ment it suffered often, and greatly, by savage depredations. In the year 1697, on the 5th day of March, a body of Indians attacked this town, burnt a small number of houses, and killed and captured about forty of the inhabitants. A party of them, arrayed in all the terrors of the Indian war-dress, and carrying with them the multiplied horrors of a savage invasion, approached near to the house of a Mr. Dustan. This man was abroad at his usual labour. Upon the first alarm, he flew to the house, with the hope of conveying to a place of safety his family, consisting of his wife, who had been confined a week only in child-bed; her nurse, a Mrs. Mary Taff, a widow from the neighbourhood, and eight children. Seven of his children he ordered to flee with the utmost expedition, in the course opposite to that in which the danger was approaching; and went himself to assist his wife. Before she could leave her bed, the savages were upon them. Her husband, despairing of rendering her any service, flew to the door, mounted his horse, and determined to snatch up the child, with which he was unable to part, when he should overtake the little flock. When he came up to them, about two hundred yards from his house, he was unable to make a choice, or to leave any one of the number. He therefore determined to take his lot with them, and to defend them from their murderers, or die by their side. A body of the Indians pursued, and came up with him, and from near distances, fired at him and his little company. He returned the fire, and retreated, alternately. For more than a mile he kept so resolute a face to his enemy, retiring in the rear of his charge; returned the fire of the savages so often, and with so good success; and sheltered so effectually his terrified companions, that he finally lodged them all, safe from the pursuing butchers, in a distant house. When it is remembered how numerous his assailants were, how bold, when an overmatch for their enemies, how active, and what excellent marksmen, a devout mind will consider the hand of Providence as unusually visible in the preservation of this family.

"Another party of the Indians entered the house immediately after Mr. Dustan had quitted it, and found Mrs. Dustan and her nurse, who was attempting to fly with the infant in her arms. Mrs. Dustan they ordered to rise instantly; and, before she could completely dress herself, obliged her and her companion to quit the house, after they had plundered it and set it on fire. In company with several other captives, they began their march into the wilderness; she, feeble, sick, terrified beyond measure, partially clad, one of her feet bare, and the season utterly unfit for comfortable travelling. The air was chilly and keen, and the earth covered

alternately with snow and deep mud. Her conductors were unfeeling, insolent, and revengeful. Murder was their glory, and torture their sport. Her infant was in her nurse's arms; and infants were the customary victims of savage barbarity.

"The company had proceeded but a short distance, when an Indian, thinking it an incumbrance, took the child out of the nurse's arms, and dashed its head against a tree. What were then the feelings of the mother!

"Such of the other captives as began to be weary, and to lag, the Indians tomahawked. The slaughter was not an act of revenge, nor of cruelty. It was a mere convenience,an effort so familiar, as not even to excite emotion.

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Feeble as Mrs. Dustan was, both she and her nurse sustained, without yielding, the fatigue of the journey. Their intense distress for the death of the child, and of their companions; anxiety for those whom they had left behind, and unceasing terror for themselves, raised these unhappy women to such a degree of vigour, that, notwithstanding their fatigue, their exposure to cold, their sufferance of hunger, and their sleeping on the damp ground under an inclement sky, they finished an expedition of about one hundred and fifty miles, without losing their spirits or injuring their health.

"The wigwam to which they were conducted, and which belonged to the savage who had claimed them as his property, was inhabited by twelve persons. In the month of April, this family set out with their captives for a settlement still more remote; and informed them, that, when they arrived at the settlement, they must be stripped, scourged, and run the gauntlet, naked, between two files of Indians, containing the whole number found in the settlement, for such they declared was the standing custom of their nation. This information, you will believe, made a deep impression on the minds of the captive women; and led them irresistibly to devise all the possible means of escape. On the 31st of the same month, very early in the morning, Mrs. Dustan, while the Indians were asleep, having awakened her nurse, and a fellow-prisoner, (a youth taken some time before from Worcester,) despatched, with the assistance of her companions, ten of the twelve Indians; the other two escaped. With the scalps of these savages, they returned through the wilderness; and, having arrived safely at Haverhill, and afterwards at Boston, received a handsome reward for their intrepid conduct from the legislature.

"Whether all their suffering, and all the danger of suffering anew, justified this slaughter, may probably be questioned by you, or some other exact moralist. Precedents innumerable, and of high authority, may, indeed, be urged in behalf of

these captives; but the moralist will equally question the rectitude of these. Few persons, however, agonising as Mrs. Dustan did, under the evils she had already suffered, and in the full apprehension of those which she was destined to suffer, would have been able to act the part of nice casuists; and fewer still, perhaps, would have exercised her intrepidity. That she herself approved of the conduct, which was applauded by the magistrates and divines of the day, in the cool hours of deliberation, cannot be doubted. The truth is, the season of Indian invasion, burning, butchering, captivity, threatening, and torture, is an unfortunate time for nice investigation and critical moralizing. A wife, who had just seen her house burnt, her infant dashed against a tree, and her companions coldly murdered one by one,—who supposed her husband and her remaining children to have shared the same fate,—who was threatened with torture, and indecency more painful than torture, and who did not entertain a doubt that the threatening would be fulfilled, would probably feel no necessity, when she found it in her power to despatch the authors of her sufferings, of asking questions concerning any thing but the success of the enterprise.

"But whatever may be thought of the rectitude of her conduct, that of her husband is in every view honourable. A finer succession of scenes for the pencil was hardly ever presented to the eye, than was furnished by the efforts of this gallant man, with their interesting appendages. The artist must be destitute, indeed, of talents, who would not engross every heart, as well as every eye, by exhibitions of this husband and father flying to rescue his wife, her infant, and her nurse, from the approaching horde of savages,-attempting, on his horse, to select from his flying family, the child which he was the least able to spare, and unable to make the selection,-facing in their rear the horde of hell-hounds,-alternately and sternly retreating behind his inestimable charge, and fronting the enemy again,-receiving and returning their fire, and presenting himself equally, as a barrier against murderers, and a shelter to the flight of innocence and anguish. In the back ground of some or other of these pictures might be exhibited, with powerful impression, the kindled dwellings, the sickly mother, the terrified nurse with the new-born infant in her arms, and the furious natives surrounding them, driving them forward, and displaying the trophies of savage victory, and the insolence of savage triumph."

R

TYRANNY OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.

A SINGULAR instance of the tyranny of Henry VIII. is recorded in the Talbot manuscripts. The council, in a postscript to a letter to the earl of Shrewsbury, then lord-lieutenant in the north of England, say-" We send herewith a letter, to be conveyed with diligence to the warden of the Middle Marches, by the contents whereof your lordship may perceive our proceedings with one Reed, an alderman of London, who repaireth down thither to serve in those parts; praying your lordship, at his passing by you northwards, to make him as strange countenance as the letter appointeth him strange service for a man of that sort."

This letter is signed "Thomas Wriothesly," chancellor ; "Charles Suffolk," "William Paget." The inclosed letter above alluded to, which is not a little curious, is directed to Sir Ralf Eure," and is as follows:

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"After our right hearty commendations. Whereas the king's highness being burdened, as you know, with the inestimable charge of his wars, (which his grace hath prosperously followed the space almost of one whole year, and must perforce, for the necessary defence of the realm, therein continue it is not known how long,) hath, for the maintenance thereof, required lately a contribution, by way of benevolence, of his highness's loving subjects; and began the execution thereof, first, with us of his grace's council, whom his majesty, according unto our most bounden duties, found in such conformity as we trust was to his grace's contentation; and from us proceeding unto the citizens of London, found them also, upon such declaration as was made unto them of the necessity of the thing, as honestly inclined to the uttermost of their powers, as they saw the request to be grounded upon most reasonable causes. Only one there was, named Richard Reed, an alderman of London, the said city, who (notwithstanding both such necessary persuasions and declarations as for the purpose at great length were shewed unto him, and the consent also and the conformity thereunto of all his company) stood alone in the refusal of the same, not only himself upon a disobedient stomach, utterly denying to give therein to the accomplishment of his duty in that part, but thereby also giving example, as much as in one man might lye, to breed a like difformity in a great many of the rest. And forasmuch as for the defence of the realm and himself, and for the continuance of his quiet life, he would not find in his heart to disburse a little quantity of his substance, his majesty hath thought it

much reason to cause him to do some service for his country with his body, whereby he might somewhat be instructed of the difference between the sitting quietly in his house, and the travel and danger which others dayly do sustain, whereby he hath been hitherto maintained in the same; and for this purpose, his grace hath thought good to send him unto your school, as you shall perceive by such letters as he shall deliver unto you, there to serve as a soldier, and yet both he and his men at his own charge, requiring you not only as you shall have occasion to send forth to any place for the doing of any enterprize upon the enemies, to cause him to ride forth to the same, and to do in all things as other soldiers are appointed to do without respect, but also to bestow him in such a place in garrison as he may feel what pains other poor soldiers abide abroad in the king's service, and know the smart of his folly and sturdy disobedience. Finally, you must use him in all things after the sharp discipline military of the northern

wars.

So well were the king's wishes obeyed, that this patriotic alderman, the sole opponent of an arbitrary tax, was allowed to be taken prisoner by the Scots, not without some suspicion of unfairness, and paid a hundred times more for his ransom than the contribution demanded.

PRESIDENT ADAMS ON TOLERATION.

Letter from President Adams to the Editor of the New York National Advocate.*

SIR,

Quincy; July 31st, 1818. Accept my best thanks for your polite and obliging favour of the 24th, and especially for the discourse inclosed. I know not when I have read a more liberal or more elegant composition.

You have not extended your ideas of the right of private judgment and the liberty of conscience, both in religion and philosophy, farther than I do. Mine are limited only by morals and propriety.

I have had occasion to be acquainted with several gentlemen of your nation, and to transact business with some of them, whom I found to be men of as liberal minds, as much

* A gentleman of the Jewish persuasion.