Nor, among the incidents of the war, will we forget your
services. After the disasters produced by the treason or the cowardice,
or both, of Hull, and the follies of some others, your capture of York
and Fort George first turned the tide of success in our favor; and the
subsequent campaigns sufficiently wiped away the disgraces of the
first. If it were justifiable to look to your own happiness only, your
resolution to retire from all public business could not but be approved.
But you are too young to ask a discharge as yet, and the public counsels
too much needing the wisdom of our ablest citizens, to relinquish their
claim on you. And surely none needs your aid more than your own State.
Oh, Massachusetts! how have I lamented the degradation of your apostacy!
Massachusetts, with whom I went with pride in 1776, whose vote was
my vote on every public question, and whose principles were then the
standard of whatever was free or fearless. But then she was under the
counsels of the two Adamses; while Strong, her present leader, was
promoting petitions for submission to British power and British
usurpation. While under her present counsels, she must be contented to
be nothing; as having a vote, indeed, to be counted, but not respected.
But should the State once more buckle on her republican harness, we
shall receive her again as a sister, and recollect her wanderings among
the crimes only of the parricide party, which would have basely sold
what their fathers so bravely won from the same enemy.
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