united griefs rapidly prepared the public mind for the reception of the numerous energetic pamphlets which began to advocate the national disunion of the colonies from the British empire. The circulation and effect of the wellknown "Common Sense" were instantaneous as those of the electric fluid. Thousands were convinced by its homely reasoning, but more were carried away by the passion of feeling, which it wrought to the highest pitch of human enthusiasm. Then followed the declaration of independence. The wishes of the people had preceded the act of their rulers, and the style of that act affixed yet a new seal of confirmation to their wishes. The simple exposition of moral and political truths with which it opens elevated still higher the already sublimed tone of the public sentiment; the energetic enumeration of the national wrongs, opposed as in contrast to these great laws of nature, kindled anew the national indignation; the solemn appeal to the great Author of Being, and the sacred pledge of "lives," "fortunes," "and honour," with which it closes, roused all the devotion of human hearts and manly minds; and, assuredly, never was it roused in a better or a nobler cause. It was not the cause of Americans only, it was the cause of the very people whose injustice they opposed; it was the cause of every people on the earth; of the whole great family of human kind. Well might that high-minded patriot and statesman, the English Chatham, exclaim in the British parliament, in the face of the British minister, "I rejoice that America has resisted!" Well might he observe, that "three millions of fellow creatures, so lost to every sense of virtue, as tamely to give up their liberties, would be fit instruments to make slaves of the rest." Had America basely submitted to the encroachments of ministerial parliaments, soon would that same parliament have tried encroachments upon the liberties of England; or had the infant America been overwhelmed by the armies poured upon her shores, with the buried liberties of her people, without farther efforts on the part of their rulers, her victors had buried for ever their own national virtue, and honour, and character. Then, indeed, had we read this moral upon England's "faded brow, Nations, like men who others' rights invade, And, in a brother's liberties o'erthrown, Shall weep to find that they have wreck'd their own." Thoughts of a Recluse. Considering the common frailties of human nature, we might well be at a loss to account for the uniform rectitude of the first rulers of these infant republics; but the secret is thus simply explained by Ramsay. "The public voice elevated none to a seat in that august assembly but such as, in addition to considerable abilities, possessed that ascendency over the minds of their fellow citizens which can neither be acquired by birth, nor purchased by wealth." The occasional weakness of the central government during the revolutionary struggle was as much owing to the unwillingness of its members to assume too much, as to the difficulty of exacting obedience, or of procuring that unanimity of measures (which can alone render the greatest national struggles effective) throughout the extent of the vast and thinly peopled territory which was every where assailed by invading legions. The vigilant patriotism of the Congress was as uniformly exerted to protect the civil as the national liberties of their country; for the former they began the struggle, and, when necessity compelled them to prosecute it for the latter, they never for a moment lost sight of the one nor the other. They seem to have ever held before them that page of the history of their English ancestors, when having risen against the tyranny of a monarch, the people fell beneath that of a soldiery. These indeed are the Scylla and Charybdis between which it is so difficult for a nation to steer during the storm of political commotions: it was here that the vessel of the state was wrecked in England at the era of the commonwealth; it was here that it was wrecked in France at that of the Revolution. If it be not impossible, it is at least incalculably difficult to establish the liberties of a country on a solid foundation by means of a vigorous army; it is, indeed, the most efficient weapon wherewith to combat tyranny, but it is a twoedged one; it forces open the temple to liberty, but stabs her as she ascends her throne. The earlier Congress may perhaps be judged to have carried their scrupulous precaution too far; to have exerted, if I may so express my self, too paternal a dominion for a season of such exigency; to have calculated too much upon that moral force which they saw so powerfully exerted around them; to have deemed, in short, the self-impelled energy of the country to have been sufficient to spurn the invaders from her shores. That their first calculation was erroneous is undoubted, and the experience of a second campaign induced them to adopt more vigorous measures; but their vigour was ever so tempered with prudence, their ardour for speedy relief from foreign violence so balanced by the dread of nerving too strongly the hands of internal power, that they have frequently been censured for too excessive a moderation, for dreaming, in short, upon abstract rights, while the very existence of the nation was at stake. The more reflecting, especially among Americans, who may be allowed to be the best judges of a scene in which they or their fathers were the actors, are wont to ascribe to the revolutionary Congress a wisdom as practical as it was beautiful. They were not dreaming upon abstract principles; they were guarding the actual rights and preserving the morals of the community. They judged it a lesser evil that the war should be somewhat protracted, than that the seeds of political evil should be ingrafted on the soil. They accounted it impossible to make slaves of a people who were determined to be free, and the result proved that they judged wisely. The Fabian shield employed by their wise general in his military conduct was spread by themselves over the civil government. Their aim was to do nothing that might afterwards require to be undone; a rule the steady adherence to which imparts more lasting strength to a government than any which has ever been devised. It must farther be observed, that the powers of Congress were at this season by no means clearly defined; and had they incautiously stretched them too far, they might have roused opposition, and so divided the community. As it was, they held it united; indeed, the unanimity of sentiment which prevailed throughout this scattered community during that grievous and protracted warfare, is perhaps not the least striking feature in the character of the times. No jealousy of the government, none of the commander, ever mingled its leaven with the patriotism of the people; both indeed were so pure, it was impossible to doubt them; and this it was that blunted the swords of the enemy, and before which their experienced and well-provisioned armies fell one after another, as the ripe leaves of the forest before the invisible breezes of heaven. I must here recall to you that singular evidence of the devotion of the national feeling, afforded, I think, in the seventh year of the war, after the revolt of the Pennsylvania line. You will remember the hard sufferings which produced the mutiny. Fainting under the united hardships of military duty, and deficient food and clothing, they withdrew from the body of the army, demanding that which their officers had not to give, the immediate supply of their necessities. To awe them into obedience, Gen Wayne presented his pistols; they pointed their bayonets at his breast. "We love and respect you, but if you fire, you are a dead man. We are not going to the enemy; but are determined on obtaining our just rights." They withdrew in good order, with their arms and field-pieces, to a neighbouring town, committed no devastations, but obstinately persisted in their demands. Congress dispatched some of its members to the mutineers, but before these arrived, emissaries from the enemy appeared among them. Unconditional terms were offered; gold, preferment, and the immediate cover and assistance of a body of royal troops, already on their march towards them. Their reply was the instant seizure of their evil tempters, whom they sent immediately under a guard from their own body to the same general who had pointed his pistols at their lives. At the appearance of the Congress' commissioners, their grievances were stated and redressed; but when President Reed offered them a hundred guineas from his private purse, as a reward for their fidelity in having surrendered the spies, the sturdy patriots refused them. "We have done a duty we owed our country, and neither desire nor will receive any reward, but the approbation of that country for which we have so often bled."* A country peopled by such men might be overrun, but could not be subdued. This conviction supported the Congress in the most trying emergencies; they ever preserved equal hopes, and asserted the same claims, whether their fellow citizens were victorious or defeated. They seem to have foreseen this consequence from defeat, a new ardour in the cause of liberty; and most truly were their expectations answered. The national spirit ever. rose highest in the moment of adversity; the greater the pressure, the more vigorous the rebound; the longer the * Among these soldiers were some naturalized citizens, natives of Ireland, a country which has sent forth many an able hand and head to the American wilderness; many, too, of high birth, but whom political or religious persecution has made aliens and foreigners. |