vation. We being obliged to take commodities from Great Britain, special duties on their exportation to us are as much taxes upon us as those imposed by the Stamp Act. We are in the situation of a besieged city surrounded in every part but one. If that is closed up, no step can be taken but to surrender at discretion.

"I would persuade the people of these colonies immediately, vigorously and unanimously to exert themselves in the most firm. but the most peaceable manner for obtaining relief. If an inveterate resolution is formed to annihilate the liberties of the governed, English history affords examples of resistance by force."

Thus wrote this able, wise and pure patriot in 1767; nor was his patriotism any the less above question in 1776.

Besides, if we recall to mind the circumstances of the hour, we can see that in many ears his words had the ring of the soundest wisdom, and can realize in some degree the

heroic intrepidity and indomitable resolution required in those who took the opposite view and urged to immediate action.

But in behalf of the Declaration Adams thundered like a Demosthenes and Witherspoon pleaded like a Cicero.

"When the Declaration of Independence was under debate"-we quote the words of the Rev. Dr. John M. Krebs, of New York -"doubts and forebodings were whispered through the hall. The House hesitated, wavered, and for a while liberty and slavery appeared to hang in even scale. It was then that an aged patriarch arose-a venerable and stately form, his head white with the frost of years.

"Every eye went to him with the quickness of thought and remained with the fixedness of the polar star. He cast on the assembly a look of inexpressible interest and unconquerable determination, while on his visage the hue of age was lost in the flush of burning patriotism that fired his cheek.

106 PRESBYTERIANS AND THE REVOLUTION.

"There is,' said he, 'a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time. We perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to consent to our own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, which ensures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not respond to its accents and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is unworthy the name of freeman.

"For my own part, of some, of reputation more.

property I have

That reputation

pledged, on the

is staked, that property is issue of this contest; and although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they descend thither by the hand of the executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country.""

66

Witherspoon, of New Jersey," says Mr. Bancroft, "urged that the country was fully ripe for the great decision, and that delay alone was fraught with peril."

CHAPTER X.

ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFEDERACY.

NEX

EXT in importance to the Declaration was the organization of the colonies into a confederacy. Independence of Great Britain might be secured by victory in the field, and yet little but confusion and oft-recurring and protracted intestine conflict ensue, unless the isolated States were drawn together into a harmonious and compact national Union.

Judge Story, in his fourth chapter on "The Constitution," writes: "The union of the colonies during the Revolution 'grew out of the exigencies and dangers of the times, and would naturally terminate with the return of peace.'

"As little could it escape observation how great would be the dangers of the separation

Rival

of the confederated States into independent communities, acknowledging no common head and acting upon no common system. ries, jealousies, real or imaginary wrongs, diversities of local interests and institutions, would soon sever the ties of a common attachment which bound them together, and bring on a state of hostile operations dangerous to their peace and subversive of their permanent interests."

At this late day it is not unnatural to assume that the organization of a permanent confederation was as easy as the need of it was obvious. And yet the fact is that so many and obstinate were the difficulties that stood in the way that from the time when Franklin first made the motion for it in Congress to the time when the confederacy was actually organized more than five long years passed away. And it was more than sixteen months after Congress appointed a committee consisting of one member from each colony to digest a plan for a confederation before