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termined and anxious patriots of the middle and southern colonies were disposed to offer the same advice, and equally dreaded or distrusted that fierce vehemence which may, or not, have been politic, though the grand result of the general struggle was so fortunate. Josiah Quincy Esq. has introduced into his Memoir of that admirable personage his father, some letters confirmatory of the fact we have just intimated, and has premised these remarks:

"The following letters indicate, not only the general jealousies and fears which existed at the period in which they were written (1774), but also the particular apprehensions prevalent in some of the other colonies, in relation to the conduct of the inhabitants of Boston under the oppressions to which they were subjected. The best friends of American freedom were not without very natural fears, lest Massachusetts should be quickened into measures of open resistance, before the public opinion of the other colonies would justify them in uniting their fate with hers."

John Dickinson wrote to the elder Quincy, in June, 1774:

"As far as I have been able to collect the sense of the colonies, they are very unanimous in the measure you mention of a congress. Doubt not that every thing bears a most favourable aspect. Nothing can throw us into a pernicious confusion, but one colony's breaking the line of opposition by advancing too hastily before the rest. The one that dares to betray the common cause, by rushing forward contrary to the maxims of discipline established by common sense, and the experience of ages, will inevitably and utterly perish."

To this, Quincy answered in an earnest, and indeed, somewhat indignant strain of justification, which drew the subjoined excuse and explanation from Dickinson:

"As to your complaint against an expression of mine in a late letter, know, dear sir, I wrote in agonies of mind, for my brethren in Boston. I trembled lest something might have happened which I could not only forgive, but applaud, but which might have been eagerly and basely seized by others as a pretence for deserting them. This was the sense of men in Philadelphia the most devoted to them, and under this apprehension we agreed to make use of the strongest expressions."

Judge Johnson, in his Biography of General Greene, adverting to the history of the question of separation, proceeds to a relation, which is important for elucidating the state of that question in the patriotic province of South-Carolina, and which possesses additional interest from the trait of Gadsden:

"It was not to be expected, (says the Judge,) that on a subject so highly important, there is ever to be found a perfect unanimity. On this point there is the best reason for maintaining that there were two parties in South-Carolina, who enter tained very opposite views as to the measures of independence. The object of both was to have their grievances redressed; but one was willing yet to confide in the justice and magnanimity of the British government, and deprecated the idea of a separation. The other saw the impossibility of preserving the connexion of the two countries without perpetuating the present badges of dependence and inferiority, and was disposed to make use of passing events as the plausible pretexts, or present motives for resistance, but really with a view to absolute in. dependence, or a state approaching to a confederation. They were satisfied to continue in a state of firm connexion with Great Britain, if secure from every

exercise of royal or parliamentary authority that could humble or degrade the colonists.

There is sufficient evidence in existence to prove that Colonel Henry Laurens was of the first class, and that General Christopher Gadsden was of the last; and these two gentlemen had much influence in giving a turn and direction to opinion, in the commencement of the Revolution.

The following extract of a memorial, addressed by Colonel Laurens, when in the Tower, to the Speaker of the House of Commons, is taken from the New Annual Register for 1781, (Public Papers, 165.) The representation and prayer, &c. respectfully showeth, that your representer for many years at the peril of his life and fortune, evidently laboured to preserve and strengthen the ancient friendship between Great Britain and the colonies, and that in no instance he ever excited, on either side, the dissensions which separated them. That the commencement of the present war was the subject of great grief to him, inasmuch as he foresaw and foretold in letters now extant, the distresses which both countries experience at this day.'

General Gadsden, it is well known, and there are still living witnesses to prove it, always favoured the most decisive and energetic measures. He thought it a folly to temporise, and insisted that cordial reconciliation on honourable terms was impossible. When the news of the repeal of the Stamp Act arrived, and the whole community was in ecstacy at the event, he, on the contrary, received it with indignation. And privately convening a party of his friends beneath the celebrated Liberty-Tree, he there harangued them at considerable length on the folly of relaxing their opposition and vigilance, or indulging the fallacious hope that Great Britain would relinquish her designs or pretensions. He drew their attention to the preamble of the Act, and forcibly pressed upon them the absurdity of rejoicing at an act that still asserted and maintained the absolute dominion of Great Britain over them. And then reviewing all the chances of succeeding in a struggle to break the fetters whenever again imposed on them, he pressed them to prepare their minds for the event. The address was received with silent but profound devotion, and with linked hands the whole party pledged themselves to resist, a pledge that was faithfully redeemed when the hour of trial arrived. The author is in possession of the names of many who were present. It was from this event that the Liberty-Tree took its name. The first convention of South-Carolina held their meeting under it."

Having introduced the name of JOHN DICKINSON, we cannot refrain from paying a cursory tribute to one who stood, as an author and an orator, in the highest rank of the advocates of his country's rights, but who has been much less celebrated than his eminent coadjutors. His life has not been written; nor, indeed, is there extant concerning him any thing more than mere brief dictionary sketches, which do not record even the period or place of his birth. After having shone, from the commencement of the disputes with the British government, as one of the most able, alert, and fervid of its adversaries, and exerted himself coordinately and sympathetically with the Adamses, the Lees, and the Rutledges, in the first and the second continental congress, he took the invidious station of the chief speaker against the Declaration of Independence,-a circumstance which withdrew him, for a few years immediately subsequent, from the public councils, and has perhaps, affected the degree in which he would and should have been known and revered by the present generation of Americans. Yet, even at the moment when he so eloquently and earnestly resisted the measure, no one either in or out of

congress, doubted the firmness and warmth of his patriotism, the purity of his intentions, or his readiness to sacrifice himself and all his personal interests for the triumph of justice and freedom. The hope and the wish of reconciliation with the mother country, upon principles which would secure the privileges of the colonies and the prosperity of both, lingered in his breast longer than with his colleagues, and than was consistent with the course of events, and the relative dispositions of the parties: he did not believe the people to be quite ripe, either in sentiment or situation, for a complete and final rupture, and would therefore have deferred at least, that stern and conclusive phrase, Independence-irrevocabile verbum, which has been since sounded in other parts of this continent, quickening the colonial dead into genuine and honourable life, and gathering and organizing the dispersed and darkling communities of abject vassals, into nations sensible of their true force and destiny, and incapable, we trust, of a relapse. It was only the year before (July 6th, 1775), that Dickinson penned the famous "Declaration of the United Colonies of North America, setting forth the causes and necessity of their taking up arms," wherein he wrote for himself and them:

"We have counted the cost of the contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery; we most solemnly before God and the world DECLARE, that exerting the utmost energy of those powers which our benificent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves"—

but added, what the congress then sanctioned, and even the army re-echoed

"Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union, which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored."

The first elaborate effort of Dickinson against the new and ominous policy of the British cabinet, was his comprehensive and spirited pamphlet, printed at Philadelphia in 1765, with the title, The late Regulations respecting the British Colonies on the Continent of America, considered." When, in that year, he was deputed by the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, of which he was a member, to attend the first congress, held at NewYork, he prepared the draft of the bold and teeming Resolves of that congress. In 1766, he published a long and lofty address, on the same questions, to a committee of correspondence in Barbadoes. He next issued at Philadelphia, in 1767, his celebrated "Farmer's Letters to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies," a production that may be affirmed to have been more operative

in enlightening the American people in general, on their rights, and preparing their minds and hearts for inflexible self-defence, than the labours of any other single patriot. The Farmer's Letters were more practical, minute, and skilful in the style and strain, than the writings of Otis, Adams, or Quincy; they had a much wider circulation and influence, both in the colonies and Europe. In a short time, they passed through many editions, in several places. Richard Henry Lee wrote the preface to the Virginia copy; and Dr. Franklin to the London edition, printed under his auspices in 1768. In the following year, they were translated into French, and published in Paris, where they had a most flattering reception. In one of Arthur Lee's letters to his brother Richard, from London, dated 1767, it is said:

"The Farmer's Letters are much read here, but to little purpose, though they are universally admired, and no answer is attempted. Lord Hillsborough told me, that he was both greatly pleased and informed by them, but he wished Mr. Dickinson had accommodated his reasoning to the necessity of a supreme power."

The work had scarcely reached the different colonies, before thanks and gratulations flowed upon the author from all quarters. At a meeting of the inhabitants of Boston in Faneuil-Hall, March 21st 1768, a committee was appointed,-consisting of Church, Hancock, Samuel Adams, Dr. Warren, and Rowe-to tender to him the acknowledgments of the town, in an address of the most emphatic purport. The committee styled him the "Friend of Americans, and the common benefactor of mankind," and thus complimented him on his performance :

"It is to you, worthy Sir! that America is obliged, for a most seasonable, sensible, loyal and vigorous vindication of her invaded rights and liberties: it is to you the distinguished honour is due, that, when many of the friends of liberty were ready to fear its utter subversion-armed with truth, supported by the im mutable laws of nature, the common inheritance of man, and leaning on the pillars of the British constitution; you seasonably brought your aid, opposed impending ruin, awakened the most indolent and inactive to a sense of danger, reanimated the hopes of those who had before exerted themselves in the cause of freedom, and instructed America in the best means to obtain redress."

In 1774, he wrote the Resolves of the committee for the province of Pennsylvania, and their instructions to their representatives. The instructions, as they were offered by him, formed a deep and extensive Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great Britain over the Colonies in America; and in that shape they were published, by a resolution of the committee, with thanks for the great assistance they had derived "from the laudable application of his eminent abilities to the service of his country, in that performance." While in congress, he composed several of those admirable papers, upon which Chatham pronounced in the House of Lords, the splendid panegyric that has been so often repeated. From his pen came the Address to the Inhabitants of Quebec; the first Petition to the King; the Address to the Ar

mies; the second Petition to the King; and the Address to the several States.

Richard Henry Lee, of Leesburg, Virginia, in his interesting and valuable Memoir of the life of his grandfather (1825), has claimed for the latter, zealously and argumentatively, the composition of the Petition to the King, of October, 1774, which, when shown in print, in December of that year, to Lord Chatham, by Dr. Arthur Lee, extorted the strongest encomium from that statesman, and occasioned him to remark to Dr. Lee, "The whole of your countrymen's conduct has manifested such wisdom, moderation, and manliness of character, as would have done honour to Greece and Rome in their best days." The respectable biographer of R. H. Lee observes, that in the Life of Patrick Henry, the petition in question is stated to have been written by John Dickinson, but that the author of the Life of Washington says, "the composition of the petition had been generally attributed to Mr. Lee;" and he refers to a letter of the venerable John Jay on the subject, inserted in the appendix to his first volume, in which the aged patriot argues, from particular considerations, that Mr. Lee must have been the author. But neither Mr. Jay nor the biographer of Mr. Lee could have seen the following note, which is attached to the fourth volume of the Life of Washington, as it appeared in Philadelphia, in 1805:

"In detailing the early proceedings of the American congress, the opinion was given that the petition to the king was written by Mr. Lee. Justice requires the declaration that this eloquent composition was the work of Mr. Dickinson.

The original petition reported by Mr. Lee did not manifest sufficiently that spirit of conciliation which then animated congress, and was therefore disapproved. Mr. Dickinson was added to the committee, and drew the petition which was adopted."

This "declaration" of Chief Justice Marshall, worthy of his established reputation for uniform candour and rectitude, was produced by a letter of remonstrance, which Mr. Dickinson. himself addressed to the late Dr. Logan, and which we are tempted to copy from the original manuscript, since the error that it refutes has been recently repeated in so imposing a form.

"DEAR KINSMAN,

Having subscribed for two sets of General Washington's Life by John Marshall, I lately received the second volumes of those sets; and on looking over one of them, I found a reflection cast by the Chief Justice upon my character, that has surprised and hurt me.

In page 180, after concluding extracts from the first petition, in 1774, to the king, he says, in a note: The committee which brought in this admirably well drawn and truly conciliatory Address, were Mr. Lee, Mr. John Adams, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Henry, and Mr. John Rutledge. The original composition has been generally attributed to Mr. Lee."

Here the Chief Justice has committed a mistake directly contradicted by the record, perhaps owing to his having attended only to the first resolution of congress respecting an address to the king, which was in these words:

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