Alexandria gazette & daily advertiser. [volume] (Alexandria [Va.]) 1817-1822, 1821-07-13

fancy, thew had been treated by the parent
state with neglect, harsEness, and MUS
tice. Their charters had often been dis
regarded and violated; their commerce
| restricted and shackled; their interests
wantonly or spitefuily sacrificed; SO that
the hand of the parent had been scarcely
ever felt, but in the alternate application
| of whips and scorpions.
When, in spite Of all these prosecutions,
| by the natural v,gor of their constitution,
they were Just attaining the maturity OF
political manhood, British Parliament,
in contempt of the clearest maxlms OF ma
tural equity, in defiance of the tundamen-
tai principle upon which British freedom
itself had been, cemented with British
blood: on the naked and unblushlng ale
CATION of absolute and uncomfortable
power, undertook, by their act, to levy,
without representation and without con-
sent, tares upon the people OF America,
for the benefit ofthe people of Britain
This enormous project of public robbery
was no sooner made known than 1t excl
ted throughout the colonies one general
burst of indignant resistance. 1t was
abandoned, reasserted and resumed, until
fleets and armies were transported, to re-
cord in the characters of fire, famine, and
desolation, the transatlantic wisdom of
British legislation, and the tender mer-
cies of British consanguinity.
Fellow-citizens, am speaking OF days
long past. Ever faithful to the sentiment
proclaimed in the papers which am about
to present once more 10 your memory or
the past, and to your forecast of the tu-
ture you will hold the people of Britain,
as you hold the rest of mankind-Ene-
mics in war, in peace Friends. The con-
flict for Independence is now itself but
record of history. The resentments OF
that age may be buried in oblivion. The
stoutest hearts which then supported the
tug of war are cold under the clod of the
valley. My purpose is to rekindle no an
grv passions from its embers: but this an
nual solemn perusal OF the instrument
which proclaimed to the world the causes
| of YOUR existence as a nation is not with
out it's just and useful purpose.
1t is not by the yearly reiteration OF the
wrongs endured by your fathers, to evoke
from the Sepulchre of Time the shades of
departed Tyranny; it is not to draw from
their dread abode the frailitics Of an un-
fortunate monarch WHO now sleeps with
his fathers, and the sufferings of whose
latter days may have atoned at the bar OF
Divine Mercy for the sins which the ac-
cusing Angel will read from this scroll to
his charge; it is not to exult in the great
moral triumph by which the Supreme
| Governor of the world crowned the cause
| of your country with sfccass No; the
purpose for which you listen with renew
ed and never-languishing delight to the
| reading of this paper is ola purer & more
| exalted cast. 1t is sullled with no vindic
tive recollection. 1t is degraded by no
| ranking resentment. 1t is inflated with
| no vain and idle exultation of victory.
The Declaration of Independence, in its
primary purport, was merely an occa-.
sionol state paper 1t was solemn ex-
position to the world, of the causes which
had compelled the people of small por-
ton of the British empire to cast off the
| allegiance, and renounce the protection of
the British king; and to dissolve their So
cial connexion with the British people
! In the annals of the human race, the sep
aration of one people into two is an event
of no uncommon occurrence. The sue
| cessful resistance of a people against op-
preston, to the downfall of the tyrant, and
of tyranny itself, is the lesson of many an
age, and of almost every CLINE. 1t lives
in the venerable records of Holy Writ. 1t
beams in the brightest pages of profane
history. The names of Pharaoh and Mo
ses, of Tarquin and Junius Brutus, of
Geisler and Tell, of Christiern and Gus
tavus Vasa, of Philip of Austria and Will
liam of Orange, stand in long array thro'
the vista of Time, like the Spirit of Evil
and the Spirit of Good, in embattled op-
position to each other, from the moulder-
ing ages of antiquity TO the recent memo
nv of our fathers, and from the burning
plains of Palestine to the polar frost of
Scandinavia. For the independence of
North America, there were ample and
sufficient causes in the laws OF moral and
physical nature The tie of colonial sub
lection is compatible with the essential
purposes of civil government, only when
the condition of the subordinate state is,
from its weakness, incompetent to its own
protection. Is the greatest moral purpose
of civil government the administration of
justice9 And, if Justice has been truly de-
fined the constant and perpetual will of
securing to every one his right, how alb
surd and impracticable is that form of Pc
lity in which the dispenser Of justice is in
one quarter of the globe, and he to whom
Justice is to be dispensed is in another;
where "moons revolve and oceans roll