o many comforts and enjoyments
at home; but their hearts panted for a restoration to the bosom of
their country. Invited and urged by the open-hearted and truly
benevolent people who had given them an asylum from the persecution
of their own kindred to form their settlement within the territories
then under their jurisdiction, the love of their country
predominated over every influence save that of conscience alone, and
they preferred the precarious chance of relaxation from the bigoted
rigor of the English government to the certain liberality and
alluring offers of the Hollanders. Observe, my countrymen, the
generous patriotism, the cordial union of soul, the conscious yet
unaffected vigor which beam in their application to the British
monarch:--

"They were well weaned from the delicate milk of their mother
country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land. They were
knit together in a strict and sacred bond, to take care of the good
of each other and of the whole. It was not with them as with other
men, whom small things could discourage, or small discontents cause
to wish themselves again at home."

Children of these exalted Pilgrims! Is there one among you who can
hear the simple and pathetic energy of these expressions without
tenderness and admiration? Venerated shades of our forefathers! No,
ye were, indeed, not ordinary men! That country which had ejected
you so cruelly from her bosom you still delighted to contemplate in
the character of an affectionate and beloved mother. The sacred bond
which knit you together was indissoluble while you lived; and oh,
may it be to your descendants the example and the pledge of harmony
to the latest period of time! The difficulties and dangers, which so
often had defeated attempts of similar establishments, were unable
to subdue souls tempered like yours. You heard the rigid
interdictions; you saw the menacing forms of toil and danger,
forbidding your access to this land of promise; but you heard
without dismay; you saw and disdained retreat. Firm and undaunted in
the confidence of that sacred bond; conscious of the purity, and
convinced of the importance of your motives, you put your trust in
the protecting shield of Providence, and smiled defiance at the
combining terrors of human malice and of elemental strife. These, in
the accomplishment of your undertaking, you were summoned to
encounter in their most hideous forms; these you met with that
forti