One of the patriots that voluntarily incurred the greatest degree of suffering, without the possibility of any individual gain, was JOHN HART, a member of that Congress which issued the memorable Declaration of Independence.

He was the son of Edward Hart, of Hopewell township and Hunterdon county in New Jersey, from whom he inherited a considerable patrimonial estate, and a spirit that would have been worthy of the best days of ancient Rome.

During the war with France, Edward Hart was one of those brave and loyal colonists who generously lent their aid to the military operations of England: aid that was gladly received and emphatically acknowledged but never recompensed, by the royal government. He exerted himself in the cause of the mother country so far as to raise a corps of volunteers, called the Jersey Blues; a name that they first bore, but which has become a distinguished and favourite military designation since that period. With this corps he marched into Canada, and arrived before Quebec in time to participate in the victory which closed. the mortal career of General Wolfe.

John Hart, the son, did not join in these military expeditions, but was quietly cultivating a farm of four hundred acres, which he had purchased. He had married a lady of respectable connexions and great amiability of character, named Deborah Scudder, and was surrounded by a numerous family of sons and daughters. In the enjoyment, therefore, of domestic

happiness, and engrossed by the cares of his farm, he felt no aspiring for martial fame, and was not particularly excited by the quarrel between France and England, in which the colonies took, generally, an active part.

He served, however, in the colonial legislature, and for twenty years assisted in the local legislation which was exercised for the improvement of the country, in the laying out of new roads, the erection of bridges, the founding of seminaries of education, and the provisions for administering justice: all of which beneficial objects were peculiarly within the range of powers devolved upon the general assembly. When the series of aggressions upon the rights of the colonies was commenced by the passage of the stamp act in the year 1765, he assisted in the selection of delegates appointed to represent New Jersey in the Congress held at New York, in the month of October of that year; and he was one of those who at once perceived the true nature of the dispute between the ministry of king George on the one side, and the people of the colonies on the other; he saw clearly that the question at issue between them, involved nothing less than absolute slavery to the colonies, if they should submit to the novel pretensions of the British govern

'ment.

Mr. Grenville, the prime minister, who led the way in that mad career which successive administrations were so unfortunate as to follow, in their blind determination to coerce the colonies into submission,

did not probably comprehend the whole tendency of his own project. And it surprised many well disposed persons in Great Britain to see the Americans, after suffering so quietly all sorts of restrictions upon their trade and industry, avowedly imposed for the benefit of the mother country alone, now so greatly roused and excited by the mere anticipation of a trifling tax, which could not take from them, in half a century, more treasure than they would voluntarily throw away in a single campaign against the French and Canadians.

This erroneous view of the discontents was not uncommon, and the terror, grief and indignation caused by the threatened stamp duty, was attributed to a sordid apprehension of parting with an inconsiderable sum of money: the example of such men as John Hart should have been sufficient to prove the fallacy of such an imputation.

A farmer, what had he to do with stamped paper? He had no occasion to sign bills of exchange or promissory notes.-Far advanced in years, what improvement in his condition could he look for in civil strife and commotion? Possessed only of a farm and farmer's stock, what inducement of pecuniary saving could persuade him to join in measures that would invite a hostile army, with devastation in its train, to make his fields the theatre of war? Far different motives from the love of pelf could induce such men to assume an attitude of resistance against arbitrary power.

It has happened that in England the great contests for freedom, in which our ancestors were engaged, in opposition to the arbitrary pretensions of the crown, turned chiefly on questions of taxation. It was not the amount, but the principle of the poll-tax, and the ship-money, that made those exactions so intolerably odious among the people of England. On this question of the right in the governing power to take the subject's money without his consent, the ablest pens and most eloquen't tongues of Britain had been exercised; it was the point which had been made the criterion of happiness, so far as happiness depends on freedom. The right to retain property, untaxed but by the consent of the people through their representatives, had become the sensible object in which civil liberty seemed to reside. And as these principles had been preserved unalloyed in America, since they had been brought in all their freshness to Plymouth-rock, by the first pilgrims-to say that a community might be taxed without their consent seemed to the colonists precisely equivalent to the pretension that they might be chained, scourged and branded as the vilest slaves.

It is certain, that at this early period independence was not thought of, or if suggested at all, was not in the least desired by the respectable and loyal subjects who assembled at New York in the autumn of 1765. But that Congress, faithful to the principles of the British constitution, as received and proclaimed by the best and bravest men in England, from the time

of Magna Charta, unanimously declared, in reference to the stamp act, that taxation without representation would be intolerable tyranny.

The consequences of this assertion of a maxim so important in the relations between the colonies and the mother country, were of great moment to the interests of both countries. It roused the pride of the British aristocracy, while it excited also the attention of the colonists and gave them a principle to contend for, which being approved by their understandings and impressed upon their hearts, became of dearer value than their money or their trade, their farms or their houses; all of which, as well as their peace and safety, were willingly sacrificed in their determination to maintain it.

The intelligence that was received early in the subsequent year, of the change of ministry-the dismissal of the duke of Bedford and Mr. Grenville, and the appointment of the amiable lord Rockingham as prime minister, together with the repeal of the odious stamp act, spread a heartfelt joy throughout the colonies; but confirmed the people in the belief that the Congress at New York had asserted only what was just and undeniable.

The declaratory act of parliament, passed at the time of the repeal of the stamp act, as a salvo to the pride of those members who could not bear any seeming acquiescence in the claims of the colonies, was looked upon as an empty and unmeaning boast of power, while the actual repeal of the tax seemed a