HANCOCK JOHN HANCOCK, a distinguished American statesman, was born in Massachusetts, now quines, 12, 1737, and died there, October 8, 1793. He was the son of the Reverend John Hancock of that town and inherited the business and fortune of his uncle, Thomas Hancock, in whose counting-room he was placed after his graduation at Harvard College. On one of his trips to England for his uncle, in 1760, he witnessed the coronation of George III. At twenty-nine he was a member of the General Court of the Province, and from his social position and strong personal convictions was early a person of much influence among the lovers of liberty. In 1770 he made an eloquent address at the funeral of those slain in "the Boston Massacre," and in 1774 was president of the Provincial Congress. His arrest and that of Samuel Adams was one of the objects of the English expedition to Concord in April, 1775, and both men were excepted from the general pardon offered by General Gage in the following June. From 1775 to 1777 he sat in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and his bold, dashing signature stands prominently forth among those of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was governor of Massachusetts, 1780-1785, and again from 1787 until his death, the two years intervening between his governorships being passed in the Continental Congress. Hancock was a sincere patriot and thoroughly devoted to securing the liberty of the colonies. When Washington was ordered by Congress to destroy Boston if necessary in order to dislodge the English troops, Hancock, although the largest property owner in the city, expressed his entire willingness to have the proposition carried out if it would benefit the cause. ME ORATION ON THE BOSTON MASSACRE DELIVERED MARCH 5, 1774 EN, BRETHREN, FATHERS, AND FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,- The attentive gravity, the venerable appearance of this crowded audience; the dignity which I behold in the countenances of so many in this great assembly; the solemnity of the occasion upon which we have met together, joined to a consideration of the part I am to take in the important business of this day, fill me with an awe hitherto unknown, and heighten the sense which I have troops into America to enforce obedience to acts of the British Parliament which neither God nor man ever empowered them to make. It was reasonable to expect that troops who knew the errand they were sent upon would treat the people whom they were to subjugate with a cruelty and haughtiness which too often buries the honorable character of a soldier in the disgraceful name of an unfeeling ruffian. The troops, upon their first arrival, took possession of our senate house and pointed their cannon against the judgment hall, and even continued them there whilst the supreme court of judicature for this province was actually sitting to decide upon the lives and fortunes of the king's subjects. Our streets nightly resounded with the noise of riot and debauchery; our peaceful citizens were hourly exposed to shameful insults, and often felt the effects of their violence and outrage. But this was not all: as though they thought it not enough to violate our civil rights they endeavored to deprive us of the enjoyment of our religious privileges; to vitiate our morals, and thereby render us deserving of destruction. Hence the rude din of arms which broke in upon your solemn devotions in your temples on that day hallowed by heaven and set apart by God himself for his peculiar worship. Hence impious oaths and blasphemies so often tortured your unaccustomed ear. Hence all the arts which idleness and luxury could invent were used to betray our youth of one sex into extravagance and effeminacy, and of the other, to infamy and ruin; and did they not succeed but too well? Did not a reverence for religion sensibly decay? Did not our infants almost learn to lisp out curses before they knew their horrid import? Did not our youth forget they were Americans, and regardless of the admonitions of the wise and aged servilely copy from their tyrants those vices which finally must over |