take, I will remonstrate and try to prevail upon her, by peaceable means, to release you; but I cannot, my son, fight for you.’ If he did not consider this mockery, the poor tar would address her judgment and say: ‘You owe me, my country, protection; I owe you, in return, obedience. I am not a British subject; I am a native of Massachusetts, where lives my aged father, my wife, my children. I have faithfully discharged my duty. Will you refuse to do yours?’ Appealing to her passions, he would continue: ‘I lost this eye in fighting under Truxton with the Insurgente; I got this scar before Tripoli; I broke this leg on the Constitution, when the Guerrière struck.’ If she remained still unmoved, he would break out, in the accents of mingled distress and despair, —
| ‘ | Hard, hard is my fate! Once I freedom enjoyed, |
| Was as happy, as happy could be! | |
| Oh, how hard is my fate, how galling these chains!’ |
“I will not imagine the dreadful catastrophe to which he would be driven by an abandonment of him to his oppressor. It will not be, it cannot be, that his country will refuse him protection! If there be any description of rights, which, more than any other, should unite all parties in all quarters of the Union, it is unquestionably the rights of the person. No matter what his vocation, whether he seeks subsistence amid the dangers of the sea, or draws them from the bowels of the earth, or from the humblest occupations of mechanic life, whereever the sacred rights of an American freeman are assailed, all hearts ought to unite and every arm be braced to vindicate his cause.”
After this, the objections to the invasion of Canada were easily disposed of. Canada was
