Who, that has read his
powerful appeal to his countrymen when they were on the eve of welcoming
back the tyranny and misrule which, at the expense of so much blood and
treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it? How nobly does
Liberty speak through him! "If," said he, "ye welcome back a monarchy,
it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people who
shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How
sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the
rebels, your fathers?'" How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph!
"What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss
'the good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope,
seem more strange than convincing to backsliders. This much I should
have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and
stones, and had none to cry to but with the prophet, 'O earth, earth,
earth!' to tell the very soil itself what its perverse inhabitants are
deaf to; nay, though what I have spoken should prove (which Thou suffer
not, who didst make mankind free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us
from being servants of sin) to be the last words of our expiring
liberties."
THE CITY OF A DAY.
The writer, when residing in Lowell, in 1843 contributed this and the
companion pieces to 'The Stranger' in Lowell.
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