What are the LOGOS in this speech? Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length
on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple
story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country
were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign
people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You
were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the
English Government as the home government; and
England as the fatherland. This home government, you
know, although a considerable distance from your home,
did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose
upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and
limitations, as, in its mature judgement, it deemed wise,
right and proper.
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable
idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the
absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the
home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice
of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far
in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of
government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and
altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I
scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those
measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a
declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth
much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to
what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great
controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right,
and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say
it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly
discant on the tyranny of England towards the American
Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time
when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the
cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so
were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators
and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against
the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the
oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and
on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple
story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country
were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign
people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You
were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the
English Government as the home government; and
England as the fatherland. This home government, you
know, although a considerable distance from your home,
did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose
upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and
limitations, as, in its mature judgement, it deemed wise,
right and proper.
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable
idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the
absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the
home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice
of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far
in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of
government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and
altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I
scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those
measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a
declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth
much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to
what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great
controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right,
and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say
it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly
discant on the tyranny of England towards the American
Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time
when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the
cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so
were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators
and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against
the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the
oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and