trade to be protected, at
whatever expense of blood and treasure? Is the supreme Executive
Chief of this commonwealth yet to speak not for himself, but
for her whole people, and pledge _them_ to shoulder their
muskets, and to endorse their knapsacks, against the fanatical,
non-resistant abolitionists, whenever the overseers may please to
raise the bloody flag with the swindling watch-word of 'Union'?
O, my friends, I have not the heart to join in the festivity on
the First of August--the British anniversary of disenthralled
humanity--while all this, and infinitely more that I could tell,
but that I would spare the blushes of my country, weigh down my
spirits with the uncertainty, sinking into my grave as I am,
whether she is doomed to be numbered among the first liberators
or the last oppressors of the race of immortal man!

"Let the long-trodden-down African, restored by the cheering voice
and Christian hand of Britain to his primitive right and condition
of manhood, clap his hands and shout for joy on the anniversary of
the First of August. Let the lordly Briton strip off much of his
pride on other days of the year, and reserve it all for the pride of
conscious beneficence on this day. What lover of classical learning
can read the account in Livy, or in Plutarch, of the restoration to
freedom of the Grecian cities by the Roman consul Flaminius, without
feeling his bosom heave, and his blood flow cheerily in his veins?
The heart leaps with sympathy when we read that, on the first
proclamation by the herald, the immense assembled multitude, in the
tumult of astonishment and joy, could scarcely believe their own
ears, and made him repeat the proclamation, and then '_Tum ab
certo jam gaudio, tantus cum clamore, plausus est ortus, totiesque
repetitus, ut facile appararet nihil omnium bonorum multitudini
gratius quam libertatem esse_.--Then rang the welkin with long
and redoubled shouts of exultation, clearly proving that, of all the
enjoyments accessible to the hearts of men, nothing is so delightful
to them as liberty.' Upwards of two thousand years have revolved
since that day, and the First of August is to the Briton of this age
what the day of the proclamation of Flaminius was to the ancient
Roman. Yes! let them celebrate the First of August as the day to
them of deliverance an