and at the batteries in town were fired, and a pageantry exhibited, elevated on a stage, carried in derision through the streets, and followed by crowds of people, with ludicrous effigies of the Pope and others, which, when they reached Copp's Hill, were committed to the flames. One of the regulars was flogged by one of the party, for attempting to detain the procession, as it passed the main guard stationed at the door of the state-house. On a lantern was a description of the Pope in 1769; on another was inscribed "Love and Unity. The American whig. Confusion to the tories; and a total banishment to bribery and corruption." And on the right side was this profane acrostic, below a caricature of John Mein, the royalist editor of the Chronicle, and warm opponent of the people:

"Wilkes and Liberty" was inscribed on another lantern, over highly inflammatory verses. We find no allusion to this celebration

after 1774.

When the evening of the first anniversary of the massacre arrived, an address was delivered at the Manufactory House, by Dr. Thomas Young. This building was selected for the occasion, because the first opposition to the British regulars, October, 1768, was made there, when one Elisha Brown, having possession of the building, which was located at the corner of Hamilton-place, as a tenant under the province, refused admission to the military. The high sheriff was sent by Gov. Bernard, for admission; and, on a third attempt, he found an open window, and entered that; upon which the people gathered about him, and made him prisoner. This outrage occurred just after the arrival of the regulars. We transcribe the particulars of this public demonstration, from the Boston News Letter of March 7th and 14th: The bells of the churches were tolled from twelve o'clock at noon until An oration was delivered in the evening, by Dr. Young, at the hall of the Manufactory, a building originally designed for encouraging manufactories, and employing the poor. The oration, it is said, con

one.

tained a brief account of the massacre; of the imputations of treason and rebellion, with which the tools of power endeavored to brand the inhabitants; and a descant upon the nature of treasons, with some threats of the British ministry to take away the Massachusetts charter. In the evening there was a very striking exhibition at the house of Mr. Paul Revere, fronting the old North-square, so called. At one of the chamber windows was the appearance of the ghost of Christopher Snider, with one of his fingers in the wound, endeavoring to stop the blood issuing therefrom; near him his friends weeping; at a small distance, a monumental pyramid, with his name on the top, and the names of those killed on the fifth of March round the base; underneath, the following lines:

"Snider's pale ghost fresh bleeding stands,
And vengeance for his death demands.”

In the next window were represented the soldiers drawn up, firing at the people assembled before them, — the dead on the ground, and the wounded falling, with the blood running in streams from their wounds, -over which was written, "FOUL PLAY." In the third window, was the figure of a woman, representing AMERICA, sitting on the stump of a tree, with a staff in her hand, and the cap of liberty on the top thereof; one foot on the head of a grenadier, lying prostrate, grasping a serpent; her finger pointing to the tragedy.

Another authority states that the bells of Boston tolled from nine to ten o'clock in the evening.

The allusion, in Dr. Young's oration, to the threats of Great Britain, and the imputations of treason, forcibly remind one of the firmness with which the Massachusetts colonists resisted every device to decoy and divert, most artfully attempted by the minions of the throne. The eloquence of bribery fell powerless. Lord Paramount urged, in the Revolutionary play, written by the author of the American Chronicles of the Times, published in 1776,-"Don't you know there's such sweet music in the shaking of the treasury keys, that they will instantly lock the most babbling patriot's tongue? transform a tory into a whig, and a whig into a tory? make a superannuated old miser dance, and an old cynic philosopher smile? How many thousand times has your tongue danced at Westminster Hall to the sound of such music!"

3

The bold daring of the times was thus forcibly expressed, in an old almanac, printed during the contest:

"Let tyrants rage, and sycophants exclaim;
Let tories grumble, parasites defame,
And all the herd of trembling despots roar,
And plot revenge; dependence is no more.
"T is independence that we will maintain,
And Britain's tyrant shall no longer reign.
Britain, adieu! we seek your aid no more;
Nor call you Mother, as we did before."

We know little of Dr. Thomas Young. He was a member of the Committee of Correspondence in 1772. He was a talented writer in papers of the day, and in the Royal American Magazine, on medical, political, and religious subjects. He was one of the tea-party in 1773; but a groundless tradition exists, that he was the person who filled his pockets with the detestable herb, which being discovered when he was on the way home from the ships, some one cut off the skirts of his coat, and threw away the tea. The old crier witnessed this scene, but cannot state who committed the act. John Adams writes of him

as his physician.

In the Life and Times of General Thomas Lamb, of Revolutionary fame, are highly spirited letters from Dr. Young, in one of which he says, that "Lord North endeavors to still the rising rage of his countrymen, by assuring them that no other province will, in the least, countenance the rebellious Bostonians." And, in allusion to a townmeeting at Faneuil Hall, Dr. Young says, it "was conducted with a freedom and energy becoming the orators of ancient Rome." We descendants of the patriot fathers have no conception of their perils, and are prompted by emotions of veneration, at their decided tone, amid the glare of royal bayonets. In Edes and Gill's North American Almanac, printed in 1770, we find what is termed "A New Song, now much in vogue in North America," which entwines this rebel passage:

"All ages shall speak with amaze and applause

Of the courage we 'll show in support of our laws.
To die we don't fear, but to serve we disdain ;

We had better not be, than not freemen remain.
In freedom we 're born, and in freedom we 'll live ;

Our purses are ready,—

Steady, friends, steady;

Not as slaves, but as freemen, our money we 'll give."

The earliest orations were delivered in the Old Brick Church, on the site of Cornhill-square, or at the Old South Church, and attended by immense crowds of people. Originally, a small stage was erected in the northern section of the church, on which were exhibited the survivors wounded at the massacre, and a contribution was taken for their benefit. These patriotic orations are a protective shield to our constitution, as they illustrate the principles of civil liberty.

The honored successor of Washington to the presidency of this glorious Union, when writing to Dr. Morse in allusion to the memorable orations on the massacre, and those succeeding on the national independence, from the peace of 1783 down to the year 1816, thus emphasizes:-"These orations were read, I had almost said, by everybody that could read, and scarcely ever with dry eyes. They have now been continued for forty-five years. Will you read them all? They were not long continued in their original design; but other gentlemen, with other views, had influence enough to obtain a change from 'standing armies' to 'feelings which produced the Revolution.' Of these forty-five orations, I have read as many as I have seen. They have varied with all the changes of our politics. They have been made the engine of bringing forward to public notice young gentlemen of promising genius, whose connections and sentiments were tolerable to the prevailing opinions of the moment. There is juvenile ingenuity in all that I have read. There are few men of consequence among us who did not commence their career by an oration on the fifth of March. I have read these orations with a mixture of pleasure and pity. Young gentlemen of genius describing scenes they never saw, and descanting on feelings they never felt,-and which great pains had been taken they never should feel. When will these orations end? And when will they cease to be monuments of the fluctuations of public opinion, and general feeling, in Boston, Massachusetts, and the United States? They are infinitely more indicative of the feelings of the moment than of the feelings that produced the Revolution." And, in the conclusion of this letter, he remarks, "If I could be fifty years younger, and had nothing better to do, I would have these orations collected and printed in volumes, and then write the history of the last forty-five years in commentaries upon them." The conception of this work was matured, and the materials mostly gathered, in relation to every one of the orators introduced, before the editor ever read or was aware of the paragraph last quoted

from the venerable Adams the elder. An entire collection of the orations noticed in this book, and published in a connected form, would prove a valuable acquisition to the history and literature of our country. Our plan differs materially from that suggested by the great Nestor of this republic. We exhibit striking specimens from some of the best of those performances, with opinions respecting their character, and present a statement of the lives of their authors, interspersed with political, historical, and literary reminiscences, unfolding a period of eighty years.

Our plan extends, moreover, to the orators of the Massachusetts Cincinnati, the Washington Benevolent, and the Democratic Washington Societies; the eulogists on the deceased presidents, on Warren, on Lafayette and Marshall, and almost every other political occasion in the great head-quarters of the Revolution, our own noble Boston!tending to establish the permanence of republican institutions. While we mainly concur with President Adams in opinion regarding the merits of those which he had examined, we venture to assert that a large portion of these productions indicate an ability and patriotic spirit that would honor the heads and the hearts of the most eminent politicians of any age or nation; and we should view the period when such orations would cease as a strong indication of the decline of this great exemplar of all nations.

A large portion of the materials for this production were gathered from the libraries of the Massachusetts Historical Society, of the Gore Library at Cambridge, of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, of the State Library, of the Boston Library, and of the Boston Athenæum; to the librarians of which institutions the editor renders his grateful acknowledgments for the ready facility extended during the research for information. The editor is more especially indebted to the Massachusetts Historical Society for the generous permission of access to valuable unpublished manuscripts in their possession, from which passages are embodied in this work, greatly enhancing its value. Moreover, the editor renders his grateful thanks to Rev. Joseph Barlow Felt, the courteous librarian of this institution, and author of an Ecclesiastical History of New England, and to Lucius Manlius Sargent, Esq., whose experience in historical research ranks them with the most profound antiquarians in our country; to Samuel G. Drake, Esq., the chronicler of Indian History; and to Dr. John C. Warren, for the free use of the Revolutionary manuscript