northern colonists were so far from receiving protection from Britain that everything was done, from the throne to the footstool, to cramp, betray, and ruin them; yet against the combined power of France, Indian savages, and the corrupt administration of those times, they carried on their settlements, and under a mild government, for these eighty years past, have made them the wonder and envy of the world.

But Mr. J-s will scribble about "our American colonies." Whose colonies can the creature mean? The ministers' colonies? No, surely. Whose then; his own? I never heard he had any colonies. Nec gladio, nec arcu, nec astu vicerunt. He must mean his majesty's American colonies. His majesty's colonies they are, and I hope and trust ever will be, and that the true native inhabitants, as they ever have been, will continue to be his majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects. Every garretteer, from the environs of Grub street to the purlieus of St. James's, has lately talked of his and my and our colonies, and of the rascally colonists, and of yoking and curbing the cattle, as they are by some politely called, at “this present now and very nascent crisis." I cannot see why the American peasants may not with as much propriety speak of their cities of London and Westminster, of their Isles of Britain, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, Sark, and the Orcades, and of the "rivulets and runlets thereof," and consider them all but as appendages to their sheep-cots and goose-pens. But land is land, and men should be men. The property of the farmer, God hath given to the possessor. These are either sui juris, or slaves and vassals; there neither is nor can be any medium.

The national debt is confessed on all hands to be a terrible evil, and may, in time, ruin the state. But it should be remembered that the colonists never occasioned its increase, nor ever reaped any of the sweet fruits of involving the finest kingdom in the world in the sad calamity of an enormous, overgrown mortgage, to state and stockjobbers. No places, nor pensions, of thousands and tens of thousands sterling have been laid out to purchase the votes and influence of the colonists. They have gone on with their settlements in spite of the most horrid difficulties. and dangers; they have ever supported, to the utmost of their ability, his majesty's provincial government over them; and, I believe, are to a man, and ever will be, ready to make grants for so valuable a purpose. But we cannot see the equity of our being obliged to pay off a score that has been much enhanced by bribes and pensions to keep those to their duty who ought to have been bound by honor and conscience. We have ever been from principle attached to his majesty and his illustrious house. We never asked any pay; the heartfelt satisfaction of having served our King and country has been always enough for us. I cannot see why it would not be well enough to go a-nabob-hunting on this occasion. Why should not the great Mogul be obliged to contribute toward, if not to

pay, the national debt, as some have proposed? He is a pagan, an East Indian, and of a dark complexion, which are full as good reasons for laying him under contribution as any I have found abroad in the pamphlets and coffee-house conferences for taxing the colonists.

The gentleman has made himself quite merry with the modest proposal some have made, though I find it generally much disliked in the colonies, and thought impracticable, namely, an American representation in parliament. But, if he is now sober, I would humbly ask him if there be, really and naturally, any greater absurdity in this plan than in a Welsh and Scotch representation? I would by no means, at any time, be understood to intend by an American representation the return of half a score ignorant, worthless, persons, who, like some colony agents, might be induced to sell their country and their God for a golden calf. An American representation, in my sense of the terms, and as I ever used them, implies a thorough beneficial union of these colonies to the realm, or mother country, so that all the parts of the empire may be compacted and consolidated, and the constitution flourish with new vigor, and the national strength, power, and importance shine with far greater splendor than ever yet hath been seen by the sons of men. An American representation implies every real advantage to the subject abroad as well as at home.

It may perhaps sound strangely to some, but it is in my most humble opinion as good law, and as good sense too, to affirm that all the plebeians of Great Britain are in fact, or virtually, represented in the assembly of the Tuskaroras as that all the colonists are in fact or virtually represented in the honorable House of Commons of Great Britain, separately considered as one branch of the supreme and universal legislature of the whole empire. These considerations, I hope, will in due time have weight enough to induce your Lordship to use your great influence for the repeal of the Stamp Act.

THIS

Ezra Stiles.

BORN in North Haven, Conn., 1727. DIED at New Haven, Conn., 1795.

THE FRUITS OF THE CONTEST.

[Sermon: The United States Elevated to Glory and Honour. 1783.]

HIS war has decided, not by the jus maritimum of Rhodes, Oleron, or Britain, but on the principles of commercial utility and public

right, that the navigation of the Atlantic Ocean shall be free: and so probably will be that of all the oceans of the terraqueous globe. All the European powers will henceforth, from national and commercial interests, naturally become an united and combined guaranty for the free navigation of the Atlantic and free commerce with America. Interest will establish a free access for all nations to our shores, and for us to all nations. The armed neutrality will disarm even war itself of hostilities against trade; will form a new chapter in the laws of nations, and preserve a free commerce among powers at war. Fighting armies will decide the fate of empires by the sword without interrupting the civil, social, and commercial intercourse of subjects. The want of anything to take will prove a natural abolition of privateering when the property shall be covered with neutral protection. Even the navies will, within a century, become useless. A generous and truly liberal system of national connection, in the spirit of the plan conceived and nearly executed by the great Henry IV., of France, will almost annihilate war itself.

We shall have a communication with all nations in commerce, manners, and science, beyond anything heretofore known in the world. Manufac turers and artisans, and men of every description may, perhaps, come and settle among us. They will be few indeed in comparison with the annual thousands of our natural increase, and will be incorporated with the prevailing hereditary complexion of the first settlers. We shall not be assimilated to them, but they to us; especially in the second and third generations. This fermentation and communion of nations will doubtless produce something very new, singular, and glorious. Upon the conquest of Alexander the Great, statuary, painting, architecture, philosophy, and the other fine arts were transplanted in perfection from Athens to Tarsus, from Greece to Syria, where they immediately flourished in even greater perfection than in the parent state. Not in Greece herself are there to be found specimens of a sublimer or more magnificent architecture, even in the Grecian style, than in the ruins of Baalbec and Palmyra. So all the arts may be transplanted from Europe and Asia, and flourish in America with an augmented lustre; not to mention the augment of the sciences from American inventions and discoveries, of which there have been as capital ones here, the last half century, as in all Europe.

The rough, sonorous diction of the English language may here take its Athenian polish, and receive its Attic urbanity; as it will probably become the vernacular tongue of more numerous millions than ever yet spake one language on earth. It may continue for ages to be the prevailing and general language of North America. The intercommunion of the United States with all the world in travels, trade, and politics, and the infusion of letters into our infancy, will probably preserve us

from the provincial dialects risen into inexterminable habit before the invention of printing. The Greek never became the language of the Alexandrine, nor the Turkish of the Ottoman conquests, nor yet the Latin that of the Roman empire. The Saracenic conquests have already lost the pure and elegant Arabic of the Koreish tribe, or the family of Ishmael, in the corrupted dialects of Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Hindostan. Different from these, the English language will grow up with the present American population into great purity and elegance, unmutilated by the foreign dialects of foreign conquests.

ANECDOTES OF THE THREE JUDGES.

[History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I. 1794.]

AMONG the traditionary anecdotes and stories concerning the events

which took place at and about the time the pursuers were at New Haven, are the following:

1. The day they were expected, the Judges walked out toward the neck-bridge, the road the pursuers must enter the town. At some distance, the Sheriff or Marshal, who then was Mr. Kimberly, overtook them with a warrant to apprehend them, and endeavored to take them. But the Judges stood upon their defence, and placing themselves behind a tree, and being expert at fencing, defended themselves with their cudgels, and repelled the officer; who went back to town to command help, and returned with aid, but found the Judges had escaped, having absconded into the woods with which the town was then surrounded.

2. That immediately after this, on the same day, the Judges hid themselves under the bridge, one mile from town, and lay there concealed under the bridge while the pursuivants rode over it and passed into town; and that the Judges returned that night into town, and lodged at Mr. Jones's. All this, tradition says, was a preconcerted and contrived business, to show that the magistrates at New Haven had used their endeavors to apprehend them before the arrival of the pursuers.

3. That on a time when the pursuers were searching the town, the Judges, when shifting their situations, happened, by accident or design, at the house of a Mrs. Eyers, a respectable and comely lady; she, seeing the pursuivants coming, ushered her guests out at the back door, who, walking out a little ways, instantly returned to the house, and were hid and concealed by her in her apartments. The pursuers coming in, inquired whether the regicides were at her house? She answered, they had been there, but were just gone away, and pointed out the way they went into

the fields and woods, and by her artful and polite address she diverted them, put them upon a false scent, and secured her friends. It is rather probable that this happened the next day after their coming to town; and that they then left the town, having shown themselves not to be concealed in Mr. Davenport's, and went into the woods to the mill, two miles off, whither they had retired on the 11th of May.

5. About the time the pursuers came to New Haven, and perhaps a little before, and to prepare the minds of the people for their reception, the Reverend Mr. Davenport preached publicly from this text (Isa. xvi. 3, 4,): “Take counsel, execute judgment, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; Moab, be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler."

This doubtless had its effect, and put the whole town upon their guard, and united them in caution and concealment.

6. To show the dexterity of the Judges at fencing, this story is told: That while at Boston, there appeared a gallant person there, some say a fencing:master, who, on a stage erected for the purpose, walked it for several days, challenging and defying any to play with him at swords. At length one of the Judges, disguised in a rustic dress, holding in one hand a cheese wrapped in a napkin, for a shield, with a broomstick whose mop he had besmeared with dirty puddle water as he passed along: thus equipped, he mounted the stage. The fencing-master railed at him for his impudence, asked what business he had there, and bid him be gone. The Judge stood his ground-upon which the gladiator made a pass at him with his sword, to drive him off-a rencounter ensued-the Judge received the sword into the cheese, and held it till he drew the mop of the broom over his mouth, and gave the gentleman a pair of whiskers.-The gentleman made another pass, and plunging his sword a second time, it was caught and held in the cheese till the broom was drawn over his eyes.-At a third lunge, the sword was caught again, till the mop of the broom was rubbed gently all over his face.-Upon this, the gentleman let fall, or laid aside his small sword, and took up the broad-sword, and came at him with that.-Upon which the Judge said, Stop, sir, hitherto you see I have only played with you, and not attempted to hurt you; but if you come at me now with the broad-sword, know that I will certainly take your life. The firmness and determinateness with which he spake struck the gentleman, who desisting, exclaimed, Who can you be? You are either Goffe, Whalley, or the Devil, for there was no other man in England that could beat me. And so the disguised Judge retired into obscurity, leaving the spectators to enjoy the diversion of the scene and the vanquishment of the boasting champion. Hence it is proverbial in some parts of New England, in speaking of a champion