of those patriots. As they ascended, the artillery of the skies responded to that of earth; and the radiant bow which then spanned the arch of heaven, gave assurance that the offerings of these patriots had been accepted, that their prayers had been heard, and that the freedom which they had purchased should endure forever.

Fellow-Citizens-We mourn not the departure of these illustrious men. Could they have chosen the day of their death, it would have been the one decreed by Providence. Could their friends or their country have chosen otherwise? When youth is cut down amidst its bloom and fragrance, we cannot withhold the tears of regret; but when the golden bowl is broken and the silver cord is loosed, when life is spun out to the last moment of enjoyment, and the cup of honor is full; then death comes a welcome messenger to release us from suffering, and to unbar to us the gates of immortality.

"To live with fame,

The Gods allow to many; but to die
With equal lustre is a blessing Heaven

Selects from all her choicest boons of fate,

And with a sparing hand on few bestows."

Had their deaths occurred on any other day, monuments and statues might have been erected to them, and their memories would have been consecrated in history. But monuments and statues decay, and in the revolutions of time, history itself becomes obscure and lost. But Heaven designed them a nobler memorial; it inscribed their names on the forehead of time, and encircled them with sun-beams. As long as time shall endure-as long as the sun shall mark the year in his circuit through the heavens-whenever the Fourth of July arrives, mankind will see in his rising beams the rays of liberty, and in his meridian path the names of the two Patriots, who consecrated the day to freedom, and ascended to their rewards on its Jubilee.

NOTES.

NOTE A.

To show the opinions maintained and advocated by John Adams before he was thirty years old, and eleven years before the Declaration of Independence, the following extracts from his treatise on the Canon and Feudal Law, were quoted in the Eulogy :

"It was the great struggle between the people and this confederacy of temporal and spiritual tyranny, that peopled America. It was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed, but it was a love ́of universal liberty, and an hatred, a dread, an horror of the infernal confederacy before described, that projected, conducted and accomplished the settlement of America."

"They saw clearly, that of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolution, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence and holiness around the idea of a priest, as no mortal could deserve, and as always must, from the constitution of human nature, be dangerous in society. For this reason they demolished the whole system of Diocesean Episcopacy, and deriding, as all reasonable and impartial men must do, the ridiculous fancies of sanctified effluvia from Episcopal fingers, they established sacerdotal ordination, on the foundation of the Bible and common sense."

"The adventurers [the Puritans] had an utter contempt for all that dark ribaldry of hereditary indefeasible right—the Lord's anointed-and the divine miraculous original of government— with which the priesthood had enveloped the feudal monarch in clouds and mysteries, from which they had deduced the most mischievous of all doctrines, that of passive obedience and non-resistance. They knew that government was a plain, simple and intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason, and quite comprehensible by common sense. They detested all the base services and servile dependencies of the feudal system, and they thought all such slavish subordinations were equally inconsistent with the constitution of human nature, and that religious liberty with which Jesus had made them free."

"Be it remembered, however, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their Rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, trustees of the people—and if the cause, the interest and trust is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys and trustees. And the preservation of the means of knowledge, among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public, than all the property of all the rich men in the country. It is even of more consequence to the rich themselves and to their posterity."

This work is spoken of by Mr. Hollis, of London, as the best American work that had then crossed the Atlantic. This remark is in a copy owned by Hon. Edward Everett, which Mr. Hollis sent to Andrew Elliot, D. D.

NOTE B.

In 1769, he was chairman of the committee that was chosen by the town of Boston, who drew up the instructions to their representatives to resist the encroachments of the crown. His colleagues on this committee were R. Dana and Gen Warren. The same year he drew up similar instructions from the town of Braintree to their representatives. In the Legislature he served on many important committees. He was on the committee that reported the address and protest to the Governor against the General Court being holden at Cambridge. When the House finally consented to go on with business, notwithstanding the Governor refused to adjourn them to Boston, he was one of the minority who voted against the measure He was chairman of the committee who drew up the answer to the Governor's message in relation to the enacting style of laws; in which he contended, that by omitting the words "in General Court assembled," it was intended to reduce the province to the footing of a little corporation in England, and by degrees to pare away not only the appearance, but the substance of authority in the General Court of the Province. He was appointed on a committee to prepare a plan for the encouragement of arts, agriculture, manufactures and commerce, and on another committee to correspond with the agent in Eng

land, and with the other Colonies. Hancock and Samuel Adams were associated with him. In 1774 he was one of the committee of the town of Boston on the Port Bill.

NOTE C.

In 1773 two others were negatived as Counsellors with him-in 1774 eleven others. "The ministerial regulation for paying the salary of the Judges, which rendered them wholly dependent on the Crown, was the occasion of a learned and able discussion in the public papers, by William Brattle, senior member of the Council, and John Adams, who had already taken an active part in support of civil liberty, and was distinguished for his great talents and legal acquirements. Mr. Adams' essays were written with great learning and ability, and had a happy effect in enlightening the public mind on a question of very great importance. It subjected him, indeed, to the displeasure of Gov. Hutchinson and the ministerial party; and at the next election in May, when chosen by the Assembly into the Council, the Governor gave his negative to the choice. These essays were published in the Boston Gazette, of February 1773, under Mr. Adams' proper signature, and would make a pamphlet of 50 or 60 pages.”—Bradford's Massachusetts.

"Some time after the Declaration of Independence, Lord Howe requested an interview with some members of Congress. The proposition was a considerable time in agitation: Mr. Adams voted against it-it was however carried in the affirmative, and he (Mr. Adams) was himself chosen one of the committee to wait on his Lordship. Dr. Franklin and Mr. Rutledge were the two other commissioners. The choice of such characters indicated plainly enough that the Americans were not inclined to give up any part of the essential point of Independence. His Lordship immediately sent as a hostage one of his principal officers, but the three commissioners were generous enough to bring him back with them. Lord Howe, having come to the place of landing, could not help expressing to them how pleased he was at this extreme confidence, and to confess that he had never received any mark of honor that had so much gratified him. The three commissioners walked through an army of 20,000 men and it was observed, that this threatening show, which was doubtless affected to give a more imposing idea of the British forces, did not excite the least alteration in the countenances of these three illustrious characters-they walked through the army as if they had been the Generals of it.

"After those insinuating civilities of which his Lordship was master, he opened the conversation, by observing that he could not

view them as commissioners from Congress, but that as he was authorized to confer with any individual, of any influence in the Colonies, on the means of restoring peace, he was happy in the present occasion. The Delegates replied, that as they were sent only to hear what his Lordship had to say, he might consider them as he pleased, but that, as to them, they could not look upon themseives in any other character except in that which they had received from Congress "You may view me in any light you please, said Mr. Adams, "except in that of a British subject." This so confounded his Lordship, that the business could not even be entered upon, aud the three commissioners returned."

NOTE E.

To show how early Mr. Adams' thoughts were turned to the subject of Independence, we subjoin some interesting extracts from his letters. He considered that James Otis was the great leader at the commencement of the revolution, and that next to him came Oxenbridge Thatcher. Mr. Adams thus speaks of him: -"I speak from personal knowledge. From 1758 to 1765, I attended every superior and inferior court in Boston, and recollect not one, in which he did not invite me home to spend evenings with him, when he made me converse with him as well as I could, on all subjects of religion, morals, law, politics, history, philosophy, belles lettres, theology, mythology, cosmogony, metaphysics, &c. But his favorite subject was politics, and the impending threatening system of parliamentary taxation and universal government over the Colonies. On this subject he was so anxious and agitated, that I have no doubt that it occasioned his premature death. From the time when he argued the question of writs of assistance, to his death, he considered the King, ministry, parliament and nation of Great Britain, as determined to new model the Colonies from the foundation, to annul all their charters; to constitute them all royal governments; to raise a revenue in America by parliamentary taxation; to apply that revenue to pay the salaries of governors, judges, and all other crown officers; and after all this, to raise as large a revenue as they pleased, to be applied to national purposes at the exchequer in England; and further to establish Bishops, and the whole system of the Church of England, tythes and all, throughout all British America. This system, he said, if it was suffered to prevail, would extinguish the flame of liberty all over the world; that America would be employed as an engine to batter down all the miserable remains of liberty in Great Britain and Ireland, where only, any semblance of liberty was left in the world."

Speaking of the arguments in Salem on writs of assistance, he says, after consultation the court ordered the question to be argued at the next February term, in Boston, in 1761. After going