The Rhode Island Republican

POLITICAL MISCELLANY.

FROM THE BOSTON CHRONICLE.

HANCOCK No. IV.

To the Republican Members of the Massachusetts Legislature.

The duties of those who are entrusted with the liberties of the people is at all times arduous and important; but a peculiar combination of circumstances may at some period give it an import of more than ordinary magnitude--a consequence of new and eventful character. At such a time, patriotism passes its severest ordeal. When difficulties thicken on every side; when a free Constitution is in danger of subversion; when a national confederacy is on the verge of being torn asunder, whose severance will prove the harbinger of ruin, subjugation and oppression; when revolution and civil war, the most disastrous of all evils, are on the dawn of raging with all their characteristics of horror; firmness, integrity and resolution are brought to a test, which will prove their sterling excellence. Then will the patriot, abandoning every selfish, local consideration, stand forth, and in his constitutional capacity use his last effort, to shield his country from such calamities. These considerations cannot but weigh heavily on your minds when they come home to your situation.

The Hartford Convention have at length adjourned. Their manifesto is now before us; and what is its complexion? It commences with a sickening, professed reluctance at severing a national union, which for fifteen years, the whole faction to which the members of this Convention belong, have labored to weaken and destroy, by sowing local prejudices and fomenting party animosities; and of abandoning a Constitution which for eight years, the members of this Convention have systematically endeavored to render a mere dead letter, by openly encouraging and recommending resistance to its demands and the legitimate laws which it sanctioned; and of pretended violations of its spirit by the measures of Congress, which have strictly conformed to its letter. The Report proceeds in a whining cant of hypocrisy, and complains that the General Government have abandoned New-England to invasion, when the Federal Governors have refused to call out the militia to protect her from invasion, at the requisition of the President; of taxation, which those who formed the Constitution contemplated, and which is equally, necessarily and justly apportioned; of an exclusion of the opposition party from office, when the members of this Convention began an indiscriminate exclusion of all republicans from office and employment under the Adams administration; and after slightly noticing the old jaded, hacknied, exploded charge of French Influence in our counsels, winds up with a recommendation, to alter, garble and cut up our Constitution into ounces' pieces, until no shadow or semblance of its features, character or virtue are left. Such amendments as are recommended, would strike to the root of our national existence, and prepare the way for monarchy and oppression. And where is the rational, candid and reflecting man, who supposes that this report, cloven-footed as it may be, embraces the views, the intentions and determinations of the Hartford Convention? No, gentlemen; the Hartford Convention are not to arrive to the consummation of their designs by the deliberations of the people, by amendments of Constitutions and a legal redress of their complaints; this is not the course of revolutionists. Their own adherents are chagrined and disappointed, and the supporters of the government are disappointed with their moderation; but let it be remembered, that all movers of revolution and civil war have began with a moderate tone, and gradually prepared the public mind for their desperate plans.--The destroyers of the Roman Republic, the very worst of men, talked smoothly of the people's liberties, while their arms were crimsoned to their elbows in blood, and they were sinking Roman freedom in her eternal grave at Pharsalia and Philippi. Oliver Cromwell and Jack Cade talked of nothing but "the will of the Lord" and the redress of sufferings; and who could ever speak more plausibly than the Dantons, the monsters of revolutionary France? New-England is not yet prepared for the deep projects of her internal enemies. Their Gazettes are yet longer to go forth in the cause of revolution, teeming with invectives against our Republican institutions, our Union and Our Government. Those wild and fiery popular passions which conspire to national catastrophes, are not yet worked up to their acme. But from the context of the Hartford Report, we can grasp at the views of the Convention. They will keep up the appearance of following not preceding the steps of those who are ripe for disunion and revolution. Their late Convention has been their first step towards the accomplishment of their ends. Their Report is to be forced through every channel to public observation, and encourage a voice of defiance to Constitution, to Law and Government. No, gentlemen, trust upon this truth, overt acts of insurrection are not to commence at the hands of the Hartford Convention. It is the Legislature of Massachusetts, which is to take the first actual measure against the Constituted Authorities of the nation. The work of rebellion is to commence here. This body, already distinguished for her disorganizing zeal; is to march in front. Another session of the Convention, we are informed, is to be holden on the ensuing June. In the mean while, measures are to be pursued in Massachusetts which will hasten the consummation of hostile designs--division, revolution and British alliance. Her Legislature is to assume a stand, which will violate the sovereignty of the National Government over the States; to pass acts which will annul the laws of Congress, and thus absolve the people from paying taxes, by attaching the specious name of law to rebellion; to adopt any expedient which will tend to embarrass the nation and encourage discontent and anarchy; and finally, to tell England, in plain and direct terms, that if she will only continue the war against us, that we shall ere long be a divided people; that N. England will seek her protection; and the other States must either come to an ignominious treaty with her cabinet, or fight with diminished strength. Commercial, humiliating and disgraceful as these intentions are, nothing perhaps but want of courage will prevent their execution from directing the proceedings of the present session. What then remains to be done by the minority of such a legislative assembly? To stop short such jacobin measures by their votes? This is not practicable: of unconstitutional and violent as the measures of a majority may prove; the minority can only oppose them in their legislative capacity, on constitutional grounds.--No, Gentlemen, we do not expect that you will prevent the dominant party in the Legislature of Massachusetts from commencing, in earnest, the works of insubordination; but we do expect, and we have a right to expect, that as rulers chosen to administer the government of the state; as men in whom we have confided the guardianship of our constitution, our rights, our honor and our tranquility; that as friends to a republican government, as friends to our union, and as friends to our common country, you will set your faces against the leaders of a disorganizing majority whose leaders are determined on the most alarming, novel and fatal measures, and OPPOSE THEM STEP BY STEP.--That no artifice, no artful covering or supercilious threat, shall conceal from your penetration, the design and enormity of a measure, or cause you for a single moment, to swerve from the rigid bold and determined discharge of your duty: And we do expect, that when the intemperate acts of an overbearing majority shall come forth; the protests of a large, respectable and patriotic minority shall come With them iN LOUD AND DECIDED LANGUAGE. If you cannot prevent the passage of an unconstitutional law, you may warn the people against submitting to it.

The eyes of the nation and the eyes of the world are upon the State of Massachusetts; not from her boasted, fancied commercial importance; not on account of her physical strength; not from any vast consequence which can be attached to her character as a state; but from the consideration, that she may be the first spot on which the standard of insurrection is to be set up; that she may be the first state which is to withdraw from the union, and strike her colors to the enemy. The idea of her taking such a stand, altho'n gives her that "bad eminence" which Milton attaches to the infernal Hero among his fallen rebels, nevertheless cannot but engross attention and curiosity. We say, then, give an honorable and convincing proof, that the people of old Massachusetts are not one, condemned mass of degeneracy.--Convince the other states of the Union, that if they shall be called to crush insurrection against the general government according to the provisions of the constitution; that all those to whom we have delegated authority will not be seen in arms with their constituents, to aid the projectors of a rebellion. And more than all this, convince the British nation, that the same people whose remonstrance once made her Butes and her Norths tremble in their shoes, and shook the foundations of her throne, are not yet extinguished; and that there is still such that will not be galled by a chain, still a spirit that will kindle at the glance of a sceptre, and still the fiard of a brave and resolute yeomanry, which will point a sword or their Constitution, laws, families and homes. This will be a new language from Massachusetts to the British Ministry. They are led to believe that we are all rebels: that they have but to offer a base and infamous peace, and we shall run to their embraces. We must tell England in the tone of a determined people, that she shall never enter our towns and cities but as an enemy; that she shall never leave them but as a conquered enemy. If these resolutions did not tell the Prince Regent, reclining among the stupid guests of his banquets, or revelling in the debaucheries of his seraglio they would reach the ears and hearts of his counsellors, with the conviction, that British authority can never remain in New-England, but with the extermination of her bravest sons; that they never will be exterminated, while the grass sprouts in their fields, or the billows of ocean tumble round their shores!

New-England must awake before her enemies bind her in fetters. Let the regeneration commence with you. An energy and union among the friends of government will silence every appearance of rebellion at home, and defeat our enemy abroad. When my voice shall again reach you, I hope it will reach you in the testimony of applause.

HANCOCK.