Such men, educated for
years, or even generations, in that hard school of necessity, where
every one's hand and wood-man's skill must keep his head; where
incessant pressing necessities required ever a prompt and sufficient
answer in deeds; and where words needed to be but few, and those
the plainest and directest, required no delay nor preparation, nor
oratorical coquetting, nor elaborate preliminary scribble; no hesitation
nor doubts in deeds; no circumlocution in words. To restrain, influence,
direct, govern, such a surging sea of life as this, required something
very different from a written address.
[Footnote 20: Born in Philadelphia; a Methodist divine, long afflicted
with blindness; but widely popular as a preacher and lecturer.]
* * * * *
ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA OF THE REVOLUTION.
=_John Dickinson, 1732-1808._= (Manual, p. 486.)
From "The Address of Congress to the States." May 26, 1779.
=_55._= THE ASPECT OF THE WAR.
To our constituents we submit the propriety and purity of our
intentions, well knowing they will not forget that we lay no burdens
upon them but those in which we participate with them--a happy sympathy,
that pervades societies formed on the basis of equal liberty.
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