“These are Sentiments, which we are obliged to express”

Yesterday I quoted the opening paragraphs of the Middlesex County Convention’s resolutions, adopted 31 Aug 1774.

I was struck hard by one trait of that declaration, evidently drafted for the convention by Jonathan Williams Austin.

That trait is clear in the closing paragraphs:

These are Sentiments, which we are obliged to express, as these Acts are intended immediately to take Place. We must now either oppose them, or tamely give up all we have been struggling for. It is this that has forced us so soon on these very important Resolves. However we do it with humble Deference to the Provincial and Continental Congress, by whose Resolutions we are determined to abide; to whom, and the World, we cheerfully appeal for the Uprightness of our Conduct.

On the whole, these are “great and profound Questions.” We are grieved to find ourselves reduced to the Necessity of entering into the Discussion of them. But we deprecate a State of Slavery. Our Fathers left a fair Inheritance to us, purchased by a Waste of Blood and Treasure. This we are resolved to transmit equally fair to our Children after us. No Danger shall affright, no Difficulties intimidate us. And if in support of our Rights we are called to encounter even Death, we are yet undaunted, sensible that HE can never die too soon, who lays down his Life in support of the Laws and Liberties of his Country.

For comparison, here’s the opening paragraph of the Suffolk County resolutions drafted by Dr. Joseph Warren and adopted on 9 September:

Whereas the power but not the justice, the vengeance but not the wisdom, of Great Britain, which of old persecuted, scourged and exiled our fugitive parents from their native shores, now pursues us, their guiltless children, with unrelenting severity; and whereas, this then savage and uncultivated desert was purchased by the toil and treasure, or acquired by the valor and blood, of those our venerable progenitors, who bequeathed to us the dear-bought inheritance, who consigned it to our care and protection,—the most sacred obligations are upon us to transmit the glorious purchase, unfettered by power, unclogged with shackles, to our innocent and beloved offspring. On the fortitude, on the wisdom, and on the exertions of this important day is suspended the fate of this New World, and of unborn millions. If a boundless extent of continent, swarming with millions, will tamely submit to live, move, and have their being at the arbitrary will of a licentious minister, they basely yield to voluntary slavery; and future generations shall load their memories with incessant execrations. On the other hand, if we arrest the hand which would ransack our pockets; if we disarm the parricide who points the dagger to our bosoms; if we nobly defeat that fatal edict which proclaims a power to frame laws for us in all cases whatsoever, thereby entailing the endless and numberless curses of slavery upon us, our heirs and their heirs for ever; if we successfully resist that unparelleled usurpation of unconstitutional power, whereby our capital is robbed of the means of life; whereby the streets of Boston are thronged with military executioners; whereby our coasts are lined, and harbors crowded with ships of war; whereby the charter of the colony, that sacred barrier against the encroachments of tyranny, is mutilated, and in effect annihilated; whereby a murderous law is framed to shelter villains from the hands of justice; whereby that unalienable and inestimable inheritance, which we derived from nature, the constitution of Britain, which was covenanted to us in the charter of the province, is totally wrecked, annulled and vacated,—posterity will acknowledge that virtue which preserved them free and happy; and, while we enjoy the rewards and blessings of the faithful, the torrent of panegyric will roll down our reputations to that latest period, when the streams of time shall be absorbed in the abyss of eternity.

That 402-word paragraph consists of only four sentences, with an average of 101 words each.

Long sentences are a hallmark of eighteenth-century prose—clauses piling up on top of each other, linked with colons and semicolons and dashes, building up to a final burst of eloquence (“when the streams of time shall be absorbed in the abyss of eternity”).

In contrast, the introductory and concluding paragraphs of the Middlesex County resolutions total to 473 words. Those fall into 19 sentences, about 25 words each. That’s practically modern in its sentence structure.

The two documents make a lot of the same arguments. It might be much easier for today’s students to grasp those points as expressed by the Middlesex County convention—but that text is not as widely available.

TOMORROW: At the Congress.