and as a king, he is bound, in honour, to defend from violations, even at the risk of his own life.

"These troops, upon their first arrival, took possession of our senate house, pointed their cannon against the judgment hall, and even continued them there whilst the supreme court of the province was actually sitting to decide upon the lives and fortunes of the king's subjects. Our streets nightly resounded with the noise of riot and debauchery; our peaceful citizens were hourly exposed to shameful insults, and often felt the effects of their violence and outrage. But this was not all; as though they thought it not enough to violate our civil rights, they endeavoured to deprive us of the enjoyment of our religious privileges; to vitiate our morals, and thereby render us deserving of destruction. Hence the rude din of arms which broke in upon your solemn devotions in your temples, on that day hallowed by heaven, and set apart by God himself for his peculiar worship. Hence, impious oaths and blasphemies so often tortured your unaccustomed

ear.

Hence, all the arts which idleness and luxury could invent, were used, to betray our youth of one sex into extravagance and effeminacy, and of the other to infamy and ruin; and did they not succeed but too well? did not a reverence for religion sensibly decay? did not our infants almost learn to lisp

out curses before they knew their horrid import? did not our youth forget they were Americans, and regardless of the admonitions of the wise and aged, copy with a servile imitation, the frivolity and vices of their tyrants? and must I be compelled to acknowledge, that even the noblest, fairest part of all the lower creation did not entirely escape the cursed snare?-or why have I seen an honest father clothed with shame; or why a virtuous mother drowned in tears?

"But I forbear, and come reluctantly to the transactions of that dismal night, when in such quick succession we felt the extremes of grief, astonishment, and rage; when heaven in anger, for a dreadful moment, suffered hell to take the reins; when Satan with his chosen band opened the sluices of New England's blood, and sacrilegiously polluted our land with the dead bodies of her guiltless sons.

"Let this sad tale of death never be told without a tear; let not the heaving bosom cease to burn with a manly indignation at the relation of it, through the long tracts of future time; let every parent tell the shameful story to his listening children, till tears of pity glisten in their eyes, or boiling passion shakes their tender frames.

"Dark and designing knaves, murderers, parricides! how dare you tread upon the earth, which has drunk

the blood of slaughtered innocence shed by your hands? how dare you breathe that air which wafted to the ear of heaven, the groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition?-but if the labouring earth doth not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet, hear it, and tremble! the eye of heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; and you, though screened from human observation, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose death you have procured, at the tremendous bar of God.

"But I gladly quit the theme of death-I would not dwell too long upon the horrid effects which have already followed from quartering regular troops in this town; let our misfortunes instruct posterity to guard against these evils. Standing armies are sometimes (I would by no means say generally, much less universally) composed of persons who have rendered themselves unfit to live in civil society; who are equally indifferent to the glory of a George or a Louis; who for the addition of one penny a day to their wages, would desert from the christian cross, and fight under the crescent of the Turkish Sultan; from such men as these, what has not a state to fear? with such as these, usurping Cæsar passed the Rubicon; with such as these he humbled

mighty Rome, and forced the mistress of the world to own a master in a traitor. These are the men whom sceptered robbers now employ to frustrate the designs of God, and render vain the bounties which his gracious hand pours indiscriminately upon his creatures."

By the sentiments of this latter paragraph, Hancock gave great offence to the British officers, who went in numbers, the succeeding year, to the old South Church, whilst an oration was repeated on the same occasion, by Doctor Warren, with the design of provoking a riot and taking revenge for the insult. A captain of the Royal Welsh fusileers standing for some time upon the pulpit'stairs, played with a handful

of bullets, and at length with a vehement and fierce exclamation endeavoured to alarm the meeting with the cry of fire!-but the town clerk, with a voice which is said to have rivalled the thunder, appeased the tumult; and the riotous officers being silenced and overawed, the solemnity was concluded without further molestation.

The remainder of this discourse comprehends a detail of the various acts of injury and oppression sustained for many years under the administration of Great Britain, in language very honorable to the talents and sentiments of the orator.

It is in some parts, perhaps, more declamatory, than the usual style of the revolution, which was commonly very foreign from the noisy eloquence of faction or the glitter of false magnificence. It derives, however, an interest, independent of the arts of composition, from the occasion upon which it was pronounced; in giving new lustre to the reputation of Mr. Hancock, which at this period was injuriously diminished.

Conscious of the fatal influence of his popularity to the designs of the British government, the governor of the province, had endeavoured by studied civilities or by direct overtures, made, it was said, at the instigation of lord North the prime minister, to procure his disaffection to the interests of the provincial party; and by the malevolence of rivals, or an insidious artifice of the enemy, joined to the natural proneness of mankind, to aggravate the imperfections of their fellow creatures, reports were soon spread detrimental to his fame.

The seductions of the governor, he was said to have resisted with too little asperity; to have violated, on some occasions, the non-importation agreement; and even to have solicited a contract for supplying the British army with provisions. These imputations were founded upon no external evidence, but were eirculated with such sedulous malignity, and at a