The Constitutional Courant

We cannot be enslaved without you reach out a helping hand: If you emulate the noble example of some of your fellow-officers, whose disinterestedness will endear them to generations yet unborn, the chains of thraldom cannot be put about our necks, at least the duration of our freedom will be prolonged. Dare you then bear a part in hastening its final extinction? Can you expect to escape the unseen hand of resentment, awakened by injuries like these? Assure yourselves the spirit of Brutus and Cassius is yet alive; there are who dare strike a blow to avenge their insulted country. Know ye vile miscreants, we love liberty, and we fear not to show it. We abhor slavery, and detest the remotest aiders and abettors of our bondage: but native Americans, who are diabolical enough to help forward our ruin, we execrate as the worst of parricides. Parricides! 'tis too soft a term: Murder your fathers, rip up the bowels of your mothers, dash the infants you have begotten against the stones, and be blameless;—but enslave your country! entail vassalage, that worst of all human miseries, that sum of all wretchedness, on millions! This, this is guilt, this calls for heaven's fiercest vengeance. But rouse, rouse my countrymen, let the villain that is hardy enough to persist, do it at his peril. Shew them we have resentment no less keen than our Eastern brethren; will you tamely suffer the execution of a law that reduces you to the vile condition of slaves, and is abhorred by all the genuine sons of liberty? Let the wretch that sleeps now, be branded as an enemy to his country.

PHILOLEUTHERUS.