of exchange, drawn in Philadelphia or New York on London, his agony of surprise would not be less than yours, could you see your posterity, after the lapse of the same number of years, standing amidst the ruins of abandoned railroads and disregarded steamboats, having miraculously retrograded to an age of barter.

But the testimony of a far greater man than either of these obscure travellers, to the condition of the colonies at that period, has been preserved. In the latter part of sixteen hundred and seventy-one, George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and one of those great agitators of the sluggish spirit, to whom the Reformation gave full scope, after being scourged and imprisoned, year after year, in Great Britain, landed in America. His mission was pastoral in its character, and had for its object, the encouragement of the Quaker settlements, then thinly scattered over this wilderness. The Journal of his American pilgrimage, as you are aware, is still extant and tells in language of extreme simplicity and beauty its tale of privation and patient endurance; a tale strongly illustrative of the real character of the obstacles to social union, which the early settlers encountered and overcome. He landed near the mouth of the Patuxent river, on the western shore of Maryland, and travelled as far eastward as Rhode Island, and as far south as Carolina. After

crossing the Chesapeake, his route, northward, was by the eastern shore to New Castle. "The next day," says he,* "we began our journey to New England, and a tedious journey it was, through the woods and the wilderness, over bogs and across great rivers. We got over the Delaware, not without some danger of our lives, and then had that wilderness country to pass through, since called West Jersey, not inhabited by any English, so that we travelled a whole day together, without seeing man or woman, house or dwellingplace. Sometimes we lay in the woods, by a fire, and sometimes in Indian wigwams." Thus travelling, pausing at occasional settlements, this illustrious Pilgrim, for such the religious sway he exercised entitles him to be considered, traversed Long Island, and reached his journey's end, in the Providence plantations. Here," says he, using the peculiar language of an enthusiastic age, "we had a large meeting, at which, beside Friends, were some hundreds of people, as was supposed. A blessed, heavenly meeting this was-a powerful, thundering testimony for truth was borne therein a great sense there was upon the people, and much brokenness and tenderness amongst them." When," he adds, "this great meeting was over, it was somewhat hard for friends to part, for the glorious power of the Lord which was over all, and his blessed truth, had knit and united them altogether at last, filled with his power, and rejoicing in his truth, they went away, with joyful hearts, to their homes, in the several colonies where they lived."

66

And here, let me pause one moment, and ask you, anticipating conclusions to be reached hereafter, to trace an active germ of union in the record of this early missionary. George Fox soon after returned to England, again to feel the scourge of persecution, and again to abide in the prison-house; but he left behind him "joyful hearts in the several colonies," -hearts which beat in unison on the one great topic of what they believed to be religious truth, and were bound together in communion which local or political separation could not sever. In every colony that he visited, the apostle of Quakerism found, or left a congregation, and thus connected by a spiritual chain of union, every humble community from New England to Georgia. Nor must it be forgotten, at what an early day other sects were weaving the web of religious communion over the wilderness. While the Jesuit missionsionary was planning and executing his scheme of conversion in one quarter, and at a later day, the accomplished Berkeley, saw in his bright and poetic visions, the rise of new Christian empires here, the unsandalled feet of two humble, but not less ambitious missionaries of truth, Fox and Wesley, were traversing, at long intervals, portions of this continent, and their footsteps can now be traced as plainly as when they were first imprinted on the virgin soil. The influence of Christian communion, in its varied forms, in aiding the growth

* Fox's Journal. Folio Edition, 1775, p. 441.

of the social union, is, of itself, a subject of vast interest, to which I regret I can but refer in passing.

Such was the condition of Colonial America in sixteen hundred and seventy-one, when George Fox left it. There was no visible union then.

The history of intercommunication, accurately written, would throw great light on the growth of that sentiment of union, which, when political causes lent their agency, matured so gloriously. On an occasion like this, it can but be alluded to. I have spoken of the primitive mail-carrier of Colonial America. The creation of this convenient functionary was long postponed, and his progress was necessarily very slow. In sixteen hundred and ninety-two, a Post Office system was projected, if I mistake not, in Virginia, but almost immediately abandoned, in consequence of the difficulties of travelling.

In seventeen hundred, there was a local Post Office in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and in seventeen hundred and ten, an act of Parliament was passed, one of the few acts of beneficence for which Colonial America ever had to thank the mother country, and which is an important statute, as being one applying to all America, and designed for the common benefit.* Under this statute, the chief Letter Office was established in New York, the line of mails extending as

far as far eastward as Portsmouth, the chief town of New
south as Charleston, the chief town of South Carolina,
Hampshire. The revenue, from colonial postages, was ap-
propriated for the general purposes of the Empire, and to
defray the expenses of the pending war; and a strong pro-
hibitory section is embodied in the statute, to meet an evil
then, and since the fruitful source of partisan complaint,
(whether justly or unjustly I do not venture here to say,)
inflicting heavy penalties, and "permanent official disfran-
chisement on any Postmaster-General, or his deputies, or
any person employed under him or them, who should, by
word, message, or writing, or in any other manner whatso-
ever, interfere in any election in the mother country or the
colonies,"

It required, however, more than an act of Parliament, to bring into convenient action, mail communication between the distant parts of the Colonial settlements, and it was not, so far as I can now ascertain, until twelve or fifteen years later, that a continuous mail route was organized even on the sea-board. In seventeen hundred and twenty-two, a Philadelphia newspaper expresses considerable alarm at the delay of the New York Post, "which," it says, with a note of admiration as emphatic as any ever used in our day, when the Great Western delays her arrival twenty-four hours, “is three days beyond its time!"

It is not easy, in these days of secondary causes, when, in the heat and hurry from which few can claim exemption, no one pretends to trace a result of any kind beyond the immediate and palpable agency which produces it, to realize the vast effects produced by this one imperial agent, the Colonial Post Office. No matter how dilatory its processes may have been; no matter how many days and nights the loitering letter-bag may have wasted or required on its weary way; still, when it came, it brought distant points together in a right line and over land, which before were foreign to each other; and when it did not come, there was a feeling of disappointment at the want of news from their neighbors-a word until then unknown in the colonial vocabulary. The New Yorker no longer looked altogether out to sea, but began to feel an interest in the ferry-craft that brought from Staten Island the ten or twenty pound mail-bag, freighted with few, but important letters from Philadelphia, and Annapolis, and Williamsburg, and Charleston. The Postman, though not then "the herald of the noisy world" was a person of great importance, and a political and social agent, with influence far beyond the short calculation of the day. It was the sound of the axe in the trackless forest-or the blazed tree to the craving eye of the man who thinks himself alone-it proved there was a neighborhood, in what seemed to be a wilder

Stat. 9 Ann. chap. 10. For some interesting memorials, &c., relating to the early Post Office, see Vol. 7, Mass. Hist. Collections, 43.

One immediate effect of the Post Office, in America, was the invigoration of the newspaper press. The infancy of the newspaper art, in America, was sickly and precarious. It may, however, easily be conceived, how great must have been the impulse given to it by the institution of a Post Office in the colonies. The first Postmasters were the Editors. The Press told its tale of local grievance, or exemption, or "Never," says the adage, “is a long time;" and this prodanger. The mail was the telegraph which transmitted it to mise of permanent loyalty, this assurance of helpless imbethose who complained, or exulted, or feared, in sympathy-cility, was broken before it was fairly written. There was an and, by this means, an union of sentiment was formed, long union, or what is the same thing, an adaptation for union, before the parties to it, or the world, dreamed of its existence. though not then discernible to those who would not see. It was, to be sure, a loose and uncertain bond-a bond of Significance was given to a current phrase of colonial conaccidental feeling, which might be easily interrupted, and the versation to which it really had no claim, and calling Engfragments made repulsive to each other. Nor, in asserting land "home," was most absurdly supposed to imply an atits precarious existence, must I be understood to exaggerate tachment to her soil, so exclusive, as to shut out all sympathy, its obligation, or to intimate that there was, in fact or in visi- with their neighbors on this side of the water who called ble promise, anything like political union in it. All that is England "home" too. The cradled infant was a neglected meant is, that in communities so closely contiguous, and child, which had soon to help itself, scramble about without which, in addition, were made, by artificial means, to know assistance, and, as we shall presently see, like the infant of of each other's existence, and take an interest in each other's mythology, defend itself against enemics from whom its welfare, there can be discerned at least the seed of the union natural guardian should have protected it. beginning to germinate. Other influences of more apparent efficacy, soon began to operate.

propagating the truths and liberties of the Gospel, and for our own mutual safety and welfare."

The history of this confederacy is of less interest in the connexion in which I wish to consider it than its institution. It was the creature of necessity, but it started into being, complete and perfect. Its heart's blood was religious sympathy. The spirit which animated it was of that spirit which was working great results and great catastrophes in the parent country. Sixteen hundred and forty-three, was an era when principles of self-government were in active fermentation, when the blast which had been driven into the ancient stone-work of Monarchy had been fired, and the old walls were shaking fearfully. Then, the colonies of Puritan New England had close sympathy with the dominant party in Great Britain, and saw, with delight which religious enthusiasm made most intense, the near triumph of men and of opinions for whose sake they had been mocked, and reviled, and scourged, and exiled; but the Parliament, even in its triumph, was too much engrossed at home, to do anything for its distant, though beloved New England. The colonies found themselves in danger and unprotected, and at once, with an impulse so prompt as to prove it to be natural, declared themselves, not free and independent, which then they certainly did not wish to be, but united. They proclaimed, not separation, but perfect and perpetual union.

In the early times of colonial warfare, it had been a strife, and a bloody strife, between the settler and the savage; but it was not long before the Indian found a new and formidable ally in the trained soldiery of France, who, lending to the savage the accomplishments of a bloody trade, seemed to receive in return an ample portion of that ferocious, indiscriminate appetite for carnage which characterizes the savage warrior. The French and Indians thus allied, were as formidable foes as ever hung upon the precincts of a peaceful or a warlike land.

It is much to be regretted that history has never yet adequately illustrated the great design of conquest and conversion, which was matured in the councils of Louis XIV, and which had for its field our western wilderness. That it was a scheme of vast scope and of sanguine promise cannot now be questioned. From the Lakes to the Ohio, the Jesuit missionary pursued his fearless and untiring course. No danger appalled him; no difficulty arrested his progress: and close on his trail, the French soldier followed-the power of this world widening, for its own purposes, the path which the preacher of the world to come had made before, and in the lapse of but few years, a line of French military posts was established on the western frontier from the Lakes to the Balize. Nor is there in history, a record more full of romantic interest, and at the same time less accurately or minutely In less than twenty years, the parent country had witness-illustrated, than that of the French missions in the Valley of ed the surrender of its new-born and vigorous liberty into the Mississippi anterior to the Peace of seventeen hundred the hands, first of that great man, the greatest perhaps that and sixty-three. Within a few years after Philadelphia was England ever produced, the first Protector, and then of the settled, and while, occasionally, an Indian's eye peered across most profidious of her monarchs, the second Charles Stuart. the Hudson at the sturdy burghers of New Amsterdam, United New England had, in the interval, been busy with Vincennes and Kaskaskia were founded. The Jesuit had her savage foes and foot by foot had driven the concentrated raised the cross, and preached the word of God to the tenants vigor of her union further and further westward. Thus oc- of the forest, and there floated over the infant settlement, the cupied, she had taken no active part, or displayed no active same white flag of Bourbon France, which our mother counsympathy, in the conflicts of Great Britain, though, in the try was fighting on the Atlantic and in Europe. And now, vigorous language of one of her own historians, "she had the far westward traveller is struck in the deep recesses of been courted thereunto, by the person who is now laid asleep Indiana and Illinois with the names of Barrois, and Richardin the dark house of the grave, with his weapons under his ville, and Theriac, and Bolon, and Laplante, indicating as head," and the Restoration found these colonies, though distinctly their origin and boasting as justly of their unaunited, yet not flagrantly disloyal. dulterated continental descent, as do the Stuyvesants, and Van Rensselaers, and Dessausures, and Petrigrus of our eastern soil.*

The process of time witnessed the gradual conquest or pacification of the Indians within the limits of New England, and, as the reluctant savage withdrew west of the Hudson, and stood, with his armed companions, at the foot of the Blue Ridge, determined to retreat no further, the circle of civilization becoming larger, there was a wider scope for united councils and united action. Something more than a New England confederacy was requisite for the common safety. The unbroken forest, and the savage enemy which tenanted it, reached from Georgia to New York, and as the charter limits of the New England provinces were asserted to extend far beyond the Hudson, they still had an interest in frontier warfare, though the war-whoop no longer disturb ed their familiar privacy. And hence we see, from this time downward, to the attempted union in seventeen hundred and fifty-four, a constant succession of attempts at united action. The instinct was decided. As early as sixteen hundred and ninety-three, Pennsylvania, at the instance of Governor Fletcher, accredited an agent to treat with Commissioners from the neighboring colonies, at New York, concerning quotas of men and moneys for frontier defence. And, from time to time, there were many other plans suggested, of the same kind, and with the same object.†

But it was not these semi-political combinations which were fabricating the true colonial union. Higher agencies were at work. The New England Confederacy was remark able as the first fruits of a common danger, and the outward pressure on a few settlements and within a narrow compass, and as remarkable for the regularity of its structure and the completeness of its parts. The occasional conventions of provincial agents-of Governors, or commissioners, in later days, had no such interest. The masses were blending and harmonizing, though the forms of concerted action were less perfect.

Hubbard, 576.

The scheme of New France, thus commenced, and destined so soon to be abandoned, is one of the most magnificent divulged by history, and I can fully sympathize with a recent French traveller, one of the most accomplished that has ever visited us, when standing near the site of Fort Duquesne, now lost amidst the chimneys of our Pennsylvania Birmingham, he mourned over the disappointment of this great enterprise. "Seventy-six years ago, this day," says Mr. Chevalier, "a handful of Frenchmen sorrowfully evacuated the Fort which stood on the point of land where the Allegheny and the Monongahela mingle their waters to form the Ohio, and the Empire of New France, like so many other magnificent schemes conceived in our country, ceased to exist. Fort Duquesne has now become Pittsburgh, and in vain did I piously search for some relics of the old French fort. There is no longer a stone, or a brick on the Ohio, to attest that France ever had a foothold there."

It is not my purpose to trace the progress of French and Indian warfare. From sixteen hundred and eighty to seventeen hundred and sixty-three, when the French flag was struck forever in America, the British colonies never had a year, and scarcely a month of tranquil, real peace. If there was nominal pacification between the European sovereigns, no treaty bound the savage, and war may be said to have intermitted. To-day, it was on Carolina-to-morrow, on continued all the time. The pressure from without never Pennsylvania-the next day on New York and New England, and sometimes on all at once; and the effect necessarily and naturally was the invigoration of a sense of common

The historical student will find a most interesting sketch of the French settlements in the West, in an Address, delivered February 22, 1839, before the Historical and Anti

† See Pennsylvania Colonial Records, 1693, vol. i. p. 352. ❘ quarian Societies of Vincennes, by the Hon. John Law.

interest—a community of direct personal concern, which was in fact an union. *

"Being, however, of different nations, different religions, and different languages, it is almost impossible to give them Having shown the state of the country at the beginning any precise and determinate character." And so, throughof the century, and even still earlier, when George Fox out his colonial pilgrimage, he discriminates just as the casual wandered through its forest-covered territories, any one will traveller would do now, and deduces, just as a superficial be satisfied of the progress of united sentiment, who will traveller might do now, from these exaggerated traits of diopen a colonial newspaper or book of travels, at or immedi-versity of manners, the absence of all community of sentiately before the peace of Paris. ment amongst them. Yet he travels on, quietly and peaceIn seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, an Episcopal clergy- ably, through the English settlements, speaking the same man, of the name of Burnaby, landed at Yorktown, in Vir-language, using the same money, reading the same newsginia, and travelled as far northward and eastward as Ports- papers, meeting branches of the same families, as in one mouth in New Hampshire. His published Journal is united people, and it is only when he attempts to travel familiarly known to every historical student, and although westward beyond that people's limits, that he is admonished his recorded opinions as the result of his observations, are he will find other than friends to each other and to himself. that no social sympathy, even at that late day, existed among He ventures as far west as Winchester in Virginia, and then the colonies, and that a political union was wholly impracti- adds, in reference to those places of fashionable resort, whithcable, yet the narrative of his own experience as a traveller, er so many, no doubt, of those who now hear me, periodically contradicts, exclusively, these very opinions. From Virginia repair: "During my stay at Winchester, I was almost to New England, from Cape Charles to Cape Cod, he tra- tempted to make a tour for a fortnight into Augusta county, velled through one people, and never seems to have discover- for the sake of seeing some springs and other natural curioed any other difference of manner, habit, or opinion, than | sities, which the officers assured me were well worth visitsuch as in a modified form, exist now. The Virginian ing; but, as the Cherokees had been scalping in those parts planter he then describes “as indolent, easy, and good na- only a few days before, I thought it most prudent to decline tured, extremely fond of society, and much given to convivial it." pleasures. He has little regard for economy, and is very apt to outrun his income." "The Virginians" he adds, "are very haughty, and jealous of their liberties, and cannot bear the thought of being controlled by any superior power on the face of the earth." He crosses the Potomac and the Chesapeake and finds the Marylanders of the Eastern shore "very like their neighbors of Virginia, though not quite so presuming or so indolent, just as convivial, and not much less thriftless." He reaches Pennsylvania, and is lost in ecstacy. "Its trade," says he, "is surprisingly extensive. Their manufactures are very considerable. The Germantown woollen stockings are in high estimation-so much so, that the year before last, as I have been credibly informed, there were manufactured sixty thousand dozen pairs." (?) He enters our fair Quaker city and thus characterizes its population, how justly, it is not for me to say.“The Philadelphians are a frugal and industrious people, not remarkably courteous and hospitable to strangers, unless particularly recommended to them, but on the whole, I must confess, rather the reverse. The women, however, are exceedingly handsome and polite-they are naturally sprightly and fond of society, and unquestionably are far more accom-ed by the crown, with a view, in the first instance, to devise plished and agreeable than the men." He arrives at New a concert of action against the French and Indians. All York, which he describes “as subject to one great inconve- that the Lords of Trade contemplated when they recomnience, the want of fresh water, so that the inhabitants are mended this meeting was a compact, by which, after a war obliged to have it brought from springs, at some distance was begun, no colony should make a separate treaty with out of town;" but then (he adds with evident zest,)" as the Indians. But the significant fact is, that no sooner was some compensation, these waters afford various kinds of the Convention organized, than the proposition for a genemost delicious fish-black-fish, sea-bass, sheeps-head, lob-ral and permanent union was introduced and unanimously sters, and several others, most delicious in their kind," and finally, when he comes to describe the inhabitants, he says

And yet his volume closes with grave speculations on the futurity then dawning on America, which satisfy him that its communities must always be disunited, helpless, and dependent, formed for happiness, perhaps, "but certainly not formed for empire or for union," and as a reason for this conclusion, adduces the rivalship between New York and Pennsylvania, the two most powerful and aspiring colonies, whom he describes "as having an inexhaustible source of animosity in their jealously for the trade of New Jersey !!" Thus contradictory were the opinions and the experience of an intelligent traveller in seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, and thus dimly did he see the future.

Five years prior to this date, a great incident in the affairs of Colonial America had occured, which has confidently been relied on by those who question the antiquity of our social union-the meeting of the Commissioners, at Albany, in seventeen hundred and fifty-four, and the failure of their plan of confederation.

The history of this experiment, I am bound to presume, is familiar to you all. It was the convention of twenty-three commissioners, chosen by the Assemblies and commission

approved, and within the short space of three weeks, the details of a well organized plan of a National Constitution were as unanimously adopted.

• See Colonel Quarry's Memorial. 1703. Mass. Coll. voked, speaks volumes. It told the secret, long disguised, This act of the Representatives of the People thus conVol. 7, p. 222.

that the social union had so matured that political union beAs early as seventeen hundred and three, a Metropolitan came a natural suggestion. Nor is it conceivable, that men agent thus characterized the sons of the Old Dominion.as sagacious as Franklin and Hutchinson, would have warm"The Virginia gentlemen consider this Province of greater importance to her Majesty than all the rest of the Provinces on the maine, and therefore they falsely conclude they ought to have greater Privileges than the rest of her Majesty's subjects. The Assembly, they conclude themselves entitled to all the Rights and Privileges of an English Parliament, and begin to search into the Records of that Honorable House for Precedents to govern themselves by. The Council have vanity enough to think that they almost stand upon equal terms with the Right Honorable, the House of Lords. These false and pernicious notions, if not timely | prevented, will have a very ill consequence.-As I have already hinted to your Lordshipps, Commonwealth notions improve dayly, and if they be not checked in time, the rights and privileges of English subjects will be thought too narrow.-Colonel Quarry's Memorial.

ly espoused a measure so decisive, without the strong con-
viction, not merely that the necessities of the people required,
but that their minds were prepared for it. And it is as little
accordant with the ordinary principles of human action,
that they and their colleagues, all men of ability and con-
sideration, should have committed so gross a blunder, or es-
caped its consequences, as to frame and recommend a plan
of National Union, with the sovereign prerogatives of taxa-
tion, coinage, enlistment, and treaties vested in it, subject
alone to the paramount control of the Crown, to a people
so divided by local jealousies as it has been described.
The plan failed, it is true. Though unanimously recom-
mended by the Convention, it was rejected by every Colony
to which it was meant to apply, and whose representatives

Massachusetts Hist. Trans, 3d Series, p. 22.

had voted for it. The colonial assemblies (for popular re- were thus denied any active participation. As I have said, presentation was the privilege of all, saw new danger, and I only refer to it as an incident in the history of progressive perhaps new tyranny, in the delegated royal authority-the union. Its acts were a Petition and Remonstrance to the imperium in imperio" of the Colomal Executive—and the King and Parliament. Temperate and guarded as the reministry at home could not regard with complacency the monstrance was, it was the earnest prayer of the whole pescreation of an united though dependent sovereignty, in a ple of America-a people united now in right, in grievaner, country where they saw their advantage in division, and and in complaint. No plans for future action were suggested where they only had recommended temporary concert, not or urged, and if any were thought of, they were withheld enduring union.* or suppressed for the sake of harmony and union. There was an out-door observer, who watched the deiberations of the first Congress with deep solicitude, and whe was destined to be the faithful witness and to keep the high record of a still graver and more solemn council. Charles Thomson, the Old Secretary, as he is called, then a young man, and a merchant of Philadelphia, came to New York to be the spectator of the doings of the Stamp Act Congress; and I have in my possession, deposited there for better Hes than other and jealous avocations permit me to apply it to, a manuscript Journal, written out at length by Mr. Thamson, of all its acts. For what object this record was made, whether for the writers own use, or for ulterior purposes, it is not easy to say. It is a curious monument, as well of hus industry as of the deep interest he then took in the ap proaching struggle.

But the plan mainly failed from a cause of greater effica. ey which was at work unseen. Some sovereign, paramount authority was required to enforce political union and give it sanction, and no such supreme authority then existed or was then exercised; for a power higher than any known to the British Colonial or Metropolitan Constitution was requisite, and that power, sovereign necessity and the popular will of the nation, soon afterwards supplied. Had the colonies represented in the Albany Convention been left as New England was in sixteen hundred and forty-three, self-dependent had the news reached its conclave that the British monar chy was convulsed by revolution and could not extend even a paralytic hand to support or restrain its distant subjects, may it not be reasonably inferred, at least by us who know what occurred within a few years afterwards, when the hand of the Monarchy, covered with a steel gauntlet, became the hand of the oppressor, that just such an union as was framed, or one more efficient and less dependent, would have been formed, and that there was no adequate obstacle to it in the social condition of the colonies †

And when, twenty-four years afterwards, this same wit ness came hither again, the only and the fit companion who accompanied Washington from Mount Vernon to New York, and stood by his side at his inauguration, and beard the solemn voice raised to swear fidelity to the Constitution, The peace of seventeen hundred and sixty-three, was the of the INDEPendent United STATES, what must not have great era of the awakening of America. That peace gave been the thick-coming recollections which crowded on las opportunity for consciousness to tell its tale-opportunity mind! For fifteen years, long years of doubt and anxiety for self-examination, and self-comparison with those around had he kept the record of the august body, which necessity and above, and if the first feeling was presumptuous or grate- and intense sympathy had created for the guidance of revoful joy, which, as it swelled in the bosom of each colonial lutionary America, and which, without authority known to community, certainly claimed no kindred with any thought the laws or provincial constitutions, had almost miraculousof union, the next was a sense of deep injustice done by the common parent to all her American offspring-and in less than two years from that peace, a peace which took off the outward pressure, and removed the outward danger in less than ten years from the dissolution of the Albany Convention and the rejection of its plan, a solemn Congress of the Colonies, convoked by Committees of Correspondence, regularly organized from Carolina to New Hampshire, was sitting in this city, in stern and solemn deliberation on the common grievances of all the Colonies.

Of that Congress, the Stamp Act Congress of seventeen hundred and sixty-five, it is becoming every American to speak with reverence, as the forerunner of the other graver and greater body, which called into being a few years later by renewed and protracted grievance, was destined never to adjourn. The Congress of seventeen hundred and sixty-five, was but the shadow of the coming substance, which sprang into being on the passage of the Port Bill, in seventeen hundred and seventy-four, and has its principal interest as an incident to the history of the political union of America.

ly, in concord and in discord, done all that regular government could do. He had seen, as an anxious spectator, what was done here to petition and remonstrate in seventeen hundred and sixty-five. He remembered the dark interval which followed, when bolt after bolt was forged in the parliamentary work-shop, and hurled at devoted America. He had not forgotten, when, at the end of that period, he had been suddenly called to become the Secretary of the Congress of the Revolution, and found, in a small room in Carpenter's Hall, in Philadelphia, forty-one individuals, convened almost on their own motion, and preparing by their decrees to snatch from the British Crown, the brightest and dearest of its bright and most cherished jewels. The dawn of this union was lowering and cloudy; and perhaps there never was a scene of more solemn anxiety than was presented at the moment when Charles Thomson entered that humble council chamber. It was a scene even better worthy of the painter's art, than that other more tranquil one which a national painter has embalmed. It was a scene on which, in the decline of life, the ancient Secretary was always proud to dwell.

It met in New York, and it is the duty of some one of the many accomplished writers that New York possesses, to pre- On the fifth of September, seventeen hundred and sevensent in detail its history to the world. The project had its ty-four, the day the Congress met, Charles Thomson was a origin in Massachusetts, but the suggestion met with a ready happy bridegroom. Musing, no doubt, on other things than response throughout Colonial America. The Massachusetts the affairs of the public, he was met in the street by a hurletter was dated in June, and by the early part of October, ried messenger, who came to tell him that the Congress, the representatives of the most distant colonies had arrived, then about to organize, required his services as their Secrein New York. But for the difliculties interposed by the Royal Governors, every colony would have been represented; even as it was, all seemed to feel alike, though some

See Report of Connecticut Committee (1st Series Mass. H. C. vol. 7, p. 209) recommending rejection of the plan, mainly on the ground of its interference with Charter privileges of self taxation.

See letter from Dr. Wm. Clarke, of Boston, to Dr. Franklin, dated May 6, 1754, (Mass. Hist. Coll. 1st Series, vol. 4, p. 74.) "However necessary an union may be for the mutual safety and preservation of these colonies, it is certain it will never take place, unless we are forced to it by the supreme authority of the nation."

tary. Nor were the excuses which he so reasonably urged admitted; but with the assurance that its session could not be prolonged more than a few days or weeks, he was made to yield a reluctant consent. As he entered the room, a plain, unadorned apartment, used by the Society of Master Carpenters for their periodical meetings, the Congress had just been called to order, and prayers were about to be said. It was a prayer of deep solicitude-a prayer, which, through the lips of the preacher, came from the hearts of his auditors, and asked a blessing and illumination on councils which were intricate and perplexed. But as the preacher, the loyal preacher,* prayed for the restoration of peace and friendly

The Rev. Jacob Duché.