Insults, recrimination, and outrage, between the soldiers and citizens, were at length, on the 5th of March, 1770, consummated, by the former's firing upon the latter in the streets of Boston, and killing five men--with circumstances shocking to humanity. After one of the slain (Mr. Gray,) had been shot through the body, and had fallen on the ground, a bayonet was pushed through his skull, and his brains fell out upon the pavement. This was the first bloodshed, consequent on the long festering irritations of the period. The officer (Capt. Preston) who gave the word "fire!" and six of the soldiers who had so fatally obeyed it, were in the ensuing October tried before a Boston jury: and, defended, in spite of obloquy, popular clamor, and the remonstrances of timid or prudent friends, by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., were even by that jury, _acquitted_. It grieves us that we cannot pause here, to bestow a merited tribute on the moral courage of the illustrious counsel who dared defend, on the steady justice of the tribunal that could acquit, and on the virtue and good sense of the multitude who, when the first paroxysm of natural excitement was over, could applaud that defence and approve that acquittal[3]--horrible as had been the deed--maddening as had been the antecedent circumstances. But though the killing happened not to be murder, (because the people had been the assailants,) still, the violent destruction of five human lives by an armed soldiery in the streets of a free and peaceful city, was too impressive an example of what mischiefs may come of standing armies and lawless government, to pass unimproved. It was determined to solemnize each anniversary of that day, by a public exposition of those mischiefs; by an oration, commemorative of the tragedy, and of those great principles, the disregard of which had led to its perpetration. Warren delivered two of these orations.[4] His first was on the 5th of March, 1772. It is not contained in the little book now before us, but we have seen it elsewhere: and on reading it, no one need be surprised at its having well nigh urged the people, even at that early day, to forcible measures. Its masterly argumentation is equalled by its burning appeals to the passions. All the four first of these orations had wrought so powerfully upon the public mind, that the British officers declared there should be no more of them: and that whoever undertook to deliver another, should do so at the peril of life. This menace daunted others, but only roused Warren. Not wailing to be _invited_, he _solicited the task_ of addressing the people; and prepared himself accordingly for the fifth anniversary of the massacre--1775. Meanwhile, the givings out of the officers, and the rumors among the populace, imported mortal hazard to him if he should persist. He persisted but the more resolutely. Early in the day, the Old South Meeting House--which, as the scene of these