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FEBRUARY
 

  “The first principle and great end of government being to provide for the best good of all the people, this can be done only by a supreme legislative and executive ultimately in the people, or whole community, where God has placed it; but the difficulties attending a universal congress gave rise to a right of representation. Such a transfer of the power of the whole to a few was necessary; but to bring the powers of all into the hands of one or some few, and to make them hereditary, is the interested work of the weak and the wicked. Nothing but life and liberty are actually heritable. The grand political problem is to invent the best combination of the powers of legislation and execution: they must exist in the state, just as the revolution of the planets; one power would fix them to a center, and another carry them off indefinitely; but the first and simple principle is "Equality' and 'the power of the whole.'

   " ...The British colonists do not hold their liberties or their lands by so slippery a tenure as the will of the prince. Colonists are men, the common children of the same Creator with their brethren of Great Britain.

    "The colonists are men: the colonists are therefore free born; for, by the law of nature, all men are free born, white or black. No good reason can be given for enslaving those of any color. Is it right to enslave a man because his color is black, or his hair short and curled like wool, instead of Christian hair? Can any logical inference in favor of slavery be drawn from a flat nose or a long or a short face? The riches of the West Indies or the luxury of the metropolis should not have weight to break the balance of truth and justice. Liberty is the gift of God, and cannot be annihilated.

   "Nor do the political and civil rights of the British colonists rest on a charter from the crown. Old Magna Charta was not the beginning of all things, nor did it rise on the borders of chaos out of the unfound mass. A time may come when Parliament shall declare every American charter void; but the natural, inherent and inseparable rights of the colonists, as men and as citizens, would remain, and whatever, became of charters, can never be abolished till the general conflagration.

    "There is no foundation for distinction between external and internal taxes; if Parliament may tax our trade, they may lay stamps, land-taxes, tithes, and so indefinitely; there are no bounds. But such an imposition of taxes in the colonies whether on trade or on land, on houses or ships, on real or personal, fixed or floating property, is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonists as British subjects and as men. Acts of Parliament against the fundamental principles of the British constitution are void.

     " ...Yet, the colonists know the blood and treasure independence would cost. They will never think of it till driven to it as the last fatal resort against ministerial oppression, which will make the wisest mad and the weakest strong. The world is at the eve of the highest scene of earthly power and grandeur that has ever yet been displayed to the view of mankind: who will win the prize is with God. But human nature must and will be rescued from general slavery that has so long triumphed over the species."

    In 1769, Mr. Otis will be severely beaten by revenue officers while in Boston and will lose his reason due to a sword cut on his head.
 
    On May 23, 1783, while standing at the door of his home at Andover, he will be struck by a bolt of lightning and killed.

5, 1736 --Georgia. John and Charles Wesley arrive here today. Charles is Secretary to Mr. James Oglethorpe the founder of the colony. While here, John will make the acquaintance of a Moravian by the name of Peter Bohler. Mr. Bohler will tell Mr. Wesley to preach faith until he experiences it.

5, 1812 --Massachusetts. Adoniram Judson and Miss Anne Hasseltine are united in marriage. They will spend but a few days together before they sail for India. When Mr. Judson is imprisoned for seventeen months in prisons at Ava and Oung-Pen-la, bound nine months with three and bound two months with five pairs of fetters, Anne will walk fearlessly from palace to prison to seek relief for her husband. He will suffer from fever, hunger, heat and cruelty at the hands of his keepers.

5, 1837 --Massachusetts. Dwight Lyman Moody is born the sixth child of nine children. The place is Northfield, and the time is his mother's birthday. His father is a mason.

5, 1864 --New York. Blind, the forty-four year old Fanny Crosby writes her first hymn, "We are going, we are going to a home beyond the skies." More than three thousand additional hymns will come from her pen.


 

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