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AVIL

1776.

BOOK they shall esteem separation from Great Britain as the last of misfortunes. What! when an attempt has been made to rob you and your posterity of your birthrights-when your fields have been laid waste, your towns have been burnt, and your citizens butchered; when your property is seized and confiscated in all parts of the world; when an inexorable tyrant, an abandoned parliament, and a corrupt pusillanimous people, have formed an hellish league to rob you of every thing men hold most dear; is it possible there should be creatures, who march on two legs, and call themselves human, who can be so destitute of sentiment, courage, and feeling, as sobbingly to protest, they shall consider separation from these butchers and robbers as the last of misfortunes?

"Oh, I could brain you with your ladies' fans !"

In pursuance, however, at length, of instructions transmitted from all parts of the province, the Maryland convention passed a vote in favor of independence; and the delegates of all the Thirteen Colonics assembled in general congress being now unanimous, the DECLARATION of INDEPENDENCE was solemnly promulgated on the 4th of July, 1776. This famous declaration commences with the acknowledgment, "That respect to the opinions of mankind re

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quires, that, when in the course of human events BOO K it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation; and they' assert the unalterable right of the people, when- ' ever government becomes destructive of those: ends for which it is instituted, to form a new government on principles most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate, that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abo lishing the forms to which they have been accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former system of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states." In proof of

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BOOK this assertion they then proceed to enumerate the particulars of his conduct in relation to Ame1776. rica, and the oppressive and tyrannic acts of his reign. In conclusion they say, "In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. WE therefore, the representatives of AMERICA in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude. of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, and that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved: and in support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour

Of this memorable declaration, memorable not merely in the annals of Great Britain, but in the history of the world, the English court, bitter as its chagrin and vehement as its resentment must questionless have been, took no public notice. An elaborate answer however in a short time appeared from

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This DECLARATION was received in every BOOK part of the continent with the loudest acclamations of applause. Amongst the most enraptured in this glorious moment of enthusiasm, was the heroic and romantic Lee, who, at this period, writing to Patrick Henry, esq. governor of Virginia, thus exultingly expresses himself: "The reveries which I considered as mere golden castles built in the air, at length bid fair for being realized. We shall now most probably see a mighty empire established of freemen, whose honour, property, and military glories, are not to be at the disposal of a sceptred tyrant, nor

the pen ofa ministerial writer, under the undisguised sanction of government, which, with unabated pride and undiminish. ed folly, speaking through this medium, says, "Ill would it become the DIGNITY of an insulted sovereign to descend to altercation with revolted subjects. Easy as it were to refute the calumnies contained in that audacious paper, it could not be expected that his majesty or ministers should CONDESCEND to give it any answer."-In reply to the dreadful charge of exciting the Indian savages to take up the hatchet against the colonists, an explicit and daring avowal is made, "that since force is become necessary, it matters not whether the instru ment be a German or a Calmuck, a Russian or a Mohawk." Thus it appears from the courtly representation of this favored writer," that the king of Great Britain, rather than recede an iota from his novel and unconstitutional claims, rather than revoke a single act of contumely or oppression, would without hesitation deliver up a whole continent to the unutterable horrors of Indian and Tartarian barbarity, converting in his ireful mood the most flourishing country

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BOOK their consciences to be fettered by a proud domineering hierarchy. Every faculty of the soul 1776. will now be put in motion; every spark of ability which every individual possesses will now be brought forth, and form the common aggregate for the advantage and honour of the community."

By advice of the new American minister, lord George Germaine, the chief command of the vast naval and military force now collected for the subjugation of America was entrusted to the How Es, brothers of the gallant nobleman who so gloriously fell in the defence of the colo

upon earth into one mighty waste, the eternal abode of solitude and desolation."-" Flattered from their cradles," says a noble writer (lord Chesterfield), "the hearts of kings are corrupt, and their heads are turned; so that they seem to be a species by themselves, No KING ever said to himself, Homo sum; humani nihil à me alienum puto." And Mr. Burke, who has since taken so much pains to unlearn his former potions, has told us, "that a king is ever surrounded with a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are erased from his mind." And he scruples not to say, "that, judging upon sure and uncon tested principles, the greatest part of the governments on earth must be concluded tyrannies, impostures, violations of the natural rights of mankind, and worse than the most dis orderly anarchy," By what species of unparalleled effrontery can this writer accuse and denounce another for proclaiming usurpers by circles of latitude and longitude over the whole globe!!!

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