A

DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED IN THE

NORTH DUTCH CHURCH,

IN THE CITY OF ALBANY,

OCCASIONED BY THE EVER TO BE LAMENTED

DEATH

OF

General Mexander Hamilton.

JULY 29, 1804.

BY ELIPHALET NOTT, A. M.

PASTOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN SAID CITY.

A

DISCOURSE.

II. SAMUEL, I, 19.

HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN !

THE occasion explains the choice of my subject. A subject on which I enter in obedience to You have assembled to express your request.. your elegiac sorrows, and sad and solemn weeds cover you.

Before such an audience, and on such an occasion, I enter on the duty assigned me with trembling. Do not mistake my meaning. I tremble indeed---not, however, through fear of failing to merit your applause; for what have I to do with that when addressing the dying and treading on. the ashes of the dead---Not through fear of failing justly to pourtray the character of that great man who is at once the theme of my encomium and regret. He needs not eulogy.-His work is finished, and death has removed him beyond my censure, and I would fondly hope, through grace, above my praise,

You will ask then, why I tremble? I tremble to think that I am called to attack from this place a crime, the very idea of which almost freezes one with horror-a crime too which exists among the polite and polished orders of society, and which is accompanied with every aggravation; committed with cool deliberation-and openly in the face of day!

But I have a duty to perform.

And difficult and awful as that duty is, I will not shrink from it.

Would to God my talents were adequate to the occasion. But such as they are, I devoutly proffer them to unfold the nature and counteract the influence of that barbarous custom, which, like a resistless torrent, is undermining the foundations

civil government-breaking down the barriers of social happiness, and sweeping away virtue, talents and domestic felicity in its desolating

course.

Another and an illustrious character-a father-ageneral a statesman-the very man who stood on an eminence and without a rival among sages and heroes, the future hope of his country in dangerthis man, yielding to the influence of a custom, which deserves our eternal reprobation, has been brought to an untimely end.

ཀ

That the deaths of great and useful men should be particularly noticed is equally the dictate of