A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time: Literature of the revolutionary period,1765-1787

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Edmund Clarence Stedman, Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, Mrs. Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz
W. E. Benjamin, 1894

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Página 167 - The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.
Página 286 - He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Página 221 - These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot, will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Página 142 - He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.
Página 168 - It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
Página 165 - ... the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.
Página 167 - In all the changes to which you may be invited remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of Governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing Constitution of a country; that facility in changes upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion...
Página 286 - He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
Página 36 - MR. STRAHAN, You are a member of parliament, and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. — You have begun to burn our towns, and murder our people. — Look upon your hands! — They are stained with the blood of your relations ! — You and I were long friends: — You are now my enemy, — and I am • Yours, B. FRANKLIN.
Página 168 - This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists, under different shapes, in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed ; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

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