cans from entering into the worst atrocities of war, towards each other and used at home to consider

rapine and cruelty as customary attributes of military life, was a natural and reasonable anticipation.

Having put his hand to the plough, however, he would not turn back. He voted for the declaration of independence, without hesitation or reluctance; although well knowing the peril that he was bringing upon his property, his family and himself.

The declaration was at first published with only the names of Mr. Hancock, as president, and Charles Thomson, as secretary. Such was the caution still prevalent respecting this most important measure, the consequences of which would have been most disastrous to all concerned in it, if the contest had eventuated in the success of the British armies.

It is remarkable in the history of the revolutionary war, and is a fact in the highest degree honourable to the patriots of that period, that their courage and spirit always appeared to be most lofty when the pressure of external circumstances seemed most disheartening.

When the declaration of independence was first promulgated, the British army had just landed on Staten Island; and no one could tell which of the members of the Congress had voted for a manifesto so offensive to the royal government. The president and secretary alone could be identified as individually responsible. Soon afterwards the battle on Long Island was fought, the American army was defeated

VOL. IX.-P

with considerable loss; and it was known that the royal army was numerous, well disciplined and brave; -under these circumstances a new publication of the declaration was made, with the names of all the members, both those who were actually present, and those who came into Congress subsequently.

Far from shrinking at this alarming crisis from the share of responsibility and contingent punishment attaching to each individual, by a concealment of the part that each had taken; every one seemed desirous to affix his name to an instrument which would have brought down on all the signers the direst vengeance of the British government, if the contest, apparently so unequal, had ended in the overthrow of the colonists.

It is impossible to contemplate without admiration the moral courage, the generous disinterestedness, the determined conscientious resolution which could impel such a man as John Hart to sign, his name to a paper which he could not but know would be a signal for the devastation of his farm, the ruin of his property, the dispersion of his family, and the total impoverishment of himself and his children. Not impelled by personal ambition, nor sustained by the ardour of youth-already trembling with the feebleness of age, and having neither hope of a protracted life to enjoy in his own person the restoration of peace and the establishment of political rights-nor suited by temperament, habit or education, for the attainment of political distinction;-what could have supplied

him with the motive for such heroic self-devotion? His motive is to be sought only in a sober conviction of rights invaded, in the dictates of a pure and enlightened patriotism, and a pious reliance on the protection of Heaven upon those who conscientiously performed their duty.

Accustomed during all his life to guide his conduct by the rules of right, and not by considerations of expediency, the same principle of rectitude which had made him the chosen arbiter of all disputes among his neighbours, and acquired for him the title of "honest"-a distinction which immortalized Aristides-this honesty impelled him to execute all his duties faithfully in whatever situation he might be placed, and guided him in the most elevated public act which was to be known and judged by the whole world, as well as in the most trivial concerns of his domestic circle.

New Jersey soon became the theatre of war. The British army proceeded as far as the banks of the Delaware, and their progress and vicinity was marked by the most unrestrained and wanton destruction of property. The details of their ravages, as they were communicated to congress, were most shocking and odious. The family of Mr. Hart escaped from insult by retiring from the neighbourhood of the troops; leaving the farm and stock to be pillaged and destroyed by the Hessians.

The waste committed there by the marauding parties of the enemy was unsparing, and they sought

with great eagerness to make Mr. Hart himself a pri

soner.

Being unwilling to leave his family at this particular juncture, his wife being extremely ill, he exposed himself frequently to the necessity of a precipitate flight, and a most inconvenient concealment. It had been impossible, so late in the season, to remove Mrs. Hart, who was afflicted with a disorder which terminated in her death, at this gloomy and disastrous period. Mr. Hart was driven from the bedside of his dying partner, and bunted through the woods and among the hills, with a perseverance on the part of his pursuers, that was worthy of a better cause.

It was not until the latter end of December, that the enterprize of Washington, in striking suddenly at the Hessians posted at Trenton, cleared Jersey of these unwelcome visitors. Until that time Mr. Hart was a fugitive-an exile and a wanderer-among the scenes of his youthful sports and his manly usefulness. While the most tempting offers of pardon were held forth to all rebels that would give in their adhesion to the royal cause, and while Washington's army was dwindling down to a mere handful, was this old man carrying his gray hairs and his infirmities about from cottage to cottage, and from cave to cave; leaving his farm to be pillaged, his property plundered, his family afflicted and dispersed-yet through sorrow, humiliation and suffering-wearing out his bodily strength and hastening the approach of decrepitude and death-but in spirit never despairing, never

repenting the course he had taken-hoping for the best, and upheld by an approving, nay an applauding conscience, and by a firm trust that the favour of Heaven would not be withheld from a righteous cause.

The particulars of his wanderings, as he afterwards in his unostentatious way related them, would require too minute a detail for the scope of the present work. The extremities to which he was reduced, may be judged from two facts: one is, that for a long period he never ventured to sleep twice at the same house ; and the other, which he very good humouredly told of himself, was, that on one occasion, being sorely pressed for a safe night's lodging, and being unknown where he applied for one, he was obliged to share the accommodations of a large dog-a bedfellow, as he declared, not in those evil times the most exceptionable.

The successes of the American army at Trenton and Princeton, and the consequent evacuation of the greater part of Jersey by the British, relieved him from his most uncomfortable concealment, and enabled him to collect his family again, and set about repairing the damages done to his plantation.

They were more easily repaired indeed, serious as they were, than the injuries which hardship and anxiety had committed on his health and constitution.

In restoring his devastated farm to order and in giving advice to his numerous friends and neighbours, who now in great numbers sought his counsel, he