and lastly revere yourself; and, after having endured fo many fufferings, and encountered fo many perils for the fake of liberty, do not suffer it, now it is obtained, either to be violated by yourself, or in any one inftance impaired by others. You cannot be truly free unless we are free too; for fuch is the nature of things, that he, who en trenches on the liberty of others, is the first to lose his own and become a flave. But, if you, who have hitherto been the patron and tutelary genius of liberty, if you, who are exceeded by no one in juftice, in piety and good ness, should hereafter invade that liberty, which you have defended, your conduct must be fatally operative, not only against the cause of liberty, but the general interefts of piety and virtue. Your integrity and virtue will appear to have evaporated, your faith in religion to have been fmall; your character with pofterity will dwindle into infignificance, by which a most destructive blow will be levelled against the happiness of mankind. The work which you have undertaken is of incalculable moment, which will thoroughly fift and expofe every principle and fenfation of your heart, which will fully difplay the vigour and genius of your character, which will evince whether you really poffefs thofe great qualities of piety, fidelity, justice, and felf-denial, which made us believe that you were elevated by the special direction of the Deity to the highest pinnacle of power. At once wifely and difcreetly to hold the fceptre over three powerful nations, to perfuade people to relinquifh inveterate and corrupt for new and more beneficial maxims and inftitutions, to penetrate into the remotest parts of the country, to have the mind present and operative in every quarter, to watch against furprise, to provide againft danger, to reject the blandishments of pleasure and pomp of power;-thefe are exertions compared with which the labour of war is mere paftime; which will require every energy and employ every faculty that you poffefs; which demand a man fupported from above, and almost instructed by immediate inspiration. These and more than these are, no doubt, the objects which occupy your attention and engross your foul; as well as the means by which you may accomplish these important ends, and render our liberty at once more ample Ff3 ample and more fecure. And this you can, in my opinion, in no other way fo readily effect, as by affociating in your councils the companions of your dangers and your toils; men of exemplary modefty, integrity and courage; whofe hearts have not been heardened in cruelty and rendered infenfible to pity by the fight of so much ravage and fo much death, but whom it has rather infpired with the love of juftice, with a respect for religion and with the feeling of compaffion, and who are more zealously interested in the preservation of liberty, in proportion as they have encountered more perils in its defence. They are not ftrangers or foreigners, a hireling rout fcraped together from the dregs of the people, but for the most part, men of the better conditions in life, of families not difgraced if not ennobled, of fortunes either ample or moderate, and what if fome among them are recommended by their poverty? for it was not the luft of ravage which brought them into the field; it was the calamitous afpect of the times, which, in the most critical circumftances, and often amid the moft difaftrous turns of fortune, roufed them to attempt the deliverance of their country from the fangs of defpotifm. They were men prepared, not only to debate but to fight; not only to argue in the fenate, but to engage the enemy in the field. But unless we will continually cherish indefinite and illufory expectations, I fee not in whom we can place any confidence, if not in thefe men and fuch as thefe. We have the furest and most indubitable pledge of their fidelity, in this, that they have already expofed themselves to death in the fervice of their country; of their piety in this, that they have been always wont to ascribe the whole glory of their fucceffes to the favour of the Deity, whofe help they have fo fuppliantly implored, and fo confpicuously obtained; of their juftice in this, that they even brought the king to trial, and when his guilt was proved, refused to fave his life; of their moderation in our own uniform experience of its effects, and because, if by any outrage, they fhould disturb the peace which they have procured, they themfelves will be the first to feel the miferies which it will occafion, the first to meet the havoc of the fword, and the first again to risk their lives for all those comforts and diftinctions which they. have fo happily acquired; and laftly, of their fortitude in this, that there is no inftance of any people who ever recovered their liberty with fo much courage and fuccefs; and therefore let us not fuppofe, that there can be any persons who will be more zealous in preserving it. I now feel myself irrefiftibly compelled to commemorate the names of fome of those who have most confpicuously fignalized themselves in thefe times; and first, thine O Fleetwood! whom I have known from a boy, to the present blooming maturity of your military fame, to have been inferior to none in humanity, in gentleness, in benignity of difpofition, whose intrepidity in the combat, and whose clemency in victory have been acknowledged even by the enemy: next thine, O Lambert! who, with a mere handful of men, checked the progress, and fuftained the attack of the Duke of Hamilton, who was attended by the whole flower and vigour of the Scottish youth; next thine, O Defborough! and thine, O Hawley! who wast always confpicuous in the heat of the combat, and the thickest of the fight; thine, O Overton! who haft been most endeared to me now for 10 many years by the fimilitude of our ftudies, the fuavity of your manners, and the more than fraternal fympathy of our hearts; you, who, in the memorable battle of Marfton More, when our left wing was put to the rour, were beheld with admiration, making head against the enemy with your infantry and repeiling his attack, amid the thickest of the carnage; and laftly you, who in the Scotch war, when under the aufpices of Cromwell, occupied the coaft of Fife, opened a paffage beyond Stirling, and made the Scotch of the weft, and of the north, and even the remoteft Orkneys confefs your humanity, and fubmit to your power. Befides thefe, I will mention fome as celebrated for their political wisdom and their civil virtues, whom you, fir, have admitted into your councils, and who are known to me by friendship or by fame. Whitlocke, Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, Sydney, (a name indiffolubly attached to the interefts of liberty,) Montacute, Laurence, both of highly cultivated minds and polished taste; befides many other citizens of fingu Ff4 lar lar merit, fome of whom were distinguished by their exertions in the fenate, and others in the field. To these men, whofe talents are fo fplendid, and whofe worth has been fo thoroughly tried, you would without doubt do right to trust the protection of our liberties; nor would it be easy to say, to whom they might more fafely be entrufted. Then, if you leave the church to its own government, and relieve yourself and the other public functionaries from a charge fo onerous, and fo incompatible with your functions; and will no longer fuffer two powers, fo different as the civil and the ecclefiaftical, to commit fornication together, and by their mutual and delufive aids in appearance to strengthen, but in reality to weaken and finally to fubvert each other; if you fhall remove all power of perfecution out of the church, (but perfecution will never ceafe, fo long as men are bribed to preach the gospel by a mercenary falary, which is forcibly extorted, rather than gratuitoufly beftowed, which ferves only to poifon religion and to ftrangle truth), you will then effectually have caft those money-changers out of the temple, who do not merely truckle with doves but with the dove irfelf, with the Spirit of the Most High. Then, fince there are often in a republic, men who have the fame itch for making a multiplicity of laws, as fome poetafters have for making many verfes, and fince laws are usually worse in proportion as they are more numerous, if you fhall not enact fo many new laws as you abolish old, which do not operate fo much as warnings against evil, as impediments in the way of good; and if you shall retain only thofe, which are neceffary, which do not confound the distinctions of good and evil, which, while they prevent the frauds of the wicked, do not prohibit the innocent freedoms of the good, which punish crimes, without interdicting those things which are lawful, only on account of the abuses to which they may occafionally be expofed. For, the intention of laws is to check the commiffion of vice, but liberty is the best fchool of virtue, and affords the strongest encouragements to the practice. Then if you make a better provision for the education of our youth than has hitherto been made, if you prevent the promifcuous inftruction of the docile, and and the indocile, of the idle and the diligent, at the public coft, but reserve the rewards of learning for the learned, and of merit for the meritorious. If you permit the free difcuffion of truth without any hazard to the author, or any fubjection to the caprice of an individual, which is the best way to make truth flourish and knowledge abound, the cenfure of the half-learned, the envy, the pufillanimity or the prejudice which measures the difcoveries of others, and in fhort every degree of wisdom by the measure of its own capacity, will be prevented from doling out information to us according to their own arbitrary choice. Laftly, if you fhall not dread to hear any truth, or any falfehood, whatever it may be, but if you fhall least of all liften to thofe, who think that they can never be free, till the liberties of others depend on their caprice, and who attempt nothing with fo much zeal and vehemence, as to fetter, not only the bodies but the minds of men, who labour to introduce into the ftate the worst of all tyrannies, the tyranny of their own depraved habits and pernicious opinions; you will always be dear to those, who think not merely that their own fect or faction, but that all citizens of all defcriptions fhould enjoy equal rights and equal laws. If there be any one, who thinks that this is not liberty enough, he appears to to be rather inflamed with the luft of ambition, or of anarchy, than with the love of a genuine and well regulated liberty; and particuarly fince the circumstances of the country, which has been fo convulfed by the storms of faction, which are yet hardly ftill, do not permit us to adopt a more perfect or defirable form of government. me For it is of no little consequence, O citizens, by what principles you are governed, either in acquiring liberty, or in retaining it when acquired. And unless that liberty, which is of fuch a kind as arms can neither procure nor take away, which alone is the fruit of piety, of justice, of temperance and unadulterated virtue, fhall have taken deep root in your minds and hearts, there will not long be wanting one who will fnatch from you by treachery what you have acquired by arms. War has made many great whom peace makes fmall. If after being released from the toils of war, you neglect the arts of peace, if your peace |