State of New-Hampshire.
BY THE GOVERNOR.
A PROCLAMATION
FOR A DAY OF THANKSGIVING.
DIVINE Providence has in a peculiar manner extended its guardian care and protection over our favored country from its earliest settlement to the present day. Our ancestors, driven from the land of their nativity by religious intolerance and oppression, came to the wilderness selected for their home, a feeble company surrounded with dangers. Weak in all the common sources of human confidence, their virtue and piety became the foundation of their strength. They put their trust in that Almighty Arm which was often conspicuously put forth to shield their infant state from impending ruin. When doomed to feel again the oppressive hand of an unnatural parent in the invasion of their civil rights, the same Almighty Power appeared in their behalf, inspired them with the heroic resolution to resist their powerful oppressor, and raised up men eminently fitted to direct their exertions in the council and in the field, in an hour of such imminent peril. By a series of events, evidently disclosing the hand of Heaven extended to their aid, their liberties were established, and they became one amongst the nations of the earth. Protected against subsequent attempts to invade their rights and blight their opening prospects, they have become a great nation, possessing, alone in the earth, the fair inheritance of freedom, through constitutions and laws securing alike to all their civil and religious rights, whilst they are surrounded with all that can minister to human happiness.
Thus highly favored of Heaven, every dictate of the understanding and sentiment of the heart call upon us for the expression of our gratitude towards the GREAT AUTHOR of blessings so inestimable.
That opportunity may be afforded for offering up to our Heavenly Father the acceptable tribute of grateful and affectionate hearts, in that united and social manner which is best adapted to inspire and promote the exercise of devotional feelings, I have thought fit to appoint, and do, with advice of the Council, appoint THURSDAY the twenty-ninth day of November next, to be kept as a day of Prayer and Thanksgiving throughout this State.
I recommend to the ministers and people of every religious persuasion to assemble on that day in their places of public worship, and give thanks and praise to Almighty God for all the displays of his mercy and beneficence towards our fathers and ourselves--adore and bless his holy name for the continuance of his parental care and goodness towards us through the past year; that He has made the voice of health and peace to be heard in our dwellings, and caused the earth again to yield her fruits, a competent supply for our sustenance and comfort; that He has continued to us the unimpaired enjoyment of those exalted civil and religious privileges which distinguish us as a people; and that the voice of revelation still communicates to us, his erring children, that knowledge of the Divine character and of our own duty, which, through his grace, is able to make us wise unto salvation.
With thanksgiving and praise let us join the penitent confession of our sins, and humbly pray that He, whose mercy is over all his other works, would graciously pardon our offences, enlighten our minds, incline and enable us to repress and control the influence of every inordinate passion, which might lead us astray; that the pure principles of that religion which breathes love to God, benevolence and charity to man, may be extended till they shall enlighten and bless the whole family of man--infuse its purity into the lives and conversation of all its professors, and become a constant spring of upright and virtuous action, of devout and charitable feeling; that He would bestow his benediction upon the interests of this State and Nation, prosper our Agriculture, Manufactures, Commerce and Fisheries, and bless the means of education and instruction in science and in moral and religious truth.
The people of this State are requested to abstain from labor on that day, and from such occupations and amusements as are unbecoming the occasion.
Given at the Council Chamber at Concord, the tenth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States the forty-sixth.
SAMUEL BELL.
BY HIS EXCELLENCY'S COMMAND WITH ADVICE OF COUNCIL,
{Begin handwritten}Richard Bartlett{End handwritten} DEPUTY SECRETARY.
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