tobacco. Every nation whose harvest is precarious, or whose lands yield not those commodities, which we cultivate, will gladly exchange their superfluities and manufactures for ours. We have already received many and large cargoes of clothing, military stores, etc., from our commerce with foreign powers, and in spite of the efforts of the boasted navy of England, we shall continue to profit by this connection. The want of our naval stores has already increased the price of these articles to a great height, especially in Britain. Without our lumber, it will be impossible for those haughty islanders to convey the products of the West Indies to their own ports— for a while they may with difficulty effect it, but without our assistance, their resources soon must fail. Indeed, the West India Islands appear as the necessary appendages to this our empire. They must owe their support to it, and ere long, I doubt not, some of them will from necessity wish to enjoy the benefit of our protection. These natural advantages will enable us to remain independent of the world, or make it the interest of European powers to court our alliance, and aid in protecting us against the invasions of others. What argument therefore do we want, to show the equity of our conduct; or motive of interest to recommend it to our prudence? Nature points out the path, and our enemies have obliged us to pursue it. If there is any man so base or so weak as to prefer a dependence on Great Britain to the dignity and happiness of living a member of a free and independent nation-let me tell him that necessity now demands what the generous principle of patriotism should have dictated. We have now no other alternative than independence, or the most ignominious and galling servitude. The legions of our enemies thicken on our plains; desolation and death mark their bloody career; whilst the mangled corpses of our countrymen seem to cry out to us as a voice from heaven-“ Will you permit our posterity to groan under the galling chains of our murderers? Has our blood been expended in vain? Is the only reward which our constancy, till death, has obtained for our country, that it should be sunk into a deeper and more ignominious vassalage? Recollect who are the men that demand your submission; to whose decrees you are invited to pay obedi ence! Men who, unmindful of their relation to you as brethren, of your long implicit submission to their laws; of the sacrifice which you and your forefathers made of your natural advantages for commerce to their avarice-formed a deliberate plan to wrest from you the small pittance of property which they had permitted you to acquire. Remember that the men who wish to rule over you, are they who, in pursuit of this plan of despotism, annulled the sacred contracts which had been made with your ancestors; conveyed into your cities a mercenary soldiery to compel you to submission by insult and murder-who called your patience, cowardice; your piety, hypocrisy." Countrymen ! the men who now invite you to surrender your rights into their hands, are the men who have let loose the merciless savages to riot in the blood of their brethren-who have dared to establish popery triumphant in our land—who have taught treachery to your slaves, and courted them to assassinate your wives and children. These are the men to whom we are exhorted to sacrifice the blessings which Providence holds out to us-the happiness, the dignity of uncontrolled freedom and independence. Let not your generous indignation be directed against any among us, who may advise so absurd and maddening a measure. Their number is but few and daily decreases; and the spirit which can render them patient of slavery will render them contemptible enemies. Our Union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties. We may justly address you, as the Decemviri did the Romans, and say-"Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends." You have now in the field armies sufficient to repel the whole force of your enemies, and their base and mercenary auxiliaries. The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom -they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords, can look up to heaven for assistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, VOL. I.-2 for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to heaven, for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory. If I have a wish dearer to my soul, than that my ashes may be mingled with those of a Warren and Montgomery-it is-that these American States may never cease to be free and independent! JAMES OTIS In New England, in the eighteenth century, before the Revolution, there was a class of wealthy and imposing gentlemen who possessed the education, the manners, and the traditions of the same class in the mother-country. They were the aristocrats of the colony; they drank their wine, drove their horses, and took snuff in drawing-rooms with the air of noblemen. They were frank and free in bearing, choleric in disposition, and splendid in attire. Many of this class, when hostilities broke out, frowned upon the cause of their fellow-colonists, and gave in their adherence to King George. They were the Tories of the war; and were soundly hated by their fellows of the patriot stamp, and vehemently hated them in their turn. At this distance of time, it is easy to condone their attitude, and to respect the constancy with which they faced obloquy for the sake of loyalty. But we do not love them; and the English failed to manifest any gratitude for their services. Treason to one's country is not rewarded even by those who profit by it. Among these fine gentlemen of colonial days was James Otis of Boston. He was born in the neighboring town of Barnstable in 1725, and died just at the end of the war, in 1783. But Otis, so far from being a Tory, was one of the fathers of independence; none of the outspoken patriots antedated him; from the very first premonitions of trouble, he stepped to the front, and spoke his opinions in no uncertain words. And for the exercise of the forum he was well fitted, both by nature and education. He had the gift of oratory; and his mind had been trained and refined by a thorough liberal education. He knew the classics: history was at his fingers' ends, and an accurate memory gave him command over statistics. He was, in short, a gentlemen of birth, breeding, and culture, who cared more for human rights, and the honor of his country, than for anything personal to himself; and who was ready therefore to pledge not his life and his sacred honor only, but his fortune into the bargain, to the attainment of liberty and independence. This is the kind of fine gentlemen to whom we have no objection in this democratic country; and Otis, a hundred years ago, was not only tolerated by the grim company of patriots, but was esteemed one of the most honorable of them, and was listened to and followed with tumultuous enthusiasm. He was eloquent in the full sense of the word, as the testimony of his contemporaries fully indicates; and though the reports of his speeches may not seem to substantiate the highest of these encomiums, yet by making due allowances, and permitting the imagination a little play, we may reconstruct the scene, and believe in the oratory. One of his best speeches was that delivered in 1761 against the Writs of Assistance; a longer and more elaborate effort was spoken in Boston on the subject of taxation without representation. It is worth reading as an eloquent and convincing_statement of the case for the colonies, as against the arguments of the English Lord Mansfield. |