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127. RESISTANCE TO BRITISH AGGRESSION.

Patrick Henry.

Patrick Henry was born, May 29th, 1736, in Hanover county, Virginia. His father was a native of Aberdeen, in Scotland. Patrick's education was scanty, and he entered upon the prac tice of the law after only six weeks of preparation. But his powers of eloquence were remarkable. He was elected repeatedly to the most important offices in the gift of the People of Vir ginia. In 1788, he was a member of the Convention which met there to consider the Constitution of the United States, and exerted himself strenuously against its adoption. He died in 1799. The Virginia Convention having before them resolutions of a temporizing character towards Great Britain, March 23d, 1775, Mr. Henry introduced others, manly and decided in their tone, and providing that the Colony should be immediately put in a state of defence. These counter resolutions he supported in the following memorable speech, the result of which was their adoption. Of the effect of this speech, Mr. Wirt says, that, when Henry took his seat, at its close, "No murmur of applause was heard. The effect was too deep. After the trance of a moment, several members started from their seats. The cry to arms! seemed to quiver on every lip, and gleam from every eye. They became impatient of speech. Their souls were on fire for action."

MR. PRESIDENT it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of Hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern our temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it!

I have but one lamp, by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry, for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, Sir; it will prove a snare to your feet! Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss! Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love?

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Let us not deceive ourselves, Sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation, the last arguments to which Kings resort. I ask Gentlemen, Sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can Gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, Sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them?-Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that, for the lest ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain.

Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms

shall we find which have not already been exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, Sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the Throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and Parlia ment. Our petitions have been slighted, our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult, our supplications have been disre garded, and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the Throne.

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In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, — if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimabl privileges for which we have been so long contending, — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, — we must fight; I repeat it, Sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!.

128. THE WAR INEVITABLE, MARCH, 1775.- Patrick Henry.

THEY tell us, Sir, that we are weak,- unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally dis armed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.

Three millions of People, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for

us.

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat it, Sir, let it come!

It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace!—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why tand we here idle? What is it that Gentlemen wish? What would

they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

129. RETURN OF BRITISH FUGITIVES, 1782. — Patrick Henry.

I VENTURE to prophesy, there are those now living who will see this favored land amongst the most powerful on earth, able, Sir, to take care of herself, without resorting to that policy, which is always so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, Sir, they will see her great in arts and in arms, her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent, her commerce penetrating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves. But, Sir, you must have men, -you cannot get along without them. Those heavy forests of valuable timber, under which your lands are groaning, must be cleared away. Those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Your timber, Sir, must be worked up into ships, to transport the productions of the soil from which it has been cleared. Then, you must have commercial men and commercial capital, to take off your productions, and find the best markets for them abroad. Your great want, Sir, is the want of men; and these you must have, and will have speedily, if you are wise.

Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, Sir, and they will come in! The population of the Old World is full to overflowing. That population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the Governments under which they live. Sir, they are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to your coasts with a wistful and longing eye. They see here a land blessed with natural and political advantages, which are not equalled by those of any other country upon earth; -a land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of abundance, - a land over which Peace hath now stretched forth her white wings, and where Content and Plenty lie down at every door!

Sir, they see something still more attractive than all this. They see a land in which Liberty hath taken up her abode, that Liberty whom they had considered as a fabled goddess, existing only in the fancies of poets. They see her here a real divinity, her altars rising on every hand, throughout these happy States; her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence. Sir, let but this, our celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the People of the Old World, — tell them to come, and bid them welcome, - and you will see them pouring in from the North, from the South, from the East, and from the West. Your wildernesses will be cleared and settled, your deserts

will smile, our ranks will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.

But Gentlemen object to any accession from Great Britain, and par ticularly to the return of the British refugees. Sir, I feel no objection to the return of those deluded people. They have, to be sure, mistaken their own interests most wofully; and most wofully have they suffered the punishment due to their offences. But the relations which we bear to them, and to their native country, are now changed. Their King hath acknowledged our independence; the quarrel is over, peace hath returned, and found us a free People. Let us have the magnanimity, Sir, to lay aside our antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in a political light. Those are an enterprising, moneyed people. They will be serviceable in taking off the surplus produce of our lands, and supplying us with necessaries, during the infant state of our manufactures. Even if they be inimical to us in point of feeling and principle, I can see no objection, in a political view, in making them tributary to our advantage. And, as I have no prejudices to prevent my making this use of them, so, Sir, I have no fear of any mischief that they can do us. Afraid of them! - What, Sir, shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at our feet, now be afraid of his whelps?

130. SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JAMES OTIS.*-Mrs. L. M. Child.

ENGLAND may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one King of England his life, another, his crown, and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies.

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We are two millions, one-fifth fighting men. We are bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the Nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be, extorted. Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper? No! America, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.

We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our

* Born, 1725; killed by a stroke of lightning, 1773.

teeth, because the fagot and torch were behind us. We have waken this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population. And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother country? No! we owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her, to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy.

But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money from your gratitude, we only demand that you should pay your own expenses." And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the King, and, with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws! Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The Ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The Cabinet behind the Throne. In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we all have reason to esteem it a great privilege that rain and dew do not depend upon Parliament; otherwise, they would soon be taxed and dried. But, thanks to God, there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice! The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome; but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember, that a fire is lighted in these Colonies which one breath of their King may kindle into such fury that the blood of all England cannot extinguish it!

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131. FOR INDEPENDENCE, 1776. — Richard Henry Lee. Born, 1732; died, 1794. THE time will certainly come when the fated separation between the mother country and these Colonies must take place, whether you will or no; for so it is decreed by the very nature of things, by the progressive increase of our population, the fertility of our soil, the extent of our territory, the industry of our countrymen, and the immensity of the ocean which separates the two countries. And, if this be true, as it is most true,- who does not see that the sooner it takes place, the better; that it would be the height of folly, not to seize the present occasion, when British injustice has filled all hearts with indignation, inspired all minds with courage, united all opinions in one, and put arms in every hand? And how long must we traverse three thousand miles of a stormy sea, to solicit of arrogant and insolent men either counsels or commands to regulate our domestic affairs? From what we have already achieved, it is easy to presume what we shall hereafter accom

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