^† Virtue and long life seem to be as intimately allied in the political as in the moral world: she is the guard which providence has set at the gate of freedom.

TRUE it is when the nature and principles of a government are pure, we have a right to suppose it as the farthest possible dis­tance from falling. But when we consider that those countries ^‡ in which the wisest institutions of republican governments have been established, now exhibit the strongest instances of apostacy, we cannot but see the necessity of vigilance. Commerce, which makes perhaps, the greatest distinction between the old world and the modern, having raised new objects for our curiosity, habitual indulgence hath at length made them necessary to our infirmities. [Page 14]Thus effeminated, can we hope to exceed the rigour of their prin­ciples who even forbad the mentioning of a foreign custom, and whose sumptuary laws are held up in our age as objects of astonish­ment? Such nations have mouldered away an uncontrovertable proof, that the best constructed human governments, like the hu­man body, tend to corruption; but as with that too, there are not wanting remedies to procrastinate their final decay.

AMONG the causes of their fall there are none more common or less natural than that of their own strength. Continual ware making a military force necessary, the habit of conquest once ac­quired and other objects being wanting, history is not without ^* instances of its turning itself inwards, and knawing as it were, upon its own bowels. Happy are we in the frequent change of our sol­diery. ^† This seems to be the best antidote against such an evil. It prevents that lethargy which would be a symptom of death in the citizen at home; and checks that immoderation in the soldier which is apt to mislead his virtues in the field. By this exchange [Page 15]of their qualities they mutually warrant happiness to each other and freedom to their country.

AMERICA once guarded against herself, what has she to fear? Her natural situation may well inspire her with confidence. Her rocks and her mountains are the chosen temples of liberty. The extent of her climate, and the variety of its produce, throw the means of her greatness into her own hands, and insure her the traffic of the world. Navies shall launch from her forests, and her bosom be found stored with the most precious treasures of nature. May the industry of her people be a still surer pledge of her wealth. —The union of her states too is founded upon the most durable principles: the similarity of the manners, religion and laws of their inhabitants, must ever support the measure their common injuries originated. Her government, while it is restrained from violating the rights of the subject, is not disarmed against the public foe.

COULD Junius Brutus and his colleagues have beheld her re­public erecting itself on the dijointed neck of tyranny, how would they have wreathed a laurel for her temple as eternal as their own memories! America! fairest copy of such great originals! be virtuous, and thy reign shall be as happy as durable, and as durable as the pillars of the world you have enfranchised.