ordered to scale the walls of the new Jerusalem, they should not dare to decline the impious attempt.

"Were it not for this ridiculous faith in the omnipotence of the tyrant whom they serve, we must suppose them fools or madmen. Indeed, that very faith would justify the charge of extreme madness and folly against all mankind who had not been nurtured in this cradle of infatuation. Were it not for the indulgence that a generous mind will always show to the weakness and prejudices of the worst of men, many whom the chance of war has thrown into our hands must have felt the severity and contempt of a justly enraged people, while they, with all their vanity and ostentation, remain the unhurt objects of our pity.

"It is surely rather a subject of merry ridicule, than deserving of serious resentment, to see many of this kind of gentry affecting to deny the character of prisoners, and attributing that indulgence, which is the effect of unparalleled generosity, to the mean motive of fear; but we will let them know that they cannot provoke us even to justice in the line of punishment, and we leave them to their own consciences, and the impartial censures of surrounding nations, to make some returns for the unexampled cruelties that many of our friends have suffered from their barbarous hands,- in lieu of that severity which, however just, humanity shudders to inflict. But we cannot think it strange to find people, in the subordinate departments of life, influenced by such ridiculous notions, while their haughty masters seem to Jabor under the misfortune of the same infatuation."

Benjamin Hichborn was born at Boston, Feb. 24, 1746, graduated at Harvard College in 1772, was admitted to the bar July 27th of that year, and became an eminent barrister. He was ardent in the cause of the Revolution, and one of the most fearless, dauntless patriots. In 1775, a Tory wrote of him as a prisoner on board the Preston, and, as a young lawyer, standing a fair chance for the gallows. He was imprisoned on board of a ship of war in Boston harbor, and a note of his oration thus alludes to the fact:

Capt. Johnson and his crew, the prisoners in general at New York and Halifax, Mr. Lovell and many others in Boston, are instances sufficient to destroy the little credit the British ever had for humanity; and the sufferings of some to which I myself have been a witness, exposed to all the inconveniences and hazards of a languishing disease in confinement on ship-board, in view of the persons and habitations of their nearest friends, and a sympathizing parent turned over the side,

with reproaches for attempting to speak to his sick, suffering, dying child, must give the characters of the polite, sensible, humane Admiral Graves, and his nephew Sam, a stamp of infamy which the power of time can never wipe away."

When Mr. Hichborn took his degree at the college, his commencement part was in Latin: "An Crimen, non Republicæ noxium, Cognitioni humanæ subjici debeat?" He married Hannah Gardner, March 2, 1780, the widow of Benjamin Andrews, a hardware merchant, whom tradition relates he shot with a pistol at the dinner-table of her husband, stating he was not aware that the pistol was loaded with ball. To obviate the tendency of the imputation against him, we quote from the Boston Gazette of Jan. 11, 1779, the following relation of the unfortunate death of Benjamin Andrews, which occurred on the Saturday evening previous: "Sitting in his parlor, with his lady and a friend, he had been comparing an elegant pair of pistols, which he had bought the preceding day, with a pair which he had some time before, and which were supposed to be unloaded. Upon one of these Mr. Andrews observed some rust in a place left for the engraver to mark the owner's name upon. His friend undertook to rub it off. Having accomplished it, he was returning the pistol to Mr. Andrews, who was sitting in a chair at the table by the fireside. Unhappily, as he took it from his friend, Mr. Andrews grasped it in such a manner as brought his thumb upon the trigger, which happened to have no guard, and it instantly discharged its contents into his head, near his temple, and he expired in less than half an hour. It is remarkable that a few minutes before he had taken the screw-pins from both these pistols, and one of them almost to pieces; and had handled them without any caution, and in every direction against his own body, and those who were in the room with him." The verdict of the jury of inquest was, that Mr. Andrews came to his death by misfortune.

As colonel of the Cadets of Boston, he marched to Rhode Island in 1778. Mr. Hichborn was a representative of Boston, a democrat of the old school, and a warm advocate of Jefferson. Many famous lawyers read law in his office. He died at Dorchester, Sept. 15, 1817. A witty political poet of Boston, in 1795, thus alludes to Hichborn in a poem, "The Lyars," which, when published, excited furious riots:

"Sooner shall Vinal in his school remain,

Or Hewes, my pack-horse, common sense attain;
Sooner shall Morton's speeches seem too long,
Or Hichborn to lay a tax upon the tongue;

Sooner shall language 'scape the clam-like lip
Of Tommy Edwards, ere he drinks his flip;
Sooner shall Dexter use a word uncouth,
Than Dr. Jarvis ever speak the truth.”

JONATHAN WILLIAMS AUSTIN.

MARCH 5, 1778. ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE.

JONATHAN WILLIAMS AUSTIN was born at Boston, April 18, 1751. He entered the Latin School 1759, graduated at Harvard College 1769. The first English exercise at this college, it is said, on commencement-day, July, 1769, was a dialogue between Mr. Austin and William Tudor. He read law with John Adams at the same period.

Mr. Austin was the first witness examined in the trial of the British soldiers for the murder of the victims on the 5th of March, 1770. He is recorded as clerk to John Adams, Esq., and recognized one William McCauley, a prisoner at the bar. He related as follows: "On the evening of the 5th of March last, I heard the bells ring, and immediately went into King-street." In answer to the question how many people were present on his entrance there, he replied, "There might be twenty or thirty, I believe. I saw the sentry at the customhouse door, swinging his gun and bayonet. There were a parcel of men and boys round him. I desired them to come away, and not molest the sentry. Some of them came off, and went to the middle of the street. I then left them, and went up towards the main guard. Immediately a party came down. I walked by the side of them till I came to the sentry-box, at the custom-house. McCauley then got to the right of the sentry-box; he was then loading his piece. I was about four feet off. McCauley said, 'Damn you, stand off!' and pushed his bayonet at me. I did so. Immediately I heard the report of a gun. He came round the sentry-box, and stood close to it on the right. I stood inside the gutter, close by the box, which was three or four feet

from the corner of the custom-house." In answer to the question how many guns did you hear fired, Mr. Austin replied that there were five or six. Mr. Austin was admitted to Suffolk bar July 27, 1772. We cannot find that Mr. Austin was ever married; we infer, however, from an "Epitaph for Himself," as follows, that matrimony was a subject near his heart, but he was removed in early life:

"I had my failings, be the truth confest ;

And, reader, canst thou boast a blameless breast?

Nor hold me all defect; I had a mind

That wished all happiness to all mankind, -
That more than wished, the little in my power

I cheered the sorrowing, soothed the dying hour.
Yearned, though in vain, to save life's parting thread,
Which mourned the pious, more the vicious, dead.
Spare me one tear, and then, kind reader, go;

Live foe to none, and die without a foe.
Live, and, if possible, enlarge thy plan;

Not live alone, die, too, the friend of man.

And when our dust obeys the trumpet's call,

He 'll prove our friend who lived and died for all.”

He was an elegant writer, and an eloquent speaker. He was a member of the Middlesex Convention, in 1774, and chairman of the committee that prepared resolutions adopted by the convention. He was author of Poetical and Political Essays, and a colonel in the army of the Revolution. He died in a southern State, in 1779.

The patriotic oration of Mr. Austin, delivered at the Old Brick, burns warm with pure love of country, and we select one passage to the point: "It is standing armies in time of peace, and the consequences thence resulting, that we deprecate. Armies, in defence of our country unjustly invaded, are necessary, and in the highest sense justifiable. We, my friends, attacked by an arbitrary tyrant, under the sanction of a force the effects of which we have attempted to illustrate, have been obliged to make the last solemn appeal. And I cannot but feel a pleasing kind of transport, when I see America, undaunted by the many trying scenes that have attended her, still baffling the efforts of the most formidable power in Europe, and exhibiting an instance unknown in history. To see an army of veterans, who had fought and conquered in different quarters of the globe, headed by a general tutored in the field of war, illustrious by former victories, and flushed with repeated successes, threatening, with all the pomp of

expression, to spread havoc, desolation, and ruin, around him, — to see such a soldiery and such a general yielding to a hardy race of men, new to the field of war,-while, on the one hand, it exalts the character of the latter, convincingly proves the folly of those who, under pretence of having a body of troops bred to war and ever ready for action, adopt this dangerous system, in subversion of every principle of lawful government. Here, if, after having depictured scenes of so distressing nature, it may not appear too descending, I could not forbear smiling at the British general and his troops, who, not willing to reflect on their present humiliating condition, affect the air of arrogant superiority. But Americans have learnt them that men, fighting on the principles of freedom and honor, despise the examples that have been set them by an enemy; and, though in the field they can brave every danger in defence of those principles, to a vanquished enemy they know how to be generous, but that this is a generosity not weak and unmeaning, but founded on just sentiments, and if wantonly presumed upon, will never interfere with that national justice which ever ought, and lately has been, properly exerted."

WILLIAM TUDOR.

MARCH 5, 1779. ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE.

WILLIAM TUDOR was born at Boston, March 28, 1750, a son of Dea. John Tudor, of Rev. Dr. Lathrop's church, who records, in 1779, that "the sudden judgments of an earthquake, terrible storm, and fire, have all three done damage to the meeting-house, within his remembrance." The son entered the Latin School in 1758, graduated at Harvard College in 1769, studied law with John Adams, was admitted to Suffolk bar July 27, 1772, was an eminent counsellor, a colonel in the army of the Revolution, and Judge Advocate General from 1775 to 1778. He married Delia Jarvis, March 5, 1778. He was a member of the House and Senate, and in 1809-10 the Secretary of State.