But, all these instances are of her fellow-men of merely co-equal, perhaps unknown descent and blood; co-existing from all time with herself, and making up, only accidentally, a part of her dominion. We ought to have been spared. The otherwise undistinguishing rigor of this outstretched sceptre might still have spared us. We were descended from her own loins: bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh; not so much a part of her empire as a part of herself-her very self. Towards her own it might have been expected she would relent. When she invaded our homes, she saw her own countenance, heard her own voice, beheld her own altars! Where was then that pure spirit which she now would tell us sustains her amidst self-sacrifices, in her generous contest for the liberties of other nations? If it flowed in her nature, here it might have delighted to beam out; here was space for its saving love: the true mother chastens, not destroys the child: but Britain, when she struck at us, struck at her own image, struck too at the immortal principles which her Lockes, her Miltons, and her Sidneys taught, and the fell blow severed us forever, as a kindred nation! The crime is purely her own; and upon her, not us, be its consequences and its stain. In looking at Britain, with eyes less prepossessed than we are apt to have from the circumstance of our ancient connexion with her, we should see, indeed, her common lot of excellence, on which to found esteem; but it would lift the covering from deformities which may well startle and repel. A harshness of individual character, in the general view of it, which is perceived and acknowledged by all Europe; a spirit of unbecoming censure, as regards all customs and institutions not their own; a ferocity in some of their characteristics of national manners, pervading their very pastimes, which no other modern people are endued with the blunted sensibility to bear: a universally self-assumed superiority, not innocently manifesting itself in speculative sentiments among themselves,

but unamiably indulged when with foreigners of whatever description in their own country, or when they themselves are the temporary sojourners in a foreign country; a code of criminal law that forgets to feel for human frailty, that sports with human misfortune, that has shed more blood in deliberate judicial severity for two centuries past-constantly increasing too in its sanguinary hue-than has ever been sanctioned by the jurisprudence of any ancient or modern nation, civilized and refined like herself; the merciless whippings in her army, peculiar to herself alone; the conspicuous commission and freest acknowledgment of vice in her upper classes; the overweening distinctions shown to opulence and birth, so destructive of a sound moral sentiment in the nation, so baffling to virtue. These are some of the traits that rise up to a contemplation of the inhabitants of this isle, and are adverted to, with an admission of qualities that may spring up as the correlatives of some of them, under the remark of our being prone to overlook the vicious ingredients, while we so readily praise the good that belongs to her.

How should it fall out, that this nation, more than any other that is ambitious and warlike, should be free from the dispositions that lead to injustice, violence and plunder; and what rules of prudence should check our watchfulness or allay our fears, in regard to the plans her conduct is the best illustration of her having so steadily meditated towards us? Why not be girded as regards her attacks, wary as regards her intrigues, alarmed as regards her habit of devastation and long indulged appetite of blood? Look at the marine of Britain, its vast, its tremendous extent! What potentate upon the earth wields a power that is to be compared with it? What What potentate upon the earth can move an apparatus of destruction so without rival, so little liable to any counteraction? The world, in no age, has seen its equal. It marks a new era in the history of human force: an instrument of

power and of ambition, with no limits to its rapid and hideous workings but the waters and the winds. Why should she impiously suppose the ocean to be her own element? Why should she claim the right to give law to it, any more than the eagle the exclusive right to fly in the air? If ever there was a power formidable to the liberties of other states, particularly those afar off, is it not this? If ever there was a power which other states should feel warned to behold with fearful jealousy, and anxious to see broken up, is it not this? The opinion inculcated by her own interested politicians and journalists, that such a force is designed to be employed only to mediate for the rights of other nations, can hold no sway before the unshackled reflections of a dispassionate mind. All experience, all knowledge of man, explode the supposition. So, more particularly, does the very growth and history of this extraordinary power itself. It has swelled to its gigantic size, not through any concurrence of fortuitous or temporary causes, but through long continued and the most systematic national views. It was in the time of her early Edwards, that she first began arrogantly to exact a ceremonious obeisance from the flags of other nations, since which, the entire spirit of her navigation laws, her commercial usages, her treaties, have steadily looked to the establishment of an overruling marine. This is the theme from which her poets insult the world by singing," Britannia's is the sea, and not a flag but by permission waves." It is the great instrument of annoyance in the hands of her ministers, with which they threaten, or which they wield, to confirm allies, to alarm foes, to make other states tributary to their manufacturing, their commercial or their warlike schemes. Even the multitude in their streets, their boys, the halt and the blind, learn it in the ballads, and at every carousal," Rule Britannia" is the loud acclamation, the triumphant echo of the scene! The end so long pursued with a constant view to unlimited

empire throughout that element which covers two thirds of the globe, has been obtained, and Britain finds herself, at this era, the dreaded mistress of the seas! With what rapacious sway she has begun to put forth this arm of her supremacy, we, fellow-citizens, have experienced, while the flames of Copenhagen have lighted it up to Europe in characters of a more awful glare.

When the late Colonel Henry Laurens left England, in the year 1774, he had previously waited on the Earl of Hillsborough, in order to converse with him on American affairs. In the course of conversation Colonel Laurens said, the duty of three pence a pound on tea, and all the other taxes, were not worth the expense of a war. “You mistake the cause of our controversy with your country," said his lordship: "You spread too much canvass upon the ocean; do you think we will let you go on with your navigation, and your forty thousand seamen ?"* The same hostile spirit to our growing commerce has actuated every minister, and every privy council, and every parliament of Great Britain since that time; and it is the spirit she manifests towards other nations. The recent declarations, made upon the floor of the House of Commons in debate upon the orders in council, add a new corroboration to the proofs that this monopolizing spirit has been one of the steady maxims designed to secure and uphold her absolute dominion upon the waves. But to that Being who made the waters and the winds for the common use of his creatures, do we owe it never to forego our equal claim to their immunities.

In entering upon a war it is our chief consolation— that will give dignity to the contest and confidence to our hearts; to know that before God and before the world, our cause is just. To dilate on this head, although so fruitful, would swell to undue limits this ad

* The writer derived this anecdote through one of our principal statesmen who has been abroad,

*

dress, and betray a forgetfulness of the informed and anticipating understandings of this assembly. Our provocation consists of multiplied wrongs, of the most numerous injuries, of the most aggravated insults. They have been fully placed before the world in the recent authentic declarations of our government. In these declarations will be read the solemn justification of what we have done, and our posterity will cling to them as a manly, yet pure and unblemished portion of their inheritance. In the language of one of them flowing from the highest and the purest source, founded on authentic history, and which exhibits a state paper alike distinguished by its profound reasoning, its elevated justice, and its impressive dignity, we have "beheld, in fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of war against the United States; and, on the side of the United States, a state of peace towards Great Britain." It is the same pen, too, which has been officially employed for so many years in combatting our wrongs and striving for their pacific redress, with a constant and sublime adherence to the maxims of universal equity as well as of public law, which now solemnly declares our actual situation. Can Americans then hesitate what part to act? Whither would have fled the remembrance of their character and deeds? Whither soon would flee their rights, their liberties? Where would be the spirits, where the courage, of their slain fathers? Snatched and gone from ignoble sons! What should we answer to the children we leave behind, who will take their praise or their reproach, from the conduct of their sires-and those sires republicans! Who, rejecting from the train of their succession the perishing honors of a riband or a badge, are more nobly inspired to transmit the unfading distinctions that spring from the resolute discharge of all the patriot's high duties! Why should we stay our arm against Britain while she wars upon us; are we

* Mr. Madison's-then President of the United States.