From Boston Gazette, March 14, 1768.

"MESSRS. EDES & GILL,

"Please insert the following:

"With pleasure I hear the general voice of this people in favor of freedom; and it gives me solid satisfaction to find all orders of unplaced, independent men, firmly determined, as far as in them lies, to support their own rights and the liberty of the press. The honorable House of Representatives have showed themselves resolute in the cause of justice. The Grand Jurors have convinced us that no influence is able to overcome their attachment to their country, and our free constitution. They deserve honor. But this is one of those cases in which, by doing as they have done, they really merit praise; yet the path was so plain, that to have done otherwise would have rendered them indeed!

"While this people know their true interest, they will be able to distinguish their friends from their enemies; and, with uniform courage, will defend from tyrannic violence all those who generously offer themselves volunteers in the cause of truth and humanity. But if ever a mistaken complaisance leads them to sacrifice their privileges, or the well-meaning assertors of them, they will deserve bondage, and soon will find themselves in chains.

"Every society of men have a clear right to refute any unjust aspersions upon their characters, especially when they feel the ill effects of such aspersions; and, though they may not pursue the slanderer from motives of revenge, yet are obliged to detect him, that so he may be prevented from injuring them again. This province has been most barbarously traduced, and now groans under the weight of those misfortunes which have been thereby brought upon it. We have detected some of the authors; we will zealously endeavor to deprive them of the power of injuring us hereafter. We will strip the serpents of their stings, and consign to disgrace all those guileful betrayers of their country. There is but one way for men to avoid being set up as objects of general hate, which is

-

NOT TO DESERVE IT.

"A TRUE PATRIOT."

In the Diary of John Adams, it is stated that he was frequently solicited to attend the town-meetings, in 1768, after the British troops had arrived in Boston, and harangue there, which was constantly refused; and Dr. Warren the most frequently urged him to this, and

his reply to him always was, "That way madness lies." The symptoms of our great friend Otis, at that time, suggested to Warren a sufficient comment on those words, at which he always smiled, and said, "It was true."

Gen. Warren once said of John Adams, that he thought he was rather a cautious man, but he could not say he was ever a trimmer. When he spoke at all, he always spoke his sentiments.

Hutchinson remarks, in his history, under date of 1772, that "Mr. Adams had been pressed to pronounce the oration upon the Boston Massacre, but declined it; and Dr. Warren, whose popularity was increasing, undertook it. Though he gained no great applause for his oratorical abilities, yet the fervor, which is the most essential part of such compositions, could not fail of its effect upon the minds of the great concourse of people present." It was delivered in the Old

South Church. We will select a passage from this performance, with one remark of wonder and admiration,- that he could have the courage to express such opinions in the presence of a British governor, amid the glare of royal bayonets. Here is reasoning of greater value than splendid declamation:

"I would ask whether the members of the British House of Commons are the democracy of this province? If they are, they are either the people of this province, or are elected by the people of this province to represent them, and have therefore a constitutional right to originate a bill for taxing them. It is most certain they are neither, and therefore nothing done by them can be said to be done by the democratic branch of our constitution. I would next ask, whether the lords, who compose the aristocratic branch of the legislature, are peers of America? I never heard it was, even in these extraordinary times, so much as pretended; and if they are not, certainly no act of theirs can be said to be the act of the aristocratic branch of our constitution. The power of the monarchic branch, we with pleasure acknowledge, resides in the king, who may act either in person or by his representative; and I freely confess that I can see no reason why a proclamation for raising money in America, issued by the king's sole authority, would not be equally consistent with our own constitution, and therefore equally binding upon us, with the late acts of the British Parliament for taxing us, for it is plain, that, if there is any validity in those acts, it must arise altogether from the monarchical branch of the legislature. And I further think that it would be at least as equita

ble; for I do not conceive it to be of the least importance to us by whom our property is taken away, so long as it is taken without our consent. And I am very much at a loss to know by what figure of rhetoric the inhabitants of this province can be called free subjects, when they are obliged to obey implicitly such laws as are made for them by men three thousand miles off, whom they know not, and whom they never have empowered to act for them; or how they can be said to have property, when a body of men, over whom they have not the least control, and who are not in any way accountable to them, shall oblige them to deliver up any part or the whole of their substance, without even asking their consent: and yet, whoever pretends that the late acts of the British Parliament for taxing America ought to be deemed binding upon us, must admit at once that we are absolute slaves, and have no property of our own, - or else that we may be freemen, and at the same time under a necessity of obeying the arbitrary commands of those over whom we have no control or influence; and that we may have property of our own which is entirely at the disposal of another. Such gross absurdities, I believe, will not be relished in this enlightened age; and it can be no matter of wonder that the people quickly perceived and seriously complained of the inroads which these acts must unavoidably make upon their liberty, and of the hazard to which their whole property is by them exposed, - for, if they may be taxed without their consent, even in the smallest trifle, they may also, without their consent, be deprived of anything they possess, although never so valuable never so dear. Certainly it never entered the hearts of our ancestors, that, after so many dangers in this then desolate wilderness, their hard-earned property should be at the disposal of the British Parliament; and as it was soon found that this taxation could not be supported by reason and argument, it seemed necessary that one act of oppression should be enforced by another; and, therefore, contrary to our just rights as possessing or, at least, having a just title to possess all the liberties and immunities of British subjects, a standing army was established among us in a time of peace, and evidently for the purpose of effecting that which it was one principal design of the founders of the constitution to prevent, when they declared a standing army, in a time of peace, to be against law, namely, for the enforcement of obedience to acts which, upon fair examination, appeared to be unjust and unconstitutional."

On the evening after the delivery of this effective oration, a lantern

of transparent paintings was exhibited on the balcony at Mrs. Clapham's, in King-street, well drawn by an ingenious young artist, representing in front the melancholy scene which occurred near that spot, over which was inscribed, "The Fatal Effects of a Standing Army in a Free City." At the east end was a representation of a monument, inscribed to the memory of those who were killed, with their names, etc.; at the west end was the figure of America, sitting in a mourning posture, and looking down on the spectators, with this label, "Behold my sons!" At a quarter after nine, the painting was taken in, and the bells tolled from that time until ten o'clock.

On the 21st of November, 1774, Gen. Warren addressed a highly patriotic letter to Josiah Quincy, from which we select this remarkable passage:

"It is the united voice of America to preserve their freedom, or lose their lives in defence of it. Their resolutions are not the effects of inconsiderate rashness, but the sound result of sober inquiry and deliberation. I am convinced that the true spirit of liberty was never 80 universally diffused through all ranks and orders of people, in any country on the face of the earth, as it now is through all North America."

When Warren pronounced his second oration on the Massacre, March 5, 1775, at the Old South Church, the Boston papers of the day merely stated that it was an elegant and spirited performance. The pulpit stairs and the pulpit itself were occupied by officers and soldiers of the garrison, who were doubtless stationed there to overawe the orator, and perhaps prevent him by force from proceeding. Warren, to avoid interruption and confusion, entered from the rear by the pulpit window; and, unmoved by the hostile military array that surrounded him and pressed upon his person, delivered the bold and thrilling oration, which was published, in which he said: "If pacific measures are ineffectual, and it appears that the only way to safety is through fields of blood, I know you will not turn your faces from your foes, but will, undauntedly, press forward, until tyranny is trodden under foot, and you have fixed your adored goddess Liberty fast by Brunswick's side, on the American throne." The editor of this work has seen the original manuscript, which is in the care of Dr. John C. Warren, his nephew, and is written on white English laid folio post, in a handsome round hand, with but few interlineations, and is in a black paper cover. We know no relic, of ancient or modern date, tending to

inspire more thrilling sensations of veneration, than this fervent defence of freedom. The Rev. Dr. Homer, late of Newton, who was present at its delivery, states there was at least one silent, but not wholly insignificant, demonstration of feeling from the military. While the oration was in progress, a captain of the Royal Welsh Fusileers, who was seated on the pulpit stairs, held up one of his hands in view of Warren, with several pistol bullets on the open palm, and, with a vehement and fierce exclamation, endeavored to alarm the audience with the cry of fire. Warren observed the action, and, without discontinuing his discourse, dropped a white handkerchief upon the officer's hand; and William Cooper, the town-clerk, with a voice of thunder, appeased the tumult, which, being silenced, the exercises were concluded without much further disturbance.

We will now revert to the abusive statement of the royalists, regarding this celebration, published in Rivington's New York Gazetteer, March 16, 1775: "On Monday, the 5th instant, the Old South meeting-house being crowded with mobility and fame, the selectmen, with Adams, Church and Hancock, Cooper and others, assembled in the pulpit, which was covered with black; and we all sat gaping at one another, above an hour, expecting! At last, a single horse chair stopped at the apothecary's, opposite the meeting, from which descended the orator (Warren) of the day; and, entering the shop, was followed by a servant with a bundle, in which were the Ciceronian toga, etc.

"Having robed himself, he proceeded across the street to the meeting, and, being received into the pulpit, he was announced by one of his fraternity to be the person appointed to declaim on the occasion. He then put himself into a Demosthenian posture, with a white handkerchief in his right hand, and his left in his breeches,- began and ended without action. He was applauded by the mob, but groaned at by people of understanding. One of the pulpiteers (Adams) then got up and proposed the nomination of another to speak next year on the bloody massacre,the first time that expression was made to the audience,when some officers cried, O fie, fie! The gallerians, apprehending fire, bounded out of the windows, and swarmed down the gutters, like rats, into the street. The 43d regiment, returning accidentally from exercise, with drums beating, threw the whole body into the greatest consternation. There were neither pageantry, exhibitions, processions, or bells tolling, as usual, but the night was remarked for being the quietest these many months past."