a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:

25. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the powers of our governments:

26. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

27. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

28. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

29. He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

30. He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

31. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

32. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

33. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts made by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.

34. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity.

35. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind - enemies in war, in peace friends.

36. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

What avails the show of external liberty, to one who has lost the government of himself?

CII. THE FIRST DECLARATION OF INDE

PENDENCE.

1. Many readers probably are aware that a claim has been set up, on the part of North Carolina, to the honor of having issued the first Declaration of Independence, more than a year prior to the appearance of the famous instrument drawn up by Jefferson, and adopted on the 4th of July, 1776.

2. This first declaration, it has been said, was issued by a meeting in Mecklenburgh county, North Carolina, in May, 1775. It was first made notorious in 1819, or thereabout, when the Raleigh "Register" produced what was alleged to be a copy of it.

3. This, however, Mr. Jefferson strenuously declared to be spurious; and the authenticity of the paper had not been generally admitted. But it is now proved to be authentic; the researches of Mr. Bancroft, in the State Paper Office of the British Government having thrown new light on this interesting subject.

4. He has discovered a copy of the resolves of the committee of Mecklenburgh sent over to England by Sir James Wright, then governor of Georgia, which show that independence was first proclaimed in North Carolina in May, 1775.

5. The letter of Sir James Wright, referred to by Mr. Bancroft, closes as follows: "By the enclosed paper your Lordship will see the extraordinary resolves of the people of Charlotte town, in Mecklenburgh county; and I should not be surprised if the same should be done every where else." The prediction was soon verified.

He who is a stranger to industry may possess, but he can not enjoy; for it is labor which gives relish to pleasure.

CIII. THE AMERICAN FLAG.

1. When freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there:
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky Baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.

2. Majestic monarch of the cloud!

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest-trumpings loud,
And see the lightning lances driven,

When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder drum of heaven -
Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given
To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!

3. Flag of the brave, thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high,
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on.
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,

Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn;
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance:
And when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud,
And gory sabers rise and fall

Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall;
There shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall sink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.

4. Flag of the seas! on ocean wave

Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave;
When Death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o'er his closing eye.

5. Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given !
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!

Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,

And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us!

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.

Generous ambition and sensibility to praise are,

especially in youth, among the marks of virtue.