3. The tyrant I arraign before you, Oh, Creeks! is no native of our soil, but a lurking miscreant, an emissary of the evil principle of darkness. It is that pernicious liquid, which our pretended white friends artfully introduced, and so plentifully pour in among us.

4. Tremble, O ye Creeks! when I thunder in your ears this denunciation, that if the cup of perdition continue to rule with so intemperate a sway among us, ye will cease to be a nation : ye will have neither heads to direct, nor hands to protect; this diabolical juice will undermine all the powers of your bodies and minds. In the day of battle, the warriour's enfeebled arm will draw the bow with inoffensive zeal: in the day of council; when national safety hangs suspended on the lips of the hoary Sachem, he will shake his head with uncollected spirits, and drive out the babblings of a second childhood.

1

5. Think not, Oh, Creeks! that I present an imaginary picture, to amuse or affright: it is too evident! it is too fatally evident, that we find the vigour of our youth abating; our numbers decreasing; our ripened manhood a premature victim to diseases, to sickness, and to death; and our venerable Sachems a scanty number.

6. Does not that desertion of all our reasoning powers, when we are under the dominion of that depraved monster, that barbarian madness wherewith it inspires us, prove, beyond a doubt, that it dislocates all our intellectual faculties, pulls down reason from her throne, and dissipates every ray of the Divinity within us? I need not, I hope, make it a question to any in this assembly, whether he would prefer the intemperate use of this liquor, to clear perceptions, sound judgement, and a mind exulting in its own reflections?

7. However great may be the force of habit, how insinuating soever the influence of example, I persuade myself, and I perceive by your countenances, Oh, Creeks! that there is not one before whom I stand, so shameless, so lost to the weakest impulses of humanity, that the very whisperings of reason, as not to acknowledge the turpitude of such a choice.

LESSON CXXXIII.

Patience under Provocations, our Interest as well as Duty.

1. THE wide circle of human society is diversified by an endless variety of characters, dispositions, and passions. Uniformity is, in no respect, the genius of the world. Every man is marked by some peculiarity which distinguishes him from another and no where can two individuals be found, who are exactly and in all respects alike. Where so much diversity obtains, it cannot but happen, that in the intercourse which men are obliged to maintain, their tempers will often be ill adjusted to that intercourse; will jar, and interfere with each other.

2. Hence, in every station, the highest as well as the lowest, and in every condition of life, publick, private, and domestick, occasions of irritation frequently arise. We are provoked, sometimes, by the folly and levity of those with whom we are connected; sometimes, by their indifference or neglect; by the incivility of a friend, the haughtiness of a superiour, or the insolent behaviour of one in lower station.

3. Hardly a day passes, without somewhat or other occurring, which serves to ruffle the man of impatient spirit. Of course, such a man lives in a continual storm. He knows not what it is to enjoy a train of good humour. Servants, neighbours, friends, spouse, and children, all, through the unrestrained violence of his temper, become sources of disturbance and vexation to him. In vain is affluence; in vain are health and prosperity. The least trifle is sufficient to discompose his mind, and poison his pleasures. His very amusements are mixed with turbulence and passion.

4. I would beseech this man to consider, of what small moment the provocations which he receives, or at least imagines himself to receive, are really in themselves; but of what great moment he makes them, by suffering them to deprive him of the possession of himself. I would beseech him to consider how many hours of happiness he throws away, which a little more patience would allow him to enjoy and how much he puts it in the power of the most insignificant persons to render him miserable.

5. "But who can expect," we hear him exclaim, “that he is to possess the insensibility of a stone? How is it possible for human nature to endure so many repeated provocations? or to bear calmly with so unreasonable behaviour?" My

brother! if thou canst bear with no instances of unreasonable behaviour, withdraw thyself from the world. Thou art no longer fit to live in it. Leave the intercourse of men. Retreat to the mountain, and the desert; or shut thyself up in a cell. For here, in the midst of society, offences must come.

6. We might as well expect, when we behold a calm atmosphere, and a clear sky, that no clouds were ever to rise, and no winds to blow, as that our life were long to proceed, without receiving provocations from human frailty. The careless and the imprudent, the giddy and the fickle, the ungrateful and the interested, every where meet us. They are the briers and thorns, with which the paths of human life are beset. He only, who can hold his course among them with patience and equanimity, he who is prepared to bear what he must expect to happen, is worthy of the name of man.

7. If we preserved ourselves composed but for a moment, we should perceive the insignificancy of most of those provocations which we magnify so highly. When a few suns more have rolled over our heads, the storm will, of itself, have subsided; the cause of our present impatience and disturbance will be utterly forgotten. Can we not then anticipate this hour of calmness to ourselves; and begin to enjoy the peace which it will certainly bring?

8. If others have behaved improperly, let us leave them to their own folly, without becoming the victim of their caprice, and punishing ourselves on their account. Patience, in this exercise of it, cannot be too much studied by all who wish their life to flow in a smooth stream. It is the reason of a man, in opposition to the passion of a child. It is the enjoy peace, in opposition to uproar and confusion.-BLAIR,

ment of

LESSON CXXXIV.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Congress

States of America, passed July of the Thirteen United

4, 1776.

1. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect

to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

2. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyrrany over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

3. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the publick good.

4. He has forbidden his governours to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation, till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of repre sentation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

5. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their publick records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

6. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firniness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

7. 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.

8. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of land.

9. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

10. He has made judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

11. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

12. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

13. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superiour to, the civil power.

14. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation :

15. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 16. For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

17. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: 18. For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

19. For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

20. For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offences:

21. For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:

22. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments:

23. For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring