retaining it in subjection, certain and inevitable. What then remains but the gratification of an ill-judged pride, or the hope of rendering us subservient to designs on your liberty? Soldiers who have sheathed their swords in the bowels of their American brethren, will not draw them with more reluctance against you. When too late, you may lament the loss of that freedom which we exhort you, while still in your power, to preserve. On the other hand, should you prove unsuccessful; should that connection which we most ardently wish to maintain, be dissolved; should your ministers exhaust your treasures, and waste the blood of your countrymen in vain attempts on our liberty, do they not deliver you, weak and defenceless, to your natural enemies? Since, then, your liberty must be the price of your victories, your ruin of your defeat,what blind fatality can urge you to a pursuit destructive of all that Britons hold dear? If you have no regard to the connection which has for ages subsisted between us; if you have forgot the wounds we have received fighting by your side for the extension of the empire; if our commerce is not an object below your consideration; if justice and humanity have lost their influence on your hearts, still motives are not wanting to excite your indignation at the measures now pursued. Your wealth, your honor, your liberty are at stake. Notwithstanding the distress to which we are reduced, we sometimes forget our own afflictions, to anticipate and sympathize in yours. We grieve that rash and inconsiderate counsels should precipitate the destruction of an empire, which has been the envy and admiration of ages; and call God to witness! that we would part with our property, endanger our lives, and sacrifice every thing but liberty, to redeem you from ruin. A cloud hangs over your heads and ours: ere this reaches you, it may probably burst upon us; let us, then (before the remembrance of former kindness is obliterated), once more repeat those appellations which are ever grateful in our ears; let us entreat Heaven to avert our ruin, and the destruction that threatens our friends, brethren and countrymen on the other side of the Atlantic. WILLIAM HENRY DRAYTON. THE ancestors of William Henry Drayton came originally from Northamptonshire, in EngLand. Thomas Drayton, his grandfather, emigrated from the island of Barbadoes, in company with Sir John Yeamans and others, in the year 1671, and settled in South Carolina. William Henry, the subject of the present sketch, was a son of John Drayton, of Drayton Hall, on Ashley river, at which place he was born some time in the month of September, 1742. In 1753, at the age of eleven years, he was sent by his parents to England, under the protection of Chiet Justice Pinckney, who had resigned his seat on the bench of South Carolina, and was removing with his family to the mother country. Under the guidance and care of this worthy gentleman, and in companionship with his sons, Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pinckney, young Drayton pursued his studies at Westminster school, in London, until the fall of 1761, when he entered the University of Oxford. After prosecuting his studies at this place for nearly three years, he returned to South Carolina, where he at once entered upon a course of general reading, and applied himself with great industry to the study of ancient and modern histories, the laws of nations, and the rights of his own country. In the year 1764, he was married to Miss Golightly, a young lady of fortune and rare endowments, by whom he had a son and daughter. In 1769 the important and serious questions which agitated the provinces, attracted the attention of Mr. Drayton, and the same year, under the signature of Freeman, he opposed "the mode of enforcing associations, which he deemed encroachments on his private rights of freedom." By this opposition he became involved in an animated controversy with the celebrated Christopher Gadsden. Soon after this he went to England, where he was favorably received by British court and nobility; and in February, 1771, he was appointed by the king to the Privy Council of South Carolina, in which body he took his seat in April, 1772. On the decease of Judge Murray, in 1774, he was placed by Lieutenant Governor Bull in the position of assistant judge of the province, "until his majesty's pleasure should be known." The energy and independence manifested by Judge Drayton in this position, excited the ill will of the chief justice and some of the assistant judges, and the appearance, in the autumn of 1774, of his address, To the deputies of North America, assembled in the High Court of Congress at Philadelphia,* exposed him in the council to an open manifestation of their displeasure, and finally to removal from the bench and council. This persecution enlisted the sympathies of his fellow-citizens, and from that time he exerted powerful influence amongst them. He was elected to the Provincial Congress of South Carolina in 1775, and the same year ascended to the presidency of that assembly, in which office he remained while that congress existed. On the formation of the constitution of South Carolina, in March, 1776, Judge Drayton was chosen chief justice of the colony. The courts were opened after the organization of government, under that constitution, when, on the twenty-third day of April, 1776, Chief Justice Drayton, in the presence of the associate judges, delivered his celebrated Charge to the Grand Jury; "In this address," says Dr. Ramsay, "he stated the grievances of America, and drew up a bill of American rights This was well received. It substantially chalked out the line of conduct adopted by Congress then in session." & production replete with learning, eloquence, and the strongest patriotism. In addition to the discharge of arduous official duties, he wrote several powerful addresses exposing the corrup tion of the ministry, and encouraging his fellow-citizens to assert and vindicate their natural rights. Among these is one under the signature of A Carolinian, in answer to the "Declaration of Lord and General Howe, published at New York, on the nineteenth of September, 1776, as commissioners for restoring peace to his Majesty's Colonies and Plantations in North America," &c. In this answer he points out the insincerity of the commissioners' proposals, and the wickedness of their intentions. "Your Excellencies," says he, "think fit to declare,' that you are desirous of restoring the public tranquillity.' But is the end your Excellencies aim at our honor and advantage? Is it to give a free scope to our natural growth? Is it to confirm to us our rights by the law of nature? No! it is to cover us with infamy. It is to chill the sap, and check the luxuriance of our imperial plant. It is to deprive us of our natural equality with the rest of mankind, by 'establishing' every State as a part of the British empire.' In short, your Excellencies invite men of common sense, to exchange an independent station for a servile and dangerous dependence! But, when we recollect that the King of Great Britain has, from the throne, declared his 'firm and steadfast resolutions to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair the supreme authority of that legislature over all the dominions of his crown:' that his hirelings in Parliament and tools in office, abhorred by the English nation, have echoed the sentiment; and that America, for ten years, has experienced that king's total want of candor, humanity, and justice-it is, I confess, a matter of wonder, that your Excellencies can submit to appear so lost to decency as to hold out subjection as the only condition of peace; and that you could condescend to sully your personal honor, by inviting us to trust a government in which you are conscious we cannot in the nature of things place any confidence—a government that you are sensible has been, now is, and ever must be jealous of our prosperity and natural growth-a government that you know is absolutely abandoned to corruption! Take it not amiss, if I hint to your Excellencies, that your very appearing in support of such a proposal, furnishes cause to doubt even of your integrity; and to reject your allurements, least they decoy us into slavery. The declaration says, 'the king is most graciously pleased to direct a revision of such of his royal instructions to his governors,' &c. 'and to concur in the revisal of all acts by which his Majesty's subjects may think themselves aggrieved.' But what of all this? Your Excellencies have not told the people, who 'think themselves aggrieved,' that they are to be a party in the revision. You have not even told them who are to be revisers. If you had, it would be nothing to the purpose; for you have not, and cannot tell them and engage that even any of the instructions and acts, being revised, shall be revoked, and repealed; particularly those by which the people 'may think themselves aggrieved.' But, if such are not to be repealed, why have you mentioned 'think themselves aggrieved?' If they are intended to be repealed, why did not your Excellencies come to the point at once and say so? It is evident your Excellencies are by your superiors precipitated into a dilemma. You have not been accustomed to dirty jobs, and plain dealing does not accord with your instructions; otherwise, in the latter case, I think you are men of too much sense and honor to have overlooked or suppressed so material a point of information. However, you say instructions and acts are to be revised: We see that you have laid an ambuscade for our liberties; the clause is carefully constructed without the least allusion to the revisers, or to the words redress, revoke, repeal. In short, it appears to be drawn up entirely on the plan of a declaration by King James the Second after his abdication, as confidentially explained by James's Secretary of State, the Earl of Melford, to Lord Dundee in Scotland. For Melford writes to Dundee, 'that notwithstanding of what was promised in the declaration, indemnity and indulgence, yet he had couched things so that the king would break them when he pleased; nor would he think himself obliged to stand to them. And your Excellencies have 'couched things so,' that more words upon this subject are unnecessary." The General Assembly of South Carolina elected Judge Drayton a delegate to the Continental Congress, early in 1778, and at the latter end of March, in that year, he repaired to York, Pennsylvania, where the Congress then held its sessions. Here he took an active part in the delibera tions against the conciliatory bills of the British Parliament, and other important measures. On the return of the Continental Congress to Philadelphia, after the evacuation of that city by the British, Judge Drayton published another pamphlet against the royal commissioners, full of ridicule and power. This is supposed to be the last work that emanated from his pen in favor of the American colonies. From this period until his death, Mr. Drayton's congressional duties were laborious and constant. He died at Philadelphia on the third of September, 1779. Among the manuscripts left behind him, was a complete history of the American Revolution, brought down to the close of the year 1778. This was published, together with a memoir of its author, by John Drayton, LL. D., in 1821. THE CHARGE TO THE GRAND JURY. At a Court of General Sessions, holden at | Charleston, South Carolina, for the district of Charleston, on the twenty-third day of April, 1776, the following charge to the Grand Jury was delivered by Chief Justice William Henry Drayton:* GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY: When, by evil machinations tending to nothing less than absolute tyranny, trials by jury have been discontinued, and juries, in discharge of their duty, have assembled, and as soon as met, as silently and arbitrarily dismissed without being impanelled, whereby, in contempt of magna charta, justice has been delayed and denied; it cannot but afford to every good citizen, the most sincere satisfaction, once more to see juries, as they now are, legally impanelled, to the end, that the laws may be duly administered-I do most heartily congratulate you upon so important an event. In this court, where silence has but too long presided, with a direct purpose to loosen the bands of government, that this country might be involved in anarchy and confusion, you are now met to regulate your verdicts, under a new constitution of government, independent of royal authority. A constitution which arose according to the great law of nature and of nations, and which was established in the late Congress, on the 26th of March last-a day that will be ever memorable in this country-a month, remarkable in our history for having given birth to the original constitution of our government in the year 1669; for being the era of the American calamities by the stamp act, in the of that act in the following year; and for the year 1765; for being the date of the repeal conclusion of the famous siege of Boston, when the American arms compelled General Howe, a general of the first reputation in the British service, with the largest, best disciplined, and best provided army in that service, supported by a formidable fleet, so precipitately to abandon the most impregnable fortifications in America, as that he left behind him a great part of the bedding, military stores, and cannon of the army. And for so many important events, is the month of March remarkable in our annals. But I proceed to lay before you the principal causes leading to the late revolution of our government-the law upon the point-and the benefits resulting from that happy and necessary establishment. The importance of the transaction deserves such a state--the occasion demands, and our future welfare requires it. To do this may take up some little time; but the subject is of the highest moment, and worthy of your particular attention. I will therefore confine my discourse to that great point; and, after charging you to attend to the due observance of the jury law, and the patrol and negro acts, forbearing to mention the other common duties of a grand jury, I will expound to you THE CONSTITUTION OF YOUR COUNTRY. The house of Brunswick was yet scarcely settled in the British throne, to which it had been called by a free people, when, in the year 1719, our ancestors in this country, finding that the government of the lords proprietors operated to their ruin, exercised the rights trans There were two other charges to the Grand Jury of Charleston, delivered by Judge Drayton; one on the fif-mitted to them by their forefathers of England; teenth of October, 1776, and another on the twenty-first of October, 1777. General Charles Lee took exceptions to some assertions contained in the latter, which bore severely upon his conduct at the battle of Monmouth, and sent a challenge to Judge Drayton, which he refused to accept; giving as reasons for so doing, "that although custom had sanctioned duelling with the military, it had not done so with the judieiary, and that such a conduct in a Chief Justice of South Carolina, as he was, would, in the eyes of the world, appear as a public outrage on government, society, and common decency."-Drayton's Memoirs. and casting off the proprietary authority, called upon the house of Brunswick to rule over them a house elevated to royal dominion, for no other purpose than to preserve to a people their unalienable rights. The king accepted the invitation, and thereby indisputably admitted the legality of that revolution. And in so doing, by his own act, he vested in those our forefathers, and us their posterity, a clear right to effect another revolution, if ever the govern ment of the house of Brunswick should operate | for I must observe to you that, in the year to the ruin of the people. So the excellent 1763, by such a proclamation, people were inRoman emperor, Trajan, delivered a sword to vited to settle in Canada, and were assured of Saburanus, his captain of the Prætorian guard, a legislative representation, the benefit of the with this admired sentence: "Receive this common law of England, and a free governsword, and use it to defend me if I govern well, ment. It is a misfortune to the public, that but against me, if I behave ill." this is not the only instance of the inefficacy of a royal proclamation. However, having given you one instance of a failure of royal faith in the northern extremity of this abused continent, let it suffice, that I direct your attention to the southern extremity; respecting which, the same particulars were in the same manner promised, but the deceived inhabitants of St. Augustine are left by their grand jury, in vain to complain and lament to the world, and yet scarcely permitted to exercise even that privilege distinguishing the miserable, that royal faith is not kept with them. With joyful acclamations our ancestors, by act of Assembly, passed on the 18th day of August, 1721, RECOGNIZED the British monarch: The virtues of the second George are still revered among us-HE was the father of his people: And it was with ecstasy we saw his grandson, George the Third, mount the throne possessed of the hearts of his subjects. But alas! almost with the commencement of his reign, his subjects felt causes to complain of government. The reign advanced-the grievances became more numerous and intolerablethe complaints more general and loud-the whole empire resounded with the cries of injured subjects! At length, grievances being unredressed and ever increasing; all patience being borne down; all hope destroyed; all confidence in royal government blasted!-Behold! the empire is rent from pole to pole!-perhaps| to continue asunder for ever. The catalogue of our oppressions, continental and local, is enormous. Of such oppressions, I will mention only some of the most weighty. Under color of law, the king and parliament of Great Britain have made the most arbitrary attempts to enslave America: By claiming a right To BIND THE COLONIES "IN ALL CASES WHATSOEVER;" By laying duties, at their mere will and pleasure, upon all the colonies; By suspending the legislature of New York; By rendering the American charters of no validity, having annulled the most material parts of the charter of the Massachusetts Bay; By divesting multitudes of the colonists of their property, without legal accusation or trial; By depriving whole colonies of the bounty of Providence on their own proper coasts, in order to coerce them by famine; By restricting the trade and commerce of America; By sending to, and continuing in America, in time of peace, an armed force, without and against the consent of the people; By granting impunity to a soldiery instigated to murder the Americans; By declaring, that the people of Massachusetts Bay are liable for offences, or pretended offences, done in that colony, to be sent to, and tried for the same in ENGLAND, or in any COLONY WHERE they cannot have the benefit of a jury of the ticinage; The proceedings which I have enumerated, either immediately or in their evident consequences, deeply affected all the colonies: ruin stared them in the face. They united their counsels, and laid their just complaints before the throne, praying a redress of grievances. But, to their astonishment, their dutiful petition for peace and safety was answered only by an actual commencement of war and military destruction! In the mean time, the British troops that had been peaceably received by the devoted inhabitants of Boston, as the troops of their sovereign, bound to protect them! fortified that town, to imprison the inhabitants, and to hold that capital against the people to whom it belonged! And the British rulers having determined to appeal from reason and justice, to violence and arms, a select body of those troops being in the night suddenly and privately marched from Boston-at Lexington, on the 19th day of April, 1775, they by surprise drew the sword of civil war, and plunged it into the breasts of the Americans! Against this horrid injustice the Almighty gave instant judgment: a handful of country militia, badly armed, suddenly collected, and unconnectedly and irregularly brought up to repel the attack, discomfited the regular bands of the tyranny; they retreated, and night saved them from total slaughter. Thus forced to take up arms in our own defence, America yet again most dutifully petitioned the king, that he would be pleased "to direct some mode, by which the united applications of his faithful colonists to the throne, in presence of their common councils, might be improved into a happy and permanent reconciliation; and that in the mean time, measures might be taken for preventing the further destruction of the lives of his majesty's subjects." —But it was in vain!-The petition on the part of millions, praying that the effusion of in-blood might be STAYED, was not thought worthy of an answer! The nefarious war continued. The ruins of Charlestown, Falmouth and Norfolk, towns not constructed for offence or defence, mark the humane progress of the royal By establishing in Quebec the Roman Catholic religion, and an arbitrary government, stead of the Protestant religion and a free government. And thus America saw it demonstrated, that no faith ought to be put in a royal proclamation; |