had heard that he put not off the citizen when he entered the camp; but because he was a citizen and wished to continue so, he made himself for a while a soldier. How stinging it was to be stigmatized, as the instrument of tyranny and oppression! how exasperating to be viewed as aiding to enthrall his country! He felt his heart glow with an ardor, which he took for a love of liberty and his country, and had formed to himself no design fatal to its privilege. He recollected, no doubt, that he had heretofore exposed himself for its service. He had bared his bosom in defence of his native soil, and as yet felt the smart of wounds received in conflict for his king and country. Could that spirit which had braved the shafts of foreign battle, brook the keener wounds of civil contest? The arrows which now pierced him, pierced as deep and rankled more than those of former times. Is it rational to imagine much har

mony could long subsist?

We must take human nature as we find it, and not vainly imagine that all things are to become new, at such a crisis.° There are an order of men in every commonwealth, who never reason, but always act from feelings. That their rights and liberties were filched away one after another, they had often been told. They had been taught by those whom they believed that the axe was laid low to the root of the tree, and one more stroke completed its fall. It was in vain to expect to silence or subdue these emotions by reasons, soothings, or dangers. A belief, that nothing could be worse than the calamities which seemed inevitable, had extended itself on all sides, and arguments drawn from such sources had little influence. Each day gave rise to new occurrences which increased animosities. Heart-burnings, heats, and bickerings became more and more extensive. Reciprocal insults soured the temper, mutual injuries embittered the passions. Can we wonder that when everything tended to some important action, the period so soon arrived? Will not our wonder be increased to

find the crisis no sooner taking place, when so many circumstances united to hasten its approach? To use an allusion somewhat homely, may we not wonder that the acid and the alkali did not sooner ferment°! A thought here imperceptibly forces itself on our minds, and we are led to be astonished that persons so discordant in opinion, so opposite in views, attachments, and connections should be stationed together. But here, gentlemen, we must stop. If we pursue this inquiry, at this time and in this place, we shall be in danger of doing great injustice. We shall get beyond our limits. The right of quartering troops in this province must be discussed at a different tribunal. The constitutional legality, the propriety, the expediency of their appointment, are questions of state, not to be determined, nor even agitated by us in this court. It is enough for us if the law takes notice of them when thus stationed; if it warrants their continuance; if it protects them in their quarters. They were sent here by that authority which our laws know; they were quartered here, as I take it, agreeable to an act of the British parliament; they were ordered here by your sovereign and mine.

о

The pomp of funeral, the horrors of death have been so delineated, as to give a spring to our ideas, and to inspire a glow incompatible with sound, deliberative judgment. In this situation, every passion has alternately been predominant. They have, each in its turn, subsided in degree, and they have sometimes given place to despondence, grief, and sorrow. How careful should we be, that we do not mistake the impression of gloom and melancholy, for the dictates of reason and truth. How careful, lest borne away by a torrent of passion, we make shipwreck of conscience.

Perhaps you may be told, gentlemen, as I remember it was said, at the late trial, that passions were like the flux and

reflux of the sea the highest tides always producing the lowest ebbs. But let it be noticed that the tide, in our political ocean, has yet never turned; certainly the current has never set toward the opposite quarter. However similes may illustrate, they never go for proof. Though I believe that it will be found that if the tide of resentment has not risen of late, it has been because it had reached its summit. In the same mode of phraseology, if so homely an expression may be used, perhaps, as the seamen say, it has been high water slack°; but I am satisfied the current has not yet altered its course in favor of the prisoners at the bar. Many things yet exist sufficient to keep alive the glow of indignation. I have aimed at securing you against the catching flame. I have endeavored to discharge my duty in this respect. What success will follow those endeavors, depends on you, gentlemen. If being told of your danger will not produce caution, nothing will. If you are determined in opinion, it is in vain to say more; but if you are zealous inquirers after truth, if you are willing to hear with impartiality, to examine and judge for yourselves, enough has been said to apprize you of those avenues at which enemies of truth and justice are most likely to enter, and most easily to beset you.

JOSEPH WARREN

1741-1775

JOSEPH WARREN is justly famed among Americans as the tyre of a man who can support his principles to the death. His is not the least illustrious name on Harvard's roll of her patriotic dead. He practised medicine in Boston from 1759 until his country's needs made him a soldier at Lexington in 1775.

The young physician espoused the cause of liberty earnestly and fearlessly. His two orations of March 5, 1772, and 1775 on the Boston Massacre are the groundwork for his fame as a public speaker. The second of these was delivered at a time when public feeling ran so high that his utterance was fraught with great danger to himself; hence it is the more frequently quoted. But the earlier oration is more forcible and less highly colored, and, on the whole, is more fairly valuable as the expression of a man who dared support his plea for freedom as Joseph Warren did, with ball and bayonet, on that memorable June 17, 1775, at Bunker Hill.

The fact that he died so young, and that, despite his youth, he had achieved a high place as professional man, patriot, and orator, lends to the name of Warren and to everything that suggests him a romantic interest such as invests the memory of young Nathan Hale, Yale's famous martyr to the cause of freedom.

Webster says, in his second Bunker Hill Oration, referring to Warren, that "Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found

that beats to the transports of patriotism and liberty, its aspiration shall be to claim kindred with his spirit."

CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY AND ARBITRARY POWER

BOSTON, MARCH 5, 1772°

When we turn over the historic page, and trace the rise and fall of states and empires, the mighty revolutions which have so often varied the face of the world strike our minds with solemn surprise, and we are naturally led to endeavor to search out the causes of such astonishing changes.

That man is formed for social life is an observation which, upon our first inquiry, presents itself immediately to our view, and our reason approves that wise and generous principle which actuated the first founders of civil government, an institution which hath its origin in the weakness of individuals, and hath for its end the strength and security of all; and so long as the means of effecting this important end are thoroughly known and religiously attended to government is one of the richest blessings to mankind, and ought to be held in the highest veneration.

In young and new-formed communities the grand design of this institution is most generally understood and the most strictly guarded; the motives which urged to the social compact cannot be at once forgotten, and that equality which is remembered to have subsisted so lately among them prevents those who are clothed with authority from attempting to invade the freedom of their brethren; or, if such an attempt be made, it prevents the community from suffering the offender to go unpunished; every member feels it to be his interest, and knows it to be his duty to preserve inviolate the constitution on which the public safety depends, and he is equally ready to assist the