To the fiscal concerns of this metropolis, to its literary and other institutions he was a zealous friend.

He was an elector at the three first elections of president of the United States and discharged various trusts to his own honour and the publick good.

Note.-The late rev. Joseph Eckley, D. D. delivered a sermon, on the afternoon of the second sabbath in January, 1809, from Job 19. 25, from the close of which the following extract has been taken, and is respectful to the memory of the hon. mr. Dawes.

"To the choice of the subject, which we have contemplated this afternoon, my hearers will readily suppose I have been directed by the late decease of the senior deacon of this religious society. It is sanctioned by long custom that, after any of our friends and brethren have acted in some of the most conspicuous and important stations, a particular notice should be taken of their lives and characters, when the scene of their activity is closed, and we have just returned from following their sable hearses to the congregation of the dead. But few persons have been brought into more publick view, and, for a long course of time, sustained a greater variety of offices, than our late respected brother.

"As a native of Boston, he discovered a very earnest attachment to its interest, and, at an early season of life, bent his mind, among other things, to

the desire of its exterior improvement. From the calling, which he pursued, and in which he acted as a principal, he greatly amended the style of architecture, and there is now a considerable number of private, as well as some publick edifices in this town and in the vicinity, indebted for their conveniency and beauty to his skill. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was well justified in making him one of its members.

"When the political concerns of our country, no less than fifty years ago, required a martial spirit and knowledge of tacticks, colonel Dawes was one of the most useful officers of the militia of this then province.

"To the fiscal state of this capital he paid a very particular and assiduous attention. With its pecuniary concerns, there was no person more intimately acquainted. I have understood that the town of Boston had often considered itself as having been overcharged in the general tax throughout the commonwealth. From the knowledge, which he was judged to possess on this subject he was elected, by a full vote of the inhabitants of this place, as a member of the house of representatives in the general court, in the year 1777, among which body, his information on many points connected with the relative situation of the towns in the whole state, especially on the subject of taxation, gave him, for a number of years, so decided an influence, as to enable him to repel many improper claims, and effectually to serve the interest of this his native place.

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Although by these particular exertions, he voluntarily consented to an abridgment of his popularity among the members of the general court, yet such was the sense, which the citizens of Boston entertained of his services, that by their united suffrages, he was advanced to a seat in the senate, in which station he served several years. Soon afterward he was elected to the council; and it was no small gratification to him that, in each of these offices, he acted for a while as colleague with the hon. messrs. Phillips and Mason, his brethren both as members and deacons of this church.

"The honourable mr. Dawes continued in the council until the age of seventy years, when by the death of lieutenant governour Gill, then the chief magistrate of the state, he became president of the council, and for a time, was the first acting magistrate in the commonwealth. He had been an elector at the three first elections of president of the United States.

"To this station, as counsellor he would undoubtedly have been re-elected, but at the age of three score years and ten he saw fit to decline being a candidate for this or any other office in the gift of his fellow citizens, and gave publick notice of the intention. From this time to the close of his life, he gradually withdrew from many other publick engagements, observing, among other reasons, that at such an advanced age, it was fit that the business of the present world should give way to the more interesting concerns of the future.

"In his connexion with this religious society I find by the records, that mr. Dawes was baptized by the rev. doc. Sewall in this church in the month of August, in the year, 1731. He was admitted as a member in full communion, A. D. 1749, being in his 19 year. Since my own relation to this society, I have always known him among those, who have taken the most active part in its concerns. After the revolutionary war with Great Britain, during which the internal part of the house, in which we are now assembled, was destroyed, he drew the plan in which, with a few late alterations, it now appears; and was a principal agent in the erection of the adjoining buildings belonging to the general estate. In the year 1787, he was chosen a deacon, in which office he continued until he was removed by death, being upwards of 21 years. He was remarkable for being a constant worshipper in the house of the Lord. During the last year of his life, disorder and sickness impaired, in some degree, the vigour of his mind, which was naturally strong, and being improved not indeed by an academick, yet by a good education, endued him with uncommon ability to serve both the publick at large, and his particular friends. It was a great consolation to the members of his family and to others, that notwithstanding this violent shock to his constitution, his rational powers and faculties were continued. Throughout this sickness, his views and conversation principally turned on the great subject of re

ligion. In the frequent visits I paid him, and which he always appeared to receive with gratification, he fully expressed his sense of the great depravity and sinfulness attached to human nature, the necessity of the divine influences in the renewal and sanctification of the heart, the insufficiency of man's rightcousness for the end of justification, the glorious nature of pardon in virtue of the mediation, with animated hopes that, through the faith, he had long professed and still continued to declare in the blessed Redeemer, he might be freely accepted, and made completely happy in the enjoyment of a holy God. With these sentiments, he mixed many others respecting the instability of all earthly things, the importance of contemplating time in relation to eternity, and continually seeking a state of preparation, by grace, for the change, which will soon be made on us all by the stroke of death.

"He lived to the beginning of the new year; and, though weak and faltering, he said to his family he would begin it in the house of the Lord. He heard my worthy colleague in the morning on a subject adapted to the season. He was not able to attend the service of the afternoon, but, as I learn, conversed with his particular connexions in the evening, in a manner the most appropriate to the occasion, and with a great degree of seriousness, solemnity, and affection. At four o'clock, the following morning, by a sudden fit of the paralytick kind, he was bereaved of his reason; and, in six hours afterwards, resigned his spirit unto God, who gave it.