iant
speech in the Convention of Delegates, March 28, 1775, throwing down
the gauge of battle to the British ministry. The ringing sentences of
this challenge are still declaimed by school boys, and many of them
remain as familiar as household words. "I have but one lamp by which
my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no
way of judging of the future but by the past.~.~.~. Gentlemen may cry
peace, peace, but there is no peace.~.~.~. Is life so dear, or peace
so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery!
Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but
as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" The {368} eloquence of
Patrick Henry was fervid rather than weighty or rich. But if such
specimens of the oratory of the American patriots as have come down to
us fail to account for the wonderful impression that their words are
said to have produced upon their fellow-countrymen, we should remember
that they are at a disadvantage when read instead of heard. The
imagination should supply all those accessories which gave them
vitality when first pronounced: the living presence and voice of the
speaker; the listening Senate; the grave excitement of the hour and of
the impending conflict. The wordiness and exaggeration; the highly
latinized diction; the rhapsodies about freedom which hundreds of
Fourth-of-July addresses have since turned into platitudes--all these
coming hot from the lips of men whose actions in the field confirmed
the earnestness of their speech--were effective enough in the crisis
and for the purpose to which they were addressed.

The press was an agent in the cause of liberty no less potent than the
platform, and patriots such as Adams, Otis, Quincy, Warren, and Hancock
wrote constantly for the newspapers essays and letters on the public
questions of the time signed "Vindex," "Hyperion," "Independent,"
"Brutus," "Cassius," and the like, and couched in language which to the
taste of to-day seems rather over rhetorical. Among the most important
of these political essays were the _Circular Letter to each Colonial
Legislature_, published by Adams {369} and Otis in 1768; Quincy's
_Observations on the Boston Port Bill_, 1774, and Otis's _Rights of the
British Colonies_, a pamphlet of one hundred and twenty pages, printed
in 1764. No collection of Otis's writings has ever been made. The
life of Quincy, published by his son, preserves for pos