1820, he was a Boston delegate to the convention on the revision of the State Constitution. He was distinguished for great energy of character, and dignity of manners. In stature he was tall and erect. He died at Boston, Nov. 1, 1831. Mr. Mason married Susanna, daughter of William Powell, April 13, 1779. Dr. John C. Warren married their daughter Susan in 1803, and Hon. David Sears married their daughter Miriam C. in 1809. An admirable portrait of Mr. Mason, by Gilbert Stuart, is in the family of Mr. Sears. THOMAS DAWES. MARCH 5, 1781. ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE. THOMAS DAWES was a son of Col. Thomas Dawes, an eminent architect, and patriot of the Revolution. He was born at Boston, July 8, 1758. He entered the Latin School in 1766, graduated at Harvard College in 1777, early entered the profession of law, and became an eminent counsellor. He married Margaret Greenleaf in 1781, and resided on the paternal estate in Purchase-street, a place famous in the Revolution for private caucuses. He ever evinced a lively imagination, and natural thirst for polite literature. His witticisms are proverbial, and his patriotic and literary poetic effusions were highly popular. Before he became forty years of age, he was appointed one of the associate justices of the Supreme Judicial Court of the State, which he filled until 1803, when he became judge of the Municipal Court for Boston until 1823. He was appointed judge of Probate for Suffolk county, which station he occupied until his decease, July 22, 1825. Judge Dawes was a delegate to the State Convention of 1820 for revising the constitution. He was of very small stature, being not five feet in height, but rotund and fleshy round the waist. His face was florid and small, with expressive eyes. His hair was long and gray. His utterance voice was soft and clear. He wore When it was announced that Thomas was of a striking lisp, and his small-clothes and buckled shoes. Dawes was appointed to the Supreme Court, Col. Hichborn, it is related, who was displeased, contemptuously said of him, "I could put him into my pocket." Upon being informed of this, Judge Dawes promptly remarked, with great dignity and good-nature, “If he did pocket me, he would have had more law in his pocket than he ever had in his head." On another occasion, standing among five other guests in a drawing-room, just before dinner was announced, all of whom were tall or stouter than himself,- Gen. Arnold Welles, Col. Roulstone, Maj. Benjamin Russell, and others,— one of them jocosely asked him how he felt, being so small, and surrounded as he was by so many large men; to whom he promptly replied, "Like a silver sixpenny piece among five copper cents, much less in size than any one, but of more intrinsic value than all of them together." When the liberty-pole was erected on the spot where the Liberty Tree once flourished, opposite Frog-lane, Judge Dawes wrote as follows: "Do we not see the darkened spring of 1770," said Judge Dawes in his oration at the Old Brick, "like the moon in a thick atmosphere, rising in blood, and ushered in by the figure of Britain plunging her poignard in the young bosom of America? O, our bleeding country! was it for this our hoary sires sought thee through all the elements, and having found thee sheltering away from the western wave, disconsolate, cheered thy sad face, and decked thee out like the garden of God? Time was when we could all affirm to this gloomy question,when we were ready to cry out that our fathers had done a vain thing. I mean upon that unnatural right which we now commemorate; when the fire of Brutus was on many a heart, when the strain of Gracchus was on many a tongue. 'Wretch that I am! - whither shall I retreat? whither shall I turn me?-to the capitol? The capitol swims in my brother's blood. To my family? There must I see a wretched, a mournful and afflicted mother.' Misery loves to brood over its own woes; and so peculiar were the woes of that night, so Let expressive the pictures of despair, so various the face of death, that not all the grand tragedies which have been since acted can crowd from our minds that era of the human passions, that preface to the general conflict that now rages. May we never forget to offer a sacrifice to the manes of our brethren who bled so early at the foot of Liberty. Hitherto we have nobly avenged their fall; but as ages cannot expunge the debt, their melancholy ghosts still rise at a stated season, and will forever wander in the night of this noted anniversary. us, then, be frequent pilgrims at their tombs. There let us profit of all our feelings; and, while the senses are struck deep with woe,' give wing to the imagination. Hark! even now, in the hollow wind, I hear the voice of the departed: 'O ye who listen to wisdom, and aspire to immortality, as ye have avenged our blood, thrice blessed! as ye still war against the mighty hunters of the earth, your names are recorded in heaven!' "Such are the suggestions of fancy; and, having given them their due scope, having described the memorable Fifth of March as a season of disaster,— it would be an impiety not to consider it in its other relation; for the rising honors of these States are distant issues, as it were, from the intricate though all-wise divinity which presided upon that night. Strike that night out of time, and we quench the first ardor of a resentment which has been ever since increasing, and now accelerates the fall of tyranny. The provocations of that night must be numbered among the master springs which gave the first motion to a vast machinery, a noble and comprehensive system of national independence. The independence of America,' says the writer under the signature of Common Sense,'' should have been considered as dating its era from the first musket that was fired against her.' Be it so! but Massachusetts may certainly date many of its blessings from the Boston Massacre, a dark hour in itself, but from which a marvellous light has arisen. From that night, revolution became inevitable, and the occasion commenced of the present most beautiful form of government. We often read of the original contract, and of mankind, in the early ages, passing from a state of nature to immediate civilization. But what eye could penetrate through Gothic night and barbarous fable to that remote period? Such an eye, perhaps, was present, when the Deity conceived the universe, and fixed his compass upon the great deep. And yet the people of Massachusetts have reduced to practice the wonderful theory. A numerous people have convened in a state of nature, and, like our ideas of the patriarchs, have deputed a few fathers of the land to draw up for them a glorious covenant. It has been drawn. The people have signed it with rapture, and have thereby bartered among themselves an easy degree of obedience for the highest possible civil happiness. To render that covenant eternal, patriotism and political virtue must forever blaze, -must blaze at the present day with superlative lustre, being watched, from different motives, by the eyes of all mankind. Nor must that patriotism be contracted to a single commonwealth. A combination of the States is requisite to support them individually. 'Unite, or die,' is our indispensable motto." Mr. Robert Patterson presented a petition to the town of Boston, on this day, March 5, 1781, setting forth that he received a wound in the right arm, on the 5th of March, 1770, by a shot from Preston's party, whereby he has entirely lost the use of it; and that, since the death of Mr. Monk, he is the only one of the unhappy number, then badly wounded, that survives; and therefore praying the charity of the town; - "voted, that a collection be made, at the close of this meeting, for the unhappy sufferer." Boxes were placed at each door of the Old Brick Meeting-house, to receive the contributions; and also on the two years succeeding. We cannot resist the insertion of Judge Dawes' patriotic effusion, repeated to the editor from memory, by Thomas Somes, a merchant of Boston, and a nephew of the judge, one day in the street, when standing nearly opposite the Athenæum, and who died suddenly a few days after the recital. It was sung June 17, 1786, at the festival on the opening of Charlestown Bridge, after the announcement of this sentiment: "May this anniversary be forever marked with joy, as its birth was with glory." "Now let rich music sound, With rapture fill; Let the full trump of fame The everlasting name "Beneath his sky-wrapt brow How dear to Jove! Not more beloved were those To arms above! "Now scarce eleven short years "Then Charlestown's gilded spires Felt unrelenting fires, And sunk in night; But, phoenix-like, they 'll rise "Meandering to the deep, Of war no more. Famed as the Appian Way, The world's first bridge, to-day All nations shall convey From shore to shore. "On our blessed mountain's head Let joy's broad howl go round, When Judge Dawes was a delegate in the State Convention of 1820, he made several speeches. On one occasion he remarked, the constitution was adopted just after he left the law office of one of its principal founders, and he had an opportunity of witnessing the anxiety of those who raised this bulwark of our liberties. Of the spirit of amity which prevailed in the convention of 1788, he could speak with confidence. He was one of the twelve gentlemen chosen from Boston to that convention, nine of whom have gone to render their account, and he must soon follow. Those gentlemen were obliged to change their minds, as light beamed upon them on the various subjects dis |