e on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a
parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched
survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have.
But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are
you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend or lover, and, whatever
may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and
the spirit of a sycophant.

Gentlemen of the First American Congress, in the name of Equality,
Fraternity and Liberty, I welcome you to this council. What is your
pleasure, gentlemen?

RICHARD HENRY LEE. Mr. President:--I wish to move the adoption of the
following resolution: "Resolved, 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."

JOHN ADAMS. Mr. President:--I second the motion.

JOHN HANCOCK. Gentlemen of the Continental Congress, you have heard the
motion of Mr. Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, for immediate and absolute
independence. Are there any remarks?

RICHARD HENRY LEE. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Continental
Congress:--Why do we delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day
give birth to an American republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and
to conquer, but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. The eyes of
Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom
that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever
increasing tyranny which devastates her polluted shores. She invites us
to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace and the
persecuted repose. She entreats us to cultivate a propitious soil where
that generous plant of liberty, which first sprang and grew in England,
but is now withered by the blasts of tyranny may revive and flourish,
sheltering under its salubrious shade all the unfortunate of the human
race. If we are not this day wanting in our duty to our country, the
names of the American legislators of 1776 will be placed by posterity at
the side of Theseus, of Lycurgus, of Romulus, of Numa, of the three
Williams of Nassau and of all those whose memory has been and forever
will be, dear to virtuous men and good citizens.[3]

(_At the close of Mr. Lee's brief speech there is a clamor for
recognition. John