t can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause
will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The people, the
people, if we are true to them will carry us, and will carry themselves,
gloriously through this struggle. I care not how fickle other people
have been found. I know the people of these colonies, and I know that
resistance to British aggression is deep and settled in their hearts,
and cannot be eradicated. Every colony, indeed, has expressed its
willingness to follow, if we but take the lead. Sir, the Declaration
will inspire the people with increased courage. Instead of a long and
bloody war for the restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances,
for chartered immunities, held under a British king, set before them the
glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into them
anew the breath of life. Read this Declaration at the head of the army;
every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered
to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the
pulpit, religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will
cling around it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to
the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it who heard the
first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers
and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill and in the streets of
Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

(_At the close of Mr. Sherman's speech there is a loud clamor for
recognition. The president recognizes John Dickinson of
Pennsylvania._)

JOHN DICKINSON. [11]Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Continental
Congress:--If we now change our object, carry our pretensions farther,
and set up for absolute independence, we shall lose the sympathy of
mankind. We shall no longer be defending what we possess, but struggling
for something which we never did possess, and which we have solemnly and
uniformly disclaimed all intention of pursuing, from the very outset of
the troubles. Abandoning thus our old ground of resistance only to
arbitrary acts of oppression, the nations will believe the whole to have
been mere pretense, and they will look on us, not as injured, but as
ambitious subjects. I shudder before this responsibility. It will be
upon us, it will be upon us, if, relinquishing the ground we have stood
upon so long, and stood so safely, we now proclaim independence