tions upon principle, which are at the bottom of our divisions, there was no more concealment or disguise in his lips than hesitation or wavering in his mind. So far was he from courting the prejudices or compromising with the claims of faction, that he published the History of the Insurrection in the commonwealth, at a time when the passions which had produced them were still rancorous and flourishing; and although nothing contributed more than that work to consign the rebellion it recorded to infamy, none of its numerous abettors ever raised a reclamation against the veracity of the history, or the worth of the historian."

In Democracy Unveiled, canto 3, on Mobocracy, by Christopher Caustic, appears a happy allusion to George Richards Minot, as follows:

The nature and operation of the causes which led to the rebellion in Massachusetts, says Caustic, in a note to Mobocracy, are explained in a lucid and masterly manner, in the history of George Richards Minot, the style of which might rank its author as the Sallust of America. According to that writer, the commonwealth of Massachusetts was in debt upwards of £1,350,000 private State debt, exclusive of the federal debt, which amounted to one million and a half of the same money. And, in addition to that, every town was embarrassed by advances they had made to comply with repeated requisitions for men and supplies to support the army, and which had been done upon their own credit. The people, Minot informs us, had been laudably employed, during the nine years in which this debt had been accumulating, in the defence of their liberties; but though their contest had instructed them in the nobler science of mankind, yet it gave them no proportionable insight into the mazes of finance. Their honest prejudices were averse to duties

of impost and excise, which were at that time supposed to be anti-republican by many judicious and influential characters. The consequences of the public debt did not at first appear among the citizens at large. The bulk of mankind are too much engaged in private concerns to anticipate the operation of national causes. The men of landed interest soon began to speak plainly against trade, as the source of luxury, and the cause of losing the circulating medium. Commercial men, on the other hand, defended themselves by insisting that the fault was only in the regulations which the trade happened to be under. Minot then proceeds to point out other causes which contributed to lead the people astray; and his history exhibits abundant proof that the people at large are not always correct judges of what political measures may best subserve their own prosperity.

"To paint the ills which power attend,

Our men of mind their talents lend;
But overlook the great propriety

Of power to guarantee society."

The following effusion was addressed to the Hon. George Richards Minot, when he was preparing the History of Massachusetts:

"Let jarring spirits turn the leaf,

And Coke and Littleton explore ;
Pleased with the logic of a brief,
And wise with metaphysic lore..
Let others on the laws decide,

And on the Norman records grope;
Lay thou the wrangling bar aside,
And give thy genius ampler scope.
Thy equal mind, on truth intent,

To paltry strife must not descend;
Another task for thee is meant,
Thy country's genius to defend.
What though that country's tardy voice
Nor urge thy labor nor reward?
The historic Muse approves the choice,
And all the wise and good applaud.
Ere laurelled science twine the wreath,
The bud of genius must unfold;
Our hardy sires, the snow beneath,
Grew strong, unmindful of the cold.
Mark'st thou yon river's peopled shore,
Its wheat-crowned hills, its bleating meads,
Taught through delicious banks to pour,

Where not a stone its course impedes?

Mark'st thou, too, the industrious sires

Who cleared the current, crowned the hills? What love and gratitude inspires

One sweet memorial of thy skill?
Yet more than if the castle told

Some wily victor ravaged here,
Your sires to vassalage he sold,
Or scourged, the pyramid to rear.'
For where no crowning castles found,
No despotism has been known;
The honest peasant reaps the ground
By free-born fathers tamed and sown.
Short is the tale of tyrant power, -
Easy the story of its reign, -
Whose march was destined to devour,
Whose glory, to recount the slain.
But the slow progress of a tribe
By nature's energies alone
Cool reason only can describe,

Ere the first principles have flown.
Yet, lo! with careless ease we sleep,
While rapid sweeps unstable time
Disgorgeless to oblivion's deep,

The records of a nation's prime.
While to hoar winter's snowy wells,
Ridged by eternal frost and hail,
When spring the laughing current swells,
And cheers, swift Merrimac, thy vale;
Urged as the vernal streams descend,

Exciting wonder as they flow,

Some ardent minds their source ascend,

And meet the untravelled realms of snow

Shall, from a country's wasting page, Which moth and rust and reason maim,

Ere darkened by a crowding age,

None snatch the unmutilated name?

Yes, ere the fabled tale is wrought,
While yet the features are imprest,
Shall thy discriminating thought
Portray the Pilgrims of the West."

THOMAS WELSH, M. D.

MARCH 5, 1783. ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE.

THOMAS WELSH was born at Charlestown, June 1, 1754, and married Mary Kent, of that town. He was an army-surgeon at Lexington and Bunker Hill. He was in attendance at the latter battle, principally at a house under the western side of the hill, in company with Lieut. Col. Brickett, a physician, who came off with the first of the wounded, and of whom Gen. Warren obtained his arms for the battle. Dr. Welsh was afterwards near Winter Hill, by which route the troops who went to Cambridge retreated. Dr. Welsh and Samuel Blodgett assisted in arresting the retreat of the New Hampshire troops. On the morning of the Battle of Lexington, Dr. Warren, at about ten o'clock, rode on horseback through Charlestown, says Frothingham. He had received, by express, intelligence of the events of the morning, and told the citizens of Charlestown that the news of the firing was correct. Among others, he met Dr. Welsh, who said, "Well, they are gone out." "Yes," replied the doctor, "and we will be up with them before night."

Dr. Welsh, who was on Prospect Hill when the British were passing from Lexington, saw Col. Pickering's regiment on the top of Winter Hill, near the front of Mr. Adams' house, the enemy being very near in Charlestown road. Washington wrote of this period: "If the retreat had not been as precipitate as it was from Lexington, —and God knows it could not well have been more so, the ministerial troops must have surrendered, or been totally cut off; for they had not arrived in Charlestown (under cover of their ships) half an hour, before a powerful body of men from Marblehead and Salem were at their heels, and must, if they had happened to be up one hour sooner, inevitably have intercepted their retreat from Charlestown." Dr. Welsh was surgeon at Castle Island, 1799. He was the hospital physician at Rainsford's Island for many years; was member of the Boston Board of Health, and vice-president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, in 1814; was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Welsh was a decided Whig of the Revolution, an amiable, social, and estimable citizen, and died at Boston, February, 1831.

The patriotic Dr. Welsh, the last of the orators at the Old Brick, on the eventful Boston Massacre, thus remarks in the peroration: "When we consider our own prosperous condition, and view the state of that nation of which we were once a part, we even weep over our enemy, when we reflect that she was once great; that her navies rode formidable upon the ocean; that her commerce was extended to every harbor of the globe; that her name was revered wherever it was known; that the wealth of nations was deposited in her island; and that America was her friend. But, by means of standing armies, an immense continent is separated from her kingdom. Near eight full years have now rolled away since America has been cast off from the bosom and embraces of her pretended parent, and has set up her own name among the empires. The assertions of so young a country were at first beheld with dubious expectation; and the world were ready to stamp the name of rashness, or enterprise, according to the event. But a manly and fortunate beginning soon insured the most generous assistance. The renowned and the ancient Gauls came early to the combat, -wise in council, mighty in battle! Then with new fury raged the storm of war! The seas were crimsoned with the richest blood of nations! America's chosen legions waded to freedom through rivers dyed with the mingled blood of her enemies and her citizens,— through fields of carnage, and the gates of death!

"At length, independence is ours!--the halcyon day appears! Lo! from the east I see the harbinger, and from the train 't is peace herself, and, as attendants, all the gentle arts of life. Commerce displays her snow-white navies, fraught with the wealth of kingdoms; Plenty, from her copious horn, pours forth her richest gifts. Heaven commands! The east and the west give up, and the north keeps not back. All nations meet, and beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and resolve to learn war no more. Henceforth shall the American wilderness blossom as the rose, and every man shall sit under his fig-tree, and none shall make him afraid."