DR. JOSEPH WARREN'S ORATION AT BOSTON, 1772.

THE voice of your fathers' blood cries to you from the ground, "My sons, scorn to be SLAVES!" In vain we met the frowns of tyrants; in vain we crossed the boisterous ocean, found a new world, and prepared it for the happy residence of liberty; in vain we toiled; in vain we fought; we bled in vain, if you our offspring want valor to repel the assaults of her invaders! Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors; but like them resolve never to part with your birthright. Be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberty. Follow not the dictates of passion; but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights; at least prevent the curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feed the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, whilst blest with liberty, to gilded palaces surrounded with the ensigns of slavery, you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny, with her whole accursed train, will hide her hideous head in confusion, shame and despair. If you perform your part, you must have the strongest confidence, that the same Almighty Being, who protected your pious and venerable forefathers, who enabled them to turn a barren wilderness into a fruitful field, who so often made bare his arm for their salvation, will still be mindful of their offspring. May this Almighty Being graciously preside in all our councils. May he direct us to such measures as he himself shall approve, and be pleased to bless. May we be ever favored of God. May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, “a name and a praise in the whole earth," until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the world in undistinguished ruin.

GOVERNOR LIVINGSTON TO THE COUNCIL AND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF NEW JERSEY.

GENTLEMEN,-Conceiving it my duty to state my sentiments on the present situation of affairs, between Great Britain and America, you will excuse my giving you the trouble of attending for that purpose.

After deploring with you the desolation spread through part of this state, by an unrelenting enemy, who have marked their progress with a devastation unknown to civilized nations; I congratulate you on the success against them at Trenton, and the victory obtained at Princeton, by the gallant troops under Washington.

The disgust they have given to their own confederates amongst us, by their ravages, has enabled us to distinguish our friends from our enemies. It has opened the eyes of those who were made to believe that abetting our persecutors, would exempt them from the common calamity. But as the rapacity of the enemy was boundless, their rapine was indiscriminate, and their barbarity unparalleled. They have plundered friends and foes. Effects capable of division, they have divided; such as were not, they have destroyed. They have warred upon decrepid age; and defenceless youth.

They have committed hostilities against the professors of literature, and the ministers of religion; against public records, and private monuments; against books of improvement, and papers of curiosity; and against the arts and sciences. They have butchered the wounded, asking for quarters; mangled the dying, weltering in their blood; refused the dead the rights of sepulture: suffered prisoners to perish for want of sustenance; violated the chastity of women; disfigured private dwellings of taste and elegance; and, in the rage of impiety and barbarism, profaned edifices dedicated to Almighty God!

Yet there are some among us, who, deluded by insidious_propositions, are aiding their machinations, to deprive us of that liberty, without which man is a beast, and government a curse.

Besides the baseness of wishing to rise on the ruin of our

country; or to acquire riches at the expense of the liberties and fortunes of our fellow-citizens, how soon would those delusive dreams, upon the conquest of America, be turned into disappointment. Instead of gratuities, these unhappy accomplices in tyranny, would meet with cold disdain; and, be finally told, by their haughty masters, that they approved of the treason, but despised the traitor.

Even the author of this horrid war is incapable of concealing his own confusion and distress. Too great to be wholly suppressed, it frequently discovers itself in his speeches, breathing threatenings, and betraying terror; a motley mixture of magnanimity and consternation; of grandeur and abasement: with troops invincible, he dreads a defeat, and wants reinforcements; victorious in America, and triumphant on the ocean, he is an humble dependent on a petty prince; and with full confidence in the friendship and alliance of France, he trembles at her secret designs, and open prepa

rations.

With all this we ought to contrast the numerous and hardy sons of America, inured to toil; seasoned alike to heat and cold ; hale, robust, patient of fatigue; and from an ardent love of liberty ready to face danger and death.

Their remarkable unanimity with the exception of a few apostates and deserters; their unshaken resolution to maintain their freedom, or perish in the attempt; the fertility of our soil; our inexhaustible internal resources; our economy in public expenses, add to this, that in a cause so just we have the highest reason to expect the blessing of heaven upon our glorious conflict.

For who can doubt the interposition of the supremely just, in favor of a people forced to arms, in defence of everything dear, against a nation deaf to our complaints, rejoicing in our misery, wantonly aggravating our oppressions, determined to divide our substance and by fire and sword to compel us into submission. Let us, however, not presumptuously rely on the interposition of providence, without those efforts which it is our duty to exert. Let us remember our plighted faith and honor to maintain the cause with our lives and fortunes. Let those in distinguished stations use all their influence to rouse the supine; animate the irres

olute; confirm the wavering, and draw from his lurking hole the skulking neutral, who, leaving to others the heat and burthen of the day, means, in the final result, to reap the fruits of that victory, for which he will not contend.

Let us be peculiarly assiduous in bringing to condign punishment, those parricides who have been openly active against their native country; and may we, in all proceedings, be directed by the great arbiter of the fate of nations, by whom empires rise and fall, and who will in due time avenge an injured people on their unfeeling oppressor and his bloody instruments.

JACOB HENRY IN THE NORTH CAROLINA LEGISLATURE.

MR. SPEAKER, Though I will not conceal the surprise I felt that the gentleman should have thought proper yesterday to have moved my expulsion from this house, on the alleged grounds that I "disbelieve in the divine authority of the New Testament," without considering himself bound by those rules of politeness, which, according to my sense of propriety, should have led him to give me some previous intimation of his design; yet since I am brought to the discussion, I feel prepared to meet the object of his resolution.

I certainly, Mr. Speaker, know not the design of the Declaration of Rights made by the people of this state in the year "76, if it was not to consecrate certain great and fundamental rights and principles, which even the constitution cannot impair: for the 44th section of the latter instrument declares that the Declaration of Rights ought never to be violated on any pretence whatever. If there is any apparent difference between the two instruments they ought if possible to be reconciled. But if there is a final repugnance between them, the Declaration of Rights must be considered paramount: for I believe that it is to the constitution, as the constitution is to a law: it controls and directs it absolutely and conclusively. If then a belief in the Protestant religion is required by the constitution to qualify a man for a seat in this house, and such

qualification is dispensed with by the Declaration of Rights, the provision of the constitution must be altogether inoperative, as the language of the bill of rights is "that all men have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience." It is undoubtedly a natural right, and when it is declared to be an inalienable one, by the people in their sovereign and original capacity, any attempt to alienate it either by the constitution or by law, must be vain and fruitless. It is difficult to conceive how such a provision crept into the constitution, unless it was from the difficulty the human mind feels in suddenly emancipating itself from fetters by which it has long been enchained.. If a man should hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the state, I do not hesitate to pronounce that he should be excluded from the public councils of the same; and I trust if I know myself, no one would be more ready to aid and assist than myself. But I should really be at a loss to specify any known religious principles which are thus dangerous. It is surely a question between a man and his Maker, and requires more than human attributes to pronounce which of the numerous sects prevailing in the world is most acceptable to the Deity. If a man fulfils the duties of that religion, which his education or his conscience has pointed to him as the true one, no person, I hold, in this our land of liberty, has a right to arraign him at the bar of any inquisition. And the day I trust is long past when principles merely speculative were propagated by force, when the sincere and pious were made victims, and the light-minded bribed into hypocrites.

The proud monuments of liberty knew that the purest homage man could render to the Almighty was in the sacrifice of his passions, and in the performance of his duties: that the Ruler of the universe would receive with equal benignity, the various offerings of man's adoration, if they proceeded from an humble spirit and sincere mind; that intolerance in matters of faith, had been from the earliest ages of the world, the severest torments by which mankind could be afflicted; and that governments were only concerned about the actions and conduct of man, and not his speculative notions. Who among us feels himself so exalted above his fellows,