reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why then should we defer the Declaration ? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life, and his own honour? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance ? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of parliament, Boston port-bill and all? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honour to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here, who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces, raised or to be raised, for defence of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver, in the support I give him. The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Independence That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of independence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct towards us has been a course of injustice and oppression, Her pride will be less wounded, by submitting to that course of things which now predestinates our independence, than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious subjects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune; the latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace Why then, why then, sir, do we not, as soon as possible, change this from a civil to a national war? And, since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory? "If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care not how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of these colonies, and I know that resistance to British aggression is deep and settled in their hearts, and cannot be eradicated. Every colony, indeed, has expressed its willingness to follow, if we but take the lead. Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for chartered immunities, held under a British king, set before them the glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life. Read this Declaration at the head of the army; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honour. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it, who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support. "Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die, colonists; die, slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously, and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But, while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country. "But, whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honour it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off, as I begun, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment-independence now; and INDEPENDENCE FOREVER!" Description of the Speedwell Mine in England.— We entered a wooden door, placed in the side of a hilland descended one hundred and six stone steps, laid like those of a set of cellar stairs. The passage was regularly arched with brick, and was in all respects convenient. Having reached the bottom of the steps, we found a handsome vaulted passage cut through solid limestone. The light of our candles discovered that it extended horizontally into the mountain, and its floor was covered with an unruffled expanse of water, four feet deep. The entrance of this passage was perfectly similar in form to the mouth of a common oven, only it was much larger. Its breadth, by my estimation, was about five feet at the water's surface, and its height four or five feet, reckoning from the same place. On this unexpected, and to me, at that moment, incomprehensible canal, we found launched a large, clean and convenient boat. We embarked, and pulled ourselves along, by taking hold of wooden pegs, fixed for that purpose in the walls. Our progress was through a passage wholly artificial, it having been all blasted and hewn out of the solid rock. You will readily believe that this adventure was a delightful recreation. I never felt more forcibly the power of contrast. Instead of crawling through a narrow, dirty passage, we were now pleasantly embarked, and were pushing along into I knew not what solitary regions of this rude earth, over an expanse as serene as summer seas. We had not the odours nor the silken sails of Cleopatra's barge, but we excelled her in melody of sound, and distinctness of echo; for, when, in the gayety of my spirits, I began to sing, the boatman soon gave me to understand that no one should sing in his mountain, without his permission ; and, before I had uttered three notes, he broke forth in such a strain, that I was contented to listen, and yield the palm without a contest. His voice, which was strong, clear and melodious, made all those silent regions ring; the long, vaulted passage augmented the effect; echo answered with great distinctness, and had the genii of the mountain been there, they would doubtless have taken passage with us, and hearken ed to the song. In the mean time we began to hear the sound of a distant water-fall, which grew louder and louder, as we advanced under the mountain, till it increased to such a roaring noise that the boatman could no longer be heard. In this manner we went on, a quarter of a mile, till we arrived in a vast cavern formed there by nature. The miners, as they were blasting the rocks, at the time when they were forming the vaulted passage, accidentally opened their way into this cavern. Here I discovered how the canal was supplied with water;-I found that it communicated with a river running through the cavern at right angles with the arched passage, and falling down a precipice twenty-five feet into a dark abyss. After crossing the river, the arched way is continued a quarter of a mile farther, on the other side, making in the whole half a mile from the entrance. The end of the arch is six hundred feet below the summit of the mountain. When it is considered that all this was effected by mere dint of hewing and blasting, it must be pronounced a stupendous performance. It took eleven years of constant labour to effect it. In the mean time the fortune of the adventurer was consumed, without any discovery of ore, except a very little lead, and, to this day, this great work remains only a wonderful monument of human labour and perseverance. During the whole period of five years that they continued this work, after they crossed the cavern, they threw the rubbish into the abyss, and it has not sensibly filled it up. They have contrived to increase the effect of the cataract by fixing a gate along the ledge of rocks over which the river falls. This gate is raised by a lever, and then the whole mass of water in the vaulted passage, as well as that in the river, presses forward towards the cataract. I ascended a ladder made by pieces of timber fixed in the sides of the cavern, and, with the aid of a candle elevated on a pole, I could discover no top; my guide assured me that none had been found, although they had ascended very high. This cavern is, without exception, the most grand and solemn place that I have ever seen. When you view me as in the centre of a mountain, in the midst of a void, where the regularity of the walls looks like some vast rotunda; when you think of a river as flowing across the bottom of this cavern, and falling abruptly into a profound abyss, with the stunning noise of a cataract; when you imagine, that, by the light of a fire-work of gun-powder, played off on purpose to render this darkness visible, the foam of the cataract is illuminated even down to the surface of the water in the abyss, and the rays emitted by the livid blaze of this preparation are reflected along the dripping walls of the cavern till they are lost in the darker regions above, you will not wonder that such a scene should seize on my |