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    land has been preserved from foreign invasion , but we have ^ Uo to undergo the mortifying feeling that our personal freedom hag at the same time been trampled beneath the feet of domestic tyrants , and that a portion of our citizens have been condemned to a state of slavery ,, compared with which the conscription of N apoleon was 9 . condition of buoyant hope .

    Thus far I have endeavoured to treat the question of impressment as a mere matter of political logic . The beatings of the heart have been stilled , and the pulses have been calmed , by an unnatural restraint . Yet it can be but for a time ; the checked current overleaps its banks , and the whirling flood rushes forth

    in its strength , in one mighty tide of humane motion , which bicJa p old caution defiance in its earnest sympathy with fellow humsn b p iags suffering under human oppression . If patriotism be a virtue , it is the virtue of resistance tq oppression ; and ,, therefore , that patriotism i $ the most noble which practises resistance under the mpst unfavourable circumstances , without the

    stimulus of public applause which waits on all national struggles . The blood boil $ , the heart pantg , the spirit leaps quicker , at the tale of individual cruelty and oppression practised amidst surrounding freedom , than at the tales of wholesale national injustice . We feel more for the forlorn pariah than for the enslaved tribe . For the latter there i& hppe , for the former there is npne . There is something soul-stirring in the name of

    patriotism , and all , even the most tyrannous Tories , do homage to it , for , when they go forth to war , they call it fighting for their country . I too would be a patriot , even to the shedding of blood , were it needful , were no other arbitrement left me ; but I would rather be the plebeian leader of a successful mutiny of impressed seamen on the decks of a battle-ship , than I would have been hailed as the victor of the Nile . I would rather aid in

    quelling a quarter-deck tyrant than in resisting an imperial manslayer . The one is a huge evil which all men are bent on putting down , the other is an oppression of the deepest die on a sipall fecale , and which therefore escapes notice . Wars are over for a time , but they may again arise , and then once more the impressment atrocities will be enacted . If ever that time shall

    come , Oh ! for the heart of a Hampden , and the brain of a Machiavel , and the arm of a gladiator , all united in one human form , and that form clad in the blue garments of an impressed English sailor . Oh I for such a man to become an ocean Washington , and proclaim man ' s universal freedom on the waters as upon the firm land . But if that may hot be , let us at least hope that there

    will not be wanted Curtii of the waters , . willing to devote their lives to human freedom . Rather than quietly submit to be made a slave , a forced toiler at the work of slaughter , it were better to seek a death struggle for freedom with the shotted guns turned inboard to beat down the quarters of tjie tyrants . It were better

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    890 CimUntd Barbarism .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 290, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/58/