by the force of arms, what was the condition of its inhabitants?—Its nobles, and its great men were driven out from their possessions, and either slaughtered at home, or compelled to wander as exiles and outcasts on a foreign land; and the people were ground down to the most intolerable slavery; they were forced, under pain of death, to extinguish every light in their houses at eight o'clock in the evening, whatsoever distress of sickness, or of sorrow, might require the need of aid and of compassion; they were exposed to every cruelty, which the lawless and the licentious Norman soldiery, could in the uniformity of their systematic brutalism devise; they were oppressed, starved, insulted, imprisoned, tortured, murdered at the will of a capricious, and a disorderly mob of the Conqueror's military followers. And not contented with all these enormities, William ac- tually ordered the whole extent of that part of Northumberland, which lies between the rivers Humber and Tees, to be laid waste, and every habitation to be consumed with fire; by which barbarous edict more than a hundred thousand families perished, either by the immediate effects of the flames and of the Norman sword, or by the more lingering destruction of cold and of famine, in the thickets, and in the forests, or on their own desolated plains, which had been blasted by the breath of tyranny. But William was the king of England, and intended that the crown should descend to his posterity;-policy, therefore, would restrain, in some measure, the atrocity of his iniquitous despotism; lest, while he utterly wasted the people, he, also, annihilated his own sovereignty. But no hope of any mercy, either dictated by humanity, or taught by policy, have the Americans to expect, if they bow their necks to the domination of a foreign usurper. -He has no wish to be himself the immediate sovereign of this land; but to subject it to the iron sceptre of one of his vassals; so that all the glory, and the honour, and the virtue, and the integrity, and the happiness, and the knowledge of this country, are to be trampled under foot by the slave of a slave!!!-by the servant, the tool, the instrument, of one, himself not free, but to himself enthralled, yet lewdly dares our ministring upbraid! When this scourge of the human race sent his legions of destruction to the confines of Hannover, they met with no resistance, the people submitted at once, and became the voluntary slaves of the victor.-And what was the consequence of this tame, this base surrender of themselves?-why even this was the consequence ;—their possessions and their property were given up to the pillage of an ignorant and a disorderly banditti; the men were slaughtered in heaps ;—nay, even infants, were wantonly murdered ;-and women, of the highest order and respectability were violated in the open streets, with every mark of outrage and of insult which the brutality of an intoxicated soldiery could inflict. All these, and more than all these indignities, and injuries are reserved for the American people, if they yield the land of their fathers unto the enemy of mankind, the murderer of his prisoners, the poisoner of his own sick and afflicted troops. In the better days of Holland, ere she had yet learned to prostrate all her honour, and all her independance at the foot of unbridled tyranny, and of profligate atheism; when Louis the fourteenth menaced entire destruction to the Dutch, the Prince of Orange(he who was afterwards the third William. on the British throne)-was asked what he would do, when the French had driven him out of every spot of his hereditary dominions, by their superior numbers, and their superior force? The intrepid hero replied ;--" I will fight every inch of ground, and will die in the last dyke.” The hour is coming when every one, who loves his country, must adopt the language of the illustrious William, if he own himself under the influence of any one tie, which humanity can bind round the heart of man.--Is he a father, and will he not rather die than live to see his boys massacred, and his daughters dishonoured?--Is he a husband, and will he look on tamely, and behold the wife of his bosom violated by outrageous lust, and lawless cruelty?--Is he a son,--a brother, --and will he wish to preserve his life, only that he may behold his aged father, and his honoured mother basely butchered; or that he may hear the agonizing shrieks of his sisters, as they vainly struggle, with ineffectual cries, and unre garded supplications, against the unhallowed attempts of brutal force? If it shall be necessary, then, we will go up to battle; and as fathers, as husbands, as sons, and as brothers, we will offer ourselves a sacrifice, to preserve our children, our wives, our parents, and our sisters, our government and our country, from the hands of the ravisher and the spoiler. If a breach be made in our citadel, we will fill up the gap with our bodies; we will raise a rampart of living power, against which all attempts of hostile invasion shall fail, and be as nothing. Those that survive the contest shall live to witness the glory and the happiness of their country, the peace and the security of all that to them are dear; and those that perish in the shock, shall die rejoicing, in that they fall for the preservation of the honour, the independence, the uprightness, the felicity, the existence of the land, which gave them birth; of the land, which supports and protects all that is near and precious to their souls. Such will ever be the sentiments of every genuine American; of every American, that is true to the best interests of his own country; even to his extremest hour, when death stands victor by, he will lay his hand upon the tumultuous boundings of his beating bosom, and say, "Oh! my country, thine shall be my last throb, and thine my latest sigh." "Non ante revellar, Exanimem quam te complectar, Roma, tuumque I will not be torn away from thee, O America, 'till I embrace thee in thy last agony; thy name, also, O Liberty, will I venerate and cherish; and will follow after and pursue the very semblance of thy shadow, even when it can avail no more. "Res videas quo modo se habeant; orbem terrarum, imperiis distributis, ardere bello; urbem sine legibus, sine judicüs, sine jure, sine fide, relictam direptioni et incendüs”says Cicero, and he says truly; for what man of common honesty will deny, that the world, all its different governments being divided amongst themselves, is wrapped in the flames of war; that the city-the state, without laws, without judi cial tribunals, without right or equity, without public faith, is given up to plunder and fire, or incendiaries.? It was the opinion of the all accomplished Sir William Jones that, in times of national adversity, those citizens are entitled to the highest praise, who by personal exertions, and active valour promote, at their private hazard the public welfare; that the second rank in the scale of honour is due to those, who in the great council of the nation, or, in other assemblies legally convened, propose and enforce, with manly eloquence, what they conceive to be salutary or expedient on the occasion; and that the third place remains for those persons, who, when they have neither a necessity to act, nor a fair opportunity to speak, impart in writing to their countrymen such opinions, as their reason approves, and such knowledge as their painful researches have enabled them to acquire. With these restrictions, the sword, the tongue, and the pen, which have been too often employed by the worst passions to the worst purposes, may become the instruments of exalted virtue; instruments, which it is not the right only, but the duty of every man to use, who can use them; paying always a sacred regard to the laws of that country, which he undertakes to defend, to advise, or to enlighten. It must have been a sense of this duty, and a consciousness of this right, which has impelled the author of the publication now under review, with no motives, as is manifest from the whole spirit of the work, of factious ambition, or of private interest, to present to the public his sentiments on a subject no less interesting at the present awful hour, than important to all the ages which are yet to come. The dedication breathes a spirit of such high and honourable patriotism, that we cannot refrain from gratifying ourselves by presenting it to the reader. Dedication to the American People. "The author of the following pages is proud of dedicating to the happiest and almost the only freemen on earth, the fruits of a zealous ambition to contribute something, as a claim to their approbation, in the attempt to discharge a duty, that he owes to his country. However unworthy his labours may be of those for whom they are wrought, and however deficient they may be in the views, which they give of our great and interesting concerns; it is hoped, that they will not be altogether abortive, in what was one of the princi pal objects in their publication, the excitement of an anxious and general inquiry into the present gloomy aspect of our political rela tions." "As you are the sources of all honour and power in the republic, it must be from those, whom you invest with the authority of the state, that all the good, or all the evil, which Americans suffer or enjoy, must be derived. Posterity will never give to your instruments the credit or the blame which they may deserve, without recurring to those, who exalted and confided in such representatives of the nation. If the honour of the American people is tarnished by those, who are unworthy to govern them, you alone have the power to take the rusting glories of the nation out of the hands of those, who defile them, and consign the great charge to the keeping of others, who will not throw a disgrace upon your name. "Whatever of splendour,-whatever of fame,-whatever of heroic grandeur you have received from those, who nobly bled and died for their acquisition, they are entrusted to your prudence,—to your wisdom, and to your spirit to preserve. These have never been so much in danger, at any era in the history of your country, as they are at this hour :—and if you fail to step forth, and vindicate the honour of the nation, and secure its solid and vital interests; you cannot prove yourselves to be men full of the holy ardour of freedom, by a conduct, which comes only from the cold apathy of sluggards. "The eyes of the world are fixed upon this great republic, of which they have heard so much, and from which the friends of liberty have promised the brightest of manly virtues :-you have it in your power to be honoured or disgraced. "That your glory may not set after having shone upon your republic for only the short period of thirty years that your death may not soon follow after your birth,-that you may not fall before you have done something worthy of the heroes, who founded your great empire, that you may live for a long succession of ages, as a monument of human greatness founded upon the most exalted of human virtues,-that liberty may ever shed her hallowed glories over your happy land, is the fervent prayer of one, who is neither a British agent, nor a French intriguer, no disgusted subject of democratic intolerance,-no disappointed seeker after public honours-but one who glories in the appellation and character of an INDEPENDENT AMERICAN." (To be Continued). |