Edwardsville spectator. [volume] (Edwardsville, Ill.) 1819-1826, 1821-08-14


omnipotent Parliament laws for grinding
the colonies to submission, cou.d talk
without amazing or divertlng his hearers,
of the Island of Virginia even Edmund
Burke, man of more ethereal mind,
ahologizing to the people of Bristol for
the offence of sympathizing with the dis
tresses OF our country, ravaged by the
FIRE and sword of Britons, asked indul-
gence for his feelings on the score Of
general humanity, and expressly declar-
ed that the Americans were a nation ut
ter strangers to him, and among whom
he was not sure of having a single ac-
quaintance. The sympa,hes therefore
most essential TO the communion of coun.
try were between the British and Ameri-
can people, eXtinct.-Those most indis-
pensable to the just relation between the
sovereign and subject, had never existed
and could not exist between the British
Government and the American people.
The connection was unnalural and it
was in the moral order, no less than in
the positive DEGREES of Providence, that
it should be dissolved.
Yet, FellowCitlzens, these are not the
| causes OF the separation assigned in the
paper which l am about to read. The
conneyion between different portions of
the same people, and between people
and their government, is connection of
duties as well as of rights. In the long
conflict Of twelve years which had pre-
coded and led to the Declaration of In
dependence, our fathers had been not
less faithful to their duties, than tena-
cious of their rights. Their resistance
had not been rebellion. 1t was not res
tive and ungovernabie spirit of ambition
bursting from the bonds of colonial SUBJ
lection, it was the deep and wouniicd
sense OF successive wrongs, upon which
omplaint had been only answered by
| aggravalion and petition repealed with
contumely, which had driven them to
their last stand upon the adamantine rock
| ofhuman rights.
1t was then, fifteen months after tie
blood of Lexington and Bunker's Hill,
after Charlestown and Falmouth, fired by
British hands, were but heaps OF ashes,
after the ear OF the adder had been turn
ed to two successive supplications to the
| throne : afte" two successive appeals to
the people of Britain, as Friends, Coun-
| trymen, and Brethren, TO which no re-
sponsive voice of sympathetic tenderness
had been returnet--
Thought but the noise of drums and trim
hrels loud;
Their children's cries unheard, that pissed
thro' fire
To the grim IDOL"
Then it was, that the Thirteen United
Colonies of North America, by their
delegates in Congress assembled, exer-
cising the first act of sovereignty by RICH.
ever inherent in the people, but neverto
| be resorted to, save at the awful crisis
when civil society is solved into its first
elements, declared themselves free and
independent states, and two days after
wards, in justification of that act, issued
this Unanimous Declaration ofthe Thir-
teen United States of America. &C..
Here Mr.. Adams read the DecIara-
ion of independence which, as we in
serted on the 26th of June, it is now SUI
perfuous to repeat.
1t is not, let me repeat, citizens,
it is not the long enumeration OF intolera-
BILE wrongs concentrated in this Decara-
ton; it is not the melancholy catalogue
of alternate oppression and entreaty, of
reciprocated indignity ndremonstrance,
upon which, in the celebration of this
anniversary, your memory delights to
dwell. Nor is it yet that the Justice Of
your cause was vindicated by the God oc
Battles; that in conflict of seven years,
the history of the war by which you
maintained that eclaration, became the
history of the civilized world; that the
unanimous voice of enlightened Europe,
and the verdict of an after age, have
sanctioned your assumption of sovereign
power; and that the name of your
WAsHIMGToN is enrolled upon the re-
cords of time, first in the glorious line OF
heroic virtue. 1t is not that the monarch
himself, who had been your oppressor,
was compelled to recognize you as
sovereign and independent people, and
that the nation, whose feelings of frater-
nifty for you had sumbered in the lap Of
pride, was awakened in the arms Of hui
initiation 10 your equal and no longer
contested rights. The primary purpose
of this Declaration, the proclamation to
the world of the causes of our Revo!u-
ton, is ''with the years beyond the
food" 1t is of no more interest to US
than the chastity Of Lucretia, or the app
pie on the head Of the child of Tell
Little less than forty years have revolved
since the struggle for independence was