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.

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.

"Are the Americans too poo1

Some have sneeringly asked, 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 teeth, because the faggot and torch were behind us. We have waked 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? that drove us from her to the rated our helpless infancy.

No! we owe it to the tyranny pelting storms, which invigo

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 shall 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 w 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.

52. DECISIVE INTEGRITY.-Wirt.

The man who is so conscious of the rectitude of his intentions, as to be willing to open his bosom to the inspection of the world, is in possession of one of the strongest pillars of a decided character. The course of such a man will be firm and steady, because he has nothing to fear from the world, and is sure of the approbation and support of heaven. While he, who is conscious of secret and dark designs which, if known, would blast him, is perpetually shrinking and dodging from public observation, and is afraid of all around, and much more of all above him.

Such a man may, indeed, pursue his iniquitous plans, steadily; he may waste himself to a skeleton in the guilty pursuit: but it is impossible that he can pursue them with the same health-inspiring confidence, and exulting alacrity, with him who feels, at every step, that he is in the pursuit of honest ends, by honest means. The clear unclouded brow, the open countenance, the brilliant eye which can look an honest man steadfastly, yet courteously in the face, the healthfully beating heart, and the firm elastic step, belong to him whose bosom is free from guile, and who knows that all his motives and pur poses are pure and right. Why should such a man falter in his course? He may be slandered; he may be deserted by the world; but he has that within which will keep him erect, and enable him to move onward in his course, with his eyes fixed on heaven, which he knows will not desert him.

Let your first step, then, in that discipline which is to give you decision of character, be the heroic determination to be nonest men, and to preserve this character through every vicissitude fortune, and in every relation which connects you win society. I do not use this phrase, "honest men," in the Larrow sense, merely, of meeting your pecuniary engagements,

and paying your debts; for this the common pride of gentlemen will constrain you to do. I use it in its larger sense of discharging all your duties, both public and private, both open and secret, with the most scrupulous, heaven-attesting integrity; in that sense, farther, which drives from the bosom all little, dark, crooked, sordid, debasing considerations of self, and substitutes in their place a bolder, loftier, and nobler spirit: one that will dispose you to consider yourselves as born, not so much for yourselves, as for your country, and your fellowcreatures, and which will lead you to act on every occasion sincerely, justly, generously, magnanimously.

There is a morality on a larger scale, perfectly consistent with a just attention to your own affairs, which it would be the height of folly to neglect: a generous expansion, a proud elevation and conscious greatness of character, which is the best preparation for a decided course, in every situation into which you can be thrown; and it is to this high and noble tone of character that I would have you to aspire. I would not have you to resemble those weak and meagre streamlets, which lose their direction at every petty impediment that presents itself, and stop, and turn back, and creep around, and search out every little channel through which they may wind their feeble and sickly course. Nor yet would I have you resemble the headlong torrent that carries havoc in its mad career. But I would have you like the ocean, that noblest emblem of majestic decision, which, in the calmest hour, still heaves its resistless might of waters to the shore, filling the heavens, day and night, with the echoes of its sublime declaration of independence, and tossing and sporting, on its bed, with an imperial consciousness of strength that laughs at opposition. It is this depth, and weight, and power, and purity of character, that I would have you to resemble; and I would have you, like the waters of the ocean, to become the purer by your own action.

The illuminees were atheists, who, previously to the French revolution, were secretly associated in every part of Europe, with the view of destroying religion, and engrossing to themselves the government of mankind.

They were distinguished beyond every other class of men, for cunning, mischief, an absolute destitution of conscience, an

absolute disregard of all the interests of man, and a torpid insensibility to moral obligation. No fraternity, for so long a time, or to so great an extent, united within its pale such a mass of talents: or employed in its service such a succession of vigorous efforts.

Their doctrines were, that God is nothing; that government is a curse, and authority a usurpation; that civil society is only the apostasy of man; that the possession of property is robbery; that chastity and natural affection are mere prejudices; and that adultery, assassination, poisoning, and other crimes of a similar nature, are lawful, and even virtuous.

Societies holding these abominable doctrines, spread with a rapidity which nothing but fact could have induced any sober mind to believe. Before the year 1786, they were established in great numbers throughout Germany, in Sweden, Russia, Poland, Austria, Holland, France, Switzerland, Italy, England, Scotland, and even in America.

Voltaire died in the year following the establishment of illuminism. His disciples, with one heart, and one voice, united in its interests; and, finding a more absolute system of corruption than themselves had been able to form, entered eagerly into all its plans and purposes. Thenceforward, therefore, all the legions of infidelity were embarked in a single bottom; and cruised together against order, peace, and virtue. When, then, the French revolution burst upon mankind, an ample field was opened for the labors of these abandoned men.

Had not God taken the wise in their own craftiness, and caused the wicked to fall into the pit which they digged, and into the snares which their hands had set; it is impossible to conjecture the extent to which they would have carried their devastation of human happiness. But, like the profligate rulers of Israel, those who succeeded, regularly destroyed their predecessors.

The spirit of infidelity has the heart of a wolf, the fangs of a tiger, and the talons of a vulture. Blood is its proper nourishment; and it scents its prey with the nerves of a hound, and cowers over a field of death on the sooty pinions of a fiend. Unlike all other animals of prey, it feeds upon its own kind; and, when glutted with the blood of others, turns back upon those who have been its coadjutors.

Between ninety and one hundred of those who were leaders this mighty work of destruction, fell by the hand of violence. Enemies to all men, they were, of course, enemies to each other. Butchers of the human race, they soon whetted the knife for each other's throats: and the tremendous Being who

rules the universe, whose existence they had denied in a solemn act of legislation, whose perfections they had made the butt of public scorn and private insult, whose Son they had crucified afresh, and whose word they had burnt by the hands of the common hangman; swept them all by the hand of violence into an untimely grave. The tale made every ear which heard it tingle, and every heart chill with horror. It was, in the language of Ossian, "the song of death." It was like the reign of the plague in a populous city. Knell tolled upon knell; hearse followed hearse; and coffin rumbled after coffin; without a mourner to shed a tear upon the corpse, or a solitary attendant to mark the place of the grave. From one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, the world went forth and looked after the carcasses of the men, who transgressed against God; and they were an abhorring unto all flesh.

54. LA FAYETTE.-Hillhouse

Among all who have labored in the great cause of man, none has acted a more benevolent, consistent, and illustrious part, than he who left a brilliant destiny in Europe, to espouse the wrongs of these states.

As if every thing conspired to prove his sincere convictions, and his noble disinterestedness, the moment of his embracing our cause was one of overwhelming gloom. So discouraging did our prospects seem, (Washington being then on his retreat through Jersey, with a handful of defeated followers,) that the American commissioners deemed themselves bound in conscience and honor, to dissuade a highly-connected youth from so unpromising an enterprise. His answer to their candid remonstrance embodies the spirit of his whole life. "Hitherto," said young La Fayette, "I have done no more than wish success to your cause. I now go to serve it. The more it has fallen in public opinion, the greater will be the effect of my departure. Since you cannot procure a vessel, I will purchase and fit one out at my own expense; and I will also undertake to transmit your despatches to the congress." He purchased a vessel, eluded his pursuers, embarked, and made a successful winter passage over seas beset with British cruisers He presented the despatches of our commissioners to the American congress, and, with them, made an offer of himself

Here, my countrymen, let us pause.-Point me, if you are able, to a parallel,-for my own recollections do not supp'y it