spicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is, that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

"These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case, were criminal. We are authorized to hope, that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective sub-divisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. 'Tis well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.”

"To the efficacy and permanency of your union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict between the parts, can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty.

they were to meet another army which Washington designed to send from Cambridge, by way of the Kennebec river, and through the wilderness. This portion of the plan was peculiarly Washington's. He thought there must be a way across the wilderness in the now state of Maine from the sources of the Kennebec to Canada, although that way had never been explored, and that an army arriving from such a direction would be so unexpected, that not much, if any, opposition would be made. He knew, too, that the sympathies of the people of Canada were with the Americans, and that a large portion of them would rejoice to throw off the shackles of British authority.

Capt. Thayer was among the first to second General Washington's plan, and to induce others to join in the expedition. His spirit of enterprise was nothing daunted in view of the difficulties before him, and he was ready to meet danger in any shape to serve his country. It was not long before two battalions, from the army at Cambridge, designed for this expedition, were ready to depart. The command of this expedition was given to Col. Arnold, a man bold and brave, fertile in resources, but rash and inconsiderate, being the same man who afterwards turned traitor to his country, and whose memory is now loathed by every American born in this widely extended Republic. It was also said that Col. Aaron Burr, afterwards Vice-President of the United States, was a volunteer in this expedition, but this fact is rather apochryphal.

From a journal kept by Capt. Thayer, never yet published, it appears that the expedition started from Cambridge about the middle of September, 1775, and consisted of the following companies, in two battalions. The first battalion was commanded by Lieut. Col. Christopher Greene, of Rhode Island, and the second by Lieut. Col. Enos, of Connecticut. In the first were one Major, one Adjutant, and one Quarter-Master, and seven companies, viz :

In the second battalion were one Major, one Adjutant, and one Quarter-Master, and six companies, viz:

There were also one Surgeon and mate and one Chaplain for both battalions.

It will be observed that in the first battalion were one Lieut. Col., Greene, and three Captains-Ward, Topham, and Thayer,—from Rhode Island, and we may suppose a like proportion of the other officers and men were from the same state. The expedition began its march Sept. 15th, in two divisions, and marched to Newburyport, and there vessels were in readiness to take them to the mouth of the Kennebec river, where batteaus were prepared to take them up that river as far as possible, together with their munitions of war and provisions for their march through the wilderness. The extreme sufferings, incredible hardships and privations which the men endured, for more than forty days, in going through the woods, without seeing a single habitation, or a human being, except those belonging to their party, are matters of history, and it is not necessary in these sketches again to recount them. They were as much as human nature could endure under any circumstances. But to their honor be it spoken, their fortitude never forsook them, and when they arrived at the height of land between the atlantic and St. Lawrence, which separated the waters of the Kennebec and those of the river Chaudiere, they took courage and pushed onward, notwithstanding all their provisions had been exhausted. Indeed for several days they had little or no food, but roots and bark of trees gathered

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government; but the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government, pre-supposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government."

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APPENDIX.

NOTE A.

MAJOR SIMEON THAYER.

Like many other distinguished officers of the Revolution, Major Thayer was a self-made man, the architect of his own reputation. His early education had been very defective, but his natural abilities were of the finest order. Very soon after his entrance into military life, the remark which Major Gen. Greene made to General Washington respecting Col. Alexander Hamilton, might have been made concerning him: "the country will soon hear from that young man," said Gen. Greene pointing to Hamilton, and so it was with Simeon Thayer, his country soon did hear from him. From the moment he was appointed a Lieutenant in the "Army of Observation," in 1775, to the time he retired from the army under the "new arrangement" in Jan. 1781, he was ever an active, faithful and enterprising officer; never avoiding, but always grappling with danger and difficulty in whatever form presented, and it was very rarely that he ever failed to accomplish his design. He was one of the Captains (for he was soon promoted to that rank in the Army of Observation) that engaged in the "Canada expedition" in the fall of 1775. The plan of invading Canada had been determined upon by Congress, and two Brigades commanded by two Brigadier Generals-Wooster and Montgomery-under the direction of Major General Schuyler, and three thousand troops, were ordered to invade that province by way of the Lakes, march to Montreal, and after the capture of that city, to go down to Quebec, where