A DISCOURSE, DELIVERED IN THE NORTH DUTCH CHURCH, IN THE CITY OF ALBANY, OCCASIONED BY THE EVER TO BE LAMENTED DEATH OF General Mexander Hamilton. JULY 29, 1804. BY ELIPHALET NOTT, A. M. PASTOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN SAID CITY: DISCOURSE. II. SAMUEL, I, 19. HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN ! THE occasion explains the choice of my subject. A subject on which I enter in obedience to your request. You have assembled to express your elegiac sorrows, and sad and solemn weeds cover you. Before such an audience, and on such an occasion, I enter on the duty assigned me with trembling. Do not mistake my meaning. I tremble indeed---not, however, through fear of failing to merit your applause; for what have I to do with that when addressing the dying and treading on the ashes of the dead---Not through fear of failing justly to pourtray the character of that great man who is at once the theme of my encomium and regret. He needs not eulogy.-His work is finished, and death has removed him beyond my censure, and I would fondly hope, through grace, above my praise, You will ask then, why I tremble? I tremble to think that I am called to attack from this place a crime, the very idea of which almost freezes one with horror-a crime too which exists among the polite and polished orders of society, and which is accompanied with every aggravation; committed with cool deliberation-and openly in the face of day! But I have a duty to perform. And difficult and awful as that duty is, I will not shrink from it. Would to God my talents were adequate to the occasion. But such as they are, I devoutly proffer them to unfold the nature and counteract the influence of that barbarous custom, which, like a resistless torrent, is undermining the foundations of civil government-breaking down the barriers of social happiness, and sweeping away virtue, talents and domestic felicity in its desolating course. Another and an illustrious character-a father-a general a statesman-the very man who stood on an eminence and without a rival among sages and heroes, the future hope of his country in dangerthis man, yielding to the influence of a custom, which deserves our eternal reprobation, has been brought to an untimely end. That the deaths of great and useful men should be particularly noticed is equally the dictate of réason and revelation. The tears of Israel flow . ed at the decease of good JOSIAH, and to his memory the funeral women chanted the solemn, dirge. But neither examples nor arguments are necessary to wake the sympathies of a grateful people on such occasions. The death of public benefac-. tors surcharges the heart and it spontaneously dis burdens itself by a flow of sorrows. Such was the death of WASHINGTON, to embalm whose memory, and perpetuate whose deathles fame, we lent our feeble, but unnecessary ser vices. Such also, and more peculiarly so, has been the death of HAMILTON. The tidings of the former moved us-mournfully moved us-and we wept. The account of the latter chilled our hopes and curdled our blood. The former died in a good old age; the latter was cut off in the midst of his usefulness. The former was a customary providence: we saw in it, if I may speak so, the finger of GoD and rested in his sovereignty. The latter is not attended with this soothing cir cumstance. The fall of HAMILTON owes its existence to mad deliberation, and is marked by violence. The time, the place, the circumstances, are arranged with barbarous coolness. The instrument of death is levelled in day, light, and with well directed skill pointed at his heart. Alas! the eyent has |