Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ORATION, DELIVERED /JV BOSTON, MARCH 6, 1775, DR. JOSEPH WARREN, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF MARCH, 1770; WHEN A NUMBER OF CITIZENS WERE KILLED BY A PARTY OF BRITISH TROOPS, QUARTERED AMONG THEM IN A TIME OF PEACE. MY EVER HONORED FELLOW CITIZENS, It is not without the most humiliating conviction of my want of ability that I now appear before you; but the sense I have of the obligation I am under to obey the calls of my country at all times, together with an animating recollection of your indulgence, exhibited upon so many occasions, has induced me, once more, undeserving as I am, to throw myself upon that candor which looks with kindness on the feeblest efforts of an honest mind. You will not now expect the elegance, the learning, the fire, the enrapturing strains of eloquence which charmed you when a Lovell, a Church, or a Hancock spake; but you will permit me to say, that with a sincerity, equal to theirs, I mourn over my bleeding country: with them I weep at her distress, and with them deeply resent the many injuries she has received from the hands of cruel and unreasonable men. That personal freedom is the natural right of every man; and that property, or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction. And no man, or body of men can, without being guilty of flagrant injustice, claim a right to dispose of the persons or acquisitions of any other man, or body of men, unless it can be proved that such a right has arisen from some compact between the parties in which it has been explicitly and freely granted. If I may be indulged in taking a retrospective view of the first settleme…