MR. ADAMS'S 
 
 EULOGY, 
 
 ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF 
 
 JAIIIE8 xTEOMROi:. 
 
 C^ 
 
DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure %oom 
 
EULOGY: 
 
 ox THE 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER • 
 
 OF 
 
 JAMES MONROE, 
 
 t 
 
 FIFTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE REQUEST OF THE 
 
 CORPORATION OF THE CITY OF BOSTON, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 25th of ^tugust^ 1S3I. 
 
 BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 Ut vultiis liominum, ita simulacra viiltus imbecilla ac mortalia sunt. 
 Forma mentis a^terna, quam tenere et exprimere non por alienamma- 
 teriam et artem.. sed tuis ipse moribus possis. Tacitus ^gricoloe Vita. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 J. H. EASTBURN....CITY PRINTER. 
 
 1831. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S3I,' 
 
 By John H. Eastburn, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 
 
rs ^ I ^T C-- 
 
 CITY OF BOSTON. 
 
 In the Board of Aldermen, Aug. 25, 1831. 
 
 Besolved, That the thanks of the City Council be presented to the Hon. 
 John 0,uincy Adams, for the eloquent Eulogy delivered by him, this 
 day, at the Old South Church, bj' their request, in memory of" the late 
 venerable James Monkoe, and that a copy be requested for the press. 
 
 Resolved. That Aldermen Oliver, Russell, Binney and Harris, with 
 such as the Common Council may join, bo a Committee to carry the fore- 
 going resolve into effect. 
 
 Sent down for concurrence, 
 
 HENRY J. OLIVER, Chairman pro tern. 
 • 
 
 In Common Council, Aug. 25, 1831. 
 Read and Concurred, and Messrs. Stevens, Bigelow, James, Rayner and 
 Wetmore arc joined. 
 
 B. T. PICKMAN, President. 
 A TRUE Copy — Attest, 
 
 S. F. M'CLEARY, C//y Clerk. 
 
 Henry J. Oliver, Esq., Chairman of the Board 
 of Aldermen of the City of Boston. 
 
 QuiNCY, Aug. 26, 1831. 
 Sir — I have received your letter of this day's date, enclosing the Joint 
 Resolutions of the Boards of Aldermen and Common Council of the City, 
 requesting a copy of the Eulogy delivered yesterday by me, for the press. 
 An affectionate regard for the memory of Mr. Monroe, induced me in 
 preparing the Discourse, which the City Council had done me the honour 
 of inviting me to deliver, to take a review of the principal incidents of his 
 life, more extensive than it was practicable to deliver within the compass 
 of time usually allotted to such occasions. I place at the disposal of the 
 City Council, with my respectful thanks to them for the opportunity af- 
 forded me by their appointment, of manifesting my deep sense of the vir- 
 tues and public services of Mr. Monroe, a copy of the Eulogy as it was 
 prepared, considerable portions of which it was found necessary to omit, in 
 the delivery. 
 
 I am with much respect. Sir, your very obedient servant, 
 
 J. Q. ADAMS. 
 
E TJ L O G Y . 
 
 Among the peculiarities affecting the condition of 
 human existence, in a community ibrmed within the 
 period allotted to the life of man, is the state of 
 being exclusively belonging to the individuals who 
 assisted in the formation of that community. Three 
 thousand years have elapsed since the Monarch of 
 Israel, w^ho, from that time, has borne the reputation 
 of the wisest of men, declared that there was no new 
 thing under the sun. And then, as now, the asser- 
 tion, confined to the operations of nature, to the in- 
 stincts of animal life, to the primary purposes, and 
 innate passions of human kind, was, and is, strictly 
 true. Of all the illustrations of the sentiment given 
 by him, the course is now as it was then. One 
 generation passeth away, and another generation 
 cometh. To the superficial observation of the human 
 eye, the Sun still ariseth and goeth down ; the wind 
 whirlcth about continually ; all rivers run into the 
 sea, which yet is not full ; and all things are full of 
 labour, which man cannot utter : yet, although the 
 thing that hath been is that which shall be, and that 
 which is done is that which shall be done, — still the 
 eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled 
 
with hearing : and this affords the solution to all the 
 rest. The aspirations of man to a better condition 
 than that which he enjoys, are at once the pledges 
 pf his immortality, and the privileges of his existence 
 upon earth ; they combine for his enjoyment the still 
 freshening charms of novelty with the immutable 
 laws of creation, and intertwine the ever-varying 
 felicities of his condition with the unchangeable mo- 
 notony of nature. 
 
 Thus, a thousand years after Solomon had ceased 
 to exist upon earth, when his kingdom had been ex- 
 tinguished, and his nation carried into captivity, 
 there arose among his own descendants, a Redeemer 
 of the human race from the thraldom of sin ; the 
 Mediator of a new covenant between God and man. 
 From that time, though all remained unchanged in the 
 phenomena of creation, all was new in the condition 
 of human life. In the rise and fall of successive 
 empires, other novelties succeed each other from age 
 to age. New planets are discovered in the heavens, 
 and new continents are revealed upon earth. 
 New pursuits are opened to industry ; new comforts 
 to enjoyment ; new prospects to hope. The secrets 
 of the physical and intellectual world are gradually 
 disclosed ; the powers of man are from time to time 
 enlarged : — but the eye is not satisfied with seeing, 
 nor the ear filled with hearing. The tendency of 
 the magnet to the Pole, and its application to the 
 purposes of navigation ; the composition of gunpow- 
 der, and its application to the purposes of war ; the 
 invention of printing, and its application to all the 
 purposes of man, in peace and war, — to the wants of 
 the body, and the expansion of the mind, — the gift 
 
as it were, of a new earth to replenish and subdue, 
 by the disclosure of a new hemisphere, to the enter- 
 prise and capacities of man ; all these things are 
 new in the records of the human species. Each of 
 these things diverted into a new channel the current 
 of human affairs, and furnished for the lord of the 
 creation a new system of occupations in his progress 
 from the cradle to the grave. 
 
 But of all the changes effected, and all the novel- 
 ties introduced into the condition of human beings, 
 since the promulgation of the gospel of Christ, none 
 has been more considerable than that, the develope- 
 ment of which began with the severance of the Bri- 
 tish colonies in North America, from the parent- 
 stock. The immediate collisions of rights, interests, 
 and passions, which produced tlie conflict between the 
 parties, and ended in sundering the two portions of 
 the empire engaged, occupied and absorbed the agen- 
 cy and the powers of the actors on that memorable 
 theatre. An English poet has declared it praise 
 enough to fill the ambition of a common man, that 
 he was the countryman of Wolfe, and spoke the lan- 
 guage of Chatham. The colonists, who achieved 
 the independence of North America, were the coun- 
 trymen of Wolfe, and Chatham's language was their 
 mother-tongue. But of what avail for praise would 
 this have been to them, had they not possessed souls, 
 inspired with the same principles, and hearts en- 
 dowed with higher energies than those which con- 
 ducted those illustrious names to the pinnacle of 
 glory. Never would the object of the North Ameri- 
 can Revolution have been accomplished but by men, 
 in whose bosoms the love of liberty had been im- 
 
8 
 
 planted from their birth, and imbibed from the ma- 
 ternal breast. 
 
 Considered in itself, the independence of our coun- 
 try was only the splitting up of one civilized nation 
 into two — caused by usurpation ; consummated by 
 war. As such, it constituted one great element in 
 the history of civilized man during its continuance ; 
 but that was short and transient. From the Stamp 
 Act to the definitive Treaty of Peace, concluded at 
 Paris, on the third of September, 1783, a term of 
 less than twenty years intervened, — a term scarcely 
 sufficient for the action of one of the dramas of 
 Shakspeare. It was not even equal to the duration 
 of one age of man. We have already lived since the 
 close of that momentous struggle nearly thrice the 
 extent of time, in which it passed through all its 
 stages, and there are yet among the living those 
 whose birth preceded even that of the questions upon 
 which hinged our independent existence as a nation. 
 
 Among these was the distinguished person, whose 
 earthly career terminated on the fifty-fifth Anniver- 
 sary of our National Independence. 
 
 James Monroe was born in September, 1759, in 
 the County of Westmoreland, in the then Colony 
 of Virginia ; and at the time of the Declaration of 
 Independence, was in the process of completing his 
 education at the college of William and Mary. He 
 was then seventeen years of age, and at the first 
 formation of the American army entered it as a 
 cadet. Had he been born ten years before, it can 
 scarcely be doubted that he would have been one of 
 the members of the first Congress, and that his name 
 would have gone down to posterity among those of 
 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence. 
 Among the blessings conferred by a beneficent Provi- 
 dence upon this country in the series of events which 
 composed that Revolution, was its influence in the 
 formation of individual and of national character. The 
 controversy which preceded the Revolutionary war, 
 necessarily formed by a practical education the race 
 of statesmen, by whom it was conducted to its close- 
 The nature of the controversy itself, turning upon 
 the elementary principles of civil society, upon the 
 natural rights of man, and the foundations of govern- 
 ment, pointed the attention of men to the investiga- 
 tion of those principles ; exercised all the intellectual 
 faculties of the most ardent and meditative souls, 
 and led to discoveries in tlie theory of government 
 which have changed the face of the world. 
 
 The conflict of mind preceded that of matter. 
 The question at issue, between Great Britain and her 
 colonies, was purely a question of right. On one 
 side, a pretension to authority, on the other a claim 
 of freedom. It was a lawsuit between the British 
 king and Parliament of the one part, and the people 
 of the colonics, of the other, pleaded before the tri- 
 bunal of the human race. It was an advantage to 
 the cause of the colonies in that contest, that it re- 
 posed exclusively upon the basis of right. " Au- 
 thority," says a keen observer of human nature, 
 
 " Authority, though it err like others, 
 " Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself 
 " That skins the vice on the top." 
 
 In the preluding struggle, to the war of Independ- 
 ence, British authority was constantly administering 
 this self-healing medicine to her own wrongs. The 
 2 
 
10 
 
 first asserfion of lier right, was an act of Parliament 
 to levy a tax. When she found its execution im- 
 practicable, she repealed the tax, but declared the 
 right of Parliament to make laws for the colonies, in 
 all cases wiiatsoever. To this mere declaration, the 
 colonies could make no resistance. It skinned the 
 vice on the top. With the next act of taxation, she 
 sent fleets and armies for the healing medicine to 
 her errors. She dissolved the colonial Assemblies, 
 revoked the colonial charters, sealed up the port of 
 Boston, annihilated the colonial fisheries, and pro- 
 claimed the province of Massachusetts bay in rebel- 
 lion. These were the healing medicines of British 
 authority ; while the only pretence of right that she 
 could allege for all these acts, was the sovereignty 
 of the British Parliament. 
 
 To contend against this array of power, the only 
 defence of the colonies at the outset was the right 
 and justice of their cause. From the first promul- 
 gation of the Stamp- Act, the spirit of resistance with 
 the speed of a sunbeam, flashed instantaneous 
 through all the colonies ; kindled every heart and 
 raised every arm. But this spirit of resistance, and 
 this unanimity, would have been transitory and 
 evanescent, had it not been sustained, invigorated, 
 and made invincible, by the basis of eternal and im- 
 mutable justice in the cause. It engrossed, it ab- 
 sorbed all the faculties of the soul. It inspired the 
 eloquence which poured itself forth in the colonial 
 Assemblies, in the instructions from the inhabitants 
 of many of the towns to their Representatives, and 
 even in newspaper essays, and occasional pamphlets 
 by individuals. The general contest gave rise to 
 
11 
 
 frequent incidental controTersies between the royal 
 Governors, and the colonial Legislatures, in which 
 the collision of principles, stimulated the energies, 
 directed the researches, and expanded the faculties 
 of those who maintained the rights of their country. 
 The profoundest philosophical statesman of the Brit- 
 ish empire, at that period, noticed the operation of 
 these causes, in one of his admirable speeches to the 
 House of Commons. He remarked the natural ten- 
 dency and effect of the study and practice of the law, 
 to quicken the intellect, and to sharpen the reason- 
 ing powers of men. He observed the preponderant 
 portion of lawyers in the colonial Legislatures, and 
 in the continental Congress, and the influence of 
 their oratory and their argument upon the under- 
 standing and the will of their countrymen. Yet that 
 same clear sighted and penetrating statesman, long 
 after the Declaration of Independence, penned with 
 his own hand an address to the people of the United 
 States, urging them to return to their British allegi- 
 ance, and assuring them that their struggle against 
 the colossal power of Great Britain, must be fruit- 
 less and vain. Chatham himself, the most eloquent 
 orator of England — whose language it is the boast of 
 honest pride to speak — Chatham, a peer of the Brit- 
 ish realm, in the sanctuary of her legislation, declar- 
 ed his approbation of the American cause, his dis- 
 claimer of all right in Parliament to tax the colonies, 
 and his joy, that the people of the colonies, had re- 
 sisted the pretension. Yet that same Chatham, not 
 only after the declaration, l)ut after the conclusion of 
 solemn treaties of alliance bet\A een the United 
 States and France, sacrificed the remnant of his 
 
12 
 
 days, and wasted his expiring breath, in feeble and 
 fruitless protestations against the irrevocable sentence 
 to which his country was doomed — the acknowl- 
 edgement of American Independence. It has been 
 said, that men's judgments are a parcel of their for- 
 tunes ; and they who believe in a superintending 
 Providence have constant occasion to remark the 
 wisdom from above, which unfolds the jjurposes of 
 signal improvement in the condition of man, by pre- 
 paring, and maturing in advance, the instruments by 
 which they are ultimately to be accomplished. The 
 intellectual conflict, which, for a term of twelve 
 years, had preceded the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, had formed a race ofmen^ of whom the signers 
 of that instrument were the selected and faithful 
 representatives. Their constituents were like them- 
 selves. Life, fortune, and sacred honour, were 
 staked upon the maintenance of that declaration. 
 Not alone the life, fortune, and sacred honour of the 
 individuals who signed their names, but with little 
 exception, of the people whom they represented. 
 One spirit animated the mass, and that spirit A\as 
 invincible. It is a striking circumstance to remark, 
 that in the island of Great Britain, not a single mind 
 existed capable of comprehending this spirit and its 
 power. Deeper and more capacious minds, bolder 
 and more ardent hearts, than Burke and Chatham, 
 have seldom, in any age of the world, and in any 
 region of the earth, appeared upon the stage of action. 
 Yet we have here unquestionable demonstration 
 that neither of them had iormed a conception of the 
 power, physical, moral, and intellectual, of that un- 
 €xtinguishable flame which pervaded every particle 
 
13 
 
 of the man, soul and body, of the self declared inde- 
 pendent American. It is an easy resource of vulgar 
 controversy to transfer the stress of her argument 
 from the cause, to the motive of her adversary, and 
 the rottenness of any cause, will generally be found 
 proportioned to the propensity manifested by its sup- 
 porters to resort to this expedient. On the question 
 which bred the revolution of independence, the tax- 
 ation of tlie colonies by Parliament, all the great 
 and leading minds of the British islands, all who 
 have left a name on \\ liich the memory of posterity 
 will repose, Mansfield and Johnson excepted, were 
 on the American side. Burke, Cliatham, Camden, 
 Fox, Sheridan, Rockingham, Dunning, Barre, Lans- 
 down, all recorded their constant, deep, and solemn 
 protestations, against the system of measures whicli 
 forced upon the colonies the blessing of Independ- 
 ence. But when Chatham and Camden raised in 
 vain their voices to arrest the uplifted arm of oppress- 
 ion, George Grenville and his abettors knew, or 
 deemed so little of the s])irit and argument of the 
 Americans, that they affirmed it was all furnished for 
 them by Chatham and Camden, and that their only 
 motive was to supplant the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer. Adam Smith, the penetrating searcher in- 
 to the causes of the wealth of nations, whose book 
 was published about a year after the Declaration of 
 Independence, without deigning to spend a word up- 
 on the cause of America, with deep sagacity of face 
 and gravity of muscle, assures his readers, that they 
 are very weak, who imagine that the Americans will 
 easily be conquered — for tliat the continental Con- 
 gress consists of men, who from shopkeepers, trades- 
 
14 
 
 men and attornies, arc become statesmen and leffls- 
 lators. That they are employed in contriving a new 
 form of government, for an extensive empire, which 
 they justly Hatter tliemsclves will become one of the 
 greatest and most formidable that ever was in the 
 world. That if the Americans should be subdued, 
 all these men luould lose their importance — and the 
 remedy that he proposes is, to start a new object for 
 their ambition, by forming a union of the colonies 
 w itli Great Britain, and admitting some of the lead- 
 ing Americans into Parliament. Yet this man was 
 the author of a Theory of Moral Sentiments in which 
 he resolved all moral principle into sympathy. 
 
 True it was, that the shopkeepers, tradesmen and 
 attornies, were occupied in contriving a new form of 
 government, for an extensive empire, which they 
 might reasonably flatter themselves would become 
 the greatest and most glorious that the world has 
 ever seen. They were at the same time employed 
 in raising, organizing, training, and disciplining fleets 
 and armies to maintain the cause of freedom, and of 
 their country, against all Britannia's thunders. And 
 they were employed in maintaining by reason and 
 argument before the tribunal of mankind, and in the 
 face of heaven, the eternal justice of their cause. 
 Thus they were employed. Thus had been employ- 
 ed the members of the continental Congress and 
 thousands of their constituents, from the time when 
 the princes and nobles of Britain had imposed these 
 employments upon them, by the visitation of the 
 Stamp-act. And now is it not matter of curious 
 speculation, does it not open new views of human 
 nature, to observe, that while the shopkeepers, 
 
15 
 
 tradesmen and attornies of British North America 
 were thus employed, Adam Smith, the profound 
 theorist of moral sentiment, the illustrious discoverer 
 of the sources of the wealth of nations, could in the 
 depth and compass of his mighty mind, imagine no 
 operative impulse to the conduct of men thus em- 
 ployed, but a paltry gratification of vanity, in their 
 individual importance, from which they might easily 
 be weaned, by the superior and irresistible allurement 
 of a seat in the British House of Commons ? 
 
 More than half a century has now passed away ; 
 the fruits of the employment of these shopkeepers, 
 tradesmen, and attornies, transformed into statesmen 
 and legislators, now^ form the most instructive, as 
 well as the most splendid chapter in the history of 
 mankind. They did contrive a new form of govern- 
 ment for an extensive empire, which nothing under 
 the canopy of heaven, but the basest degeneracy of 
 their posterity can prevent from becoming the great- 
 est and the most formidable that the world ever saw. 
 They did maintain before earth and heaven, the jus- 
 tice of their cause. They did defend their country 
 against all the thunders of Britain, and compelled her 
 monarch, her nobles, and her people, to acknowledge 
 the Independence which they had declared, and to 
 receive their confederated republic among the sove- 
 reign potentates of the world. Of the shopkeepers, 
 tradesmen and attornies who composed the Congress 
 of Independence, the career on earth has closed. 
 They sleep with their fathers. Have they lost their 
 individual importance ? Say, ye who venerate as an 
 angel upon earth, the solitary remnant of that assem- 
 bly, yet lingering upon the verge of eternity. Give 
 
16 
 
 me the rule of pro})ortion, benveen a seat, from old 
 Sarum, in the House of Commons, and the name of 
 Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, at the foot of the 
 Dechinition of Independence ? Was honest fame, 
 one of tlie motives to action in the human heart, 
 e.xchidcd from the philoso])hical estimate of Adam 
 Smith ? Did he suppose patriotism, the love of lib- 
 erty, benevolence, and ardour for the welfare 
 and improvement of human kind, inaccessible to 
 tiie bosoms of the shopkeeper statesman, and attor- 
 ney legislators ? I forbear to pursue the inquiry fur- 
 ther, though more ample illustration might easily be 
 adduced to confirm the position which I would sub- 
 mit to your meditations : that the conflict for our 
 national Independence, and the controversy of twelve 
 years which preceded it, did, in the natural course of 
 events, and by the ordinary dispensations of Provi- 
 dence, produce and form a race of men, of moral and 
 intellectual power, adapted to the times and circum- 
 stances in which they lived, and with characters and 
 motives to action, not only differing from those which 
 predominate in other ages and climes, but of which 
 men accustomed only to the common place impulses 
 of human nature, are no more able to form a concep- 
 tion, than blindness, of the colours of the rainbow. 
 
 Of this race of men, James Monroe was one — not 
 of those who did, or could take a part in the prelim- 
 inary controversy, or in the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence. He may be said almost to have been born 
 with the question, for at the date of the Stamp-Act, 
 he was in the fifth year of his age ; but he was bred 
 in the school of the prophets, and nurtured in the 
 detestation of tyranny. His patriotism outstripped 
 
17 
 
 the lingering march of time, and at the dawn of 
 manhood, he joined the standard of his country. It 
 was at the very period of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, issued as you know at the hour of severest 
 trial to our country ; w hen every aspect of her cause 
 was unpropitious and gloomy. Mr. Monroe com- 
 menced his military career, as his country did that 
 of her Independence, with adversity. He joined her 
 standard when others were deserting it. He re- 
 paired to the head quarters of Washington at New- 
 York, precisely at the time when Britain w as pour- 
 ing her thousands of native and foreign mercenaries, 
 upon our shores ; when in proportion as the battal- 
 ions of invading armies thickened and multiplied, 
 those of the heroic chieftain of our defence were 
 dwindling to the verge of dissolution. When the 
 disastrous days of Flat Bush, Haerlem Heights, and 
 White Plains, w^ere followed by the successive evac- 
 uation of Long Island, and New- York, the surren- 
 der of Fort Washington, and the retreat through the 
 Jersies; till on the day devoted to celebrate the birth 
 of the Saviour of mankind, of the same year on which 
 Independence ^^ as proclaimed, Washington with the 
 houseless heads, and unshod feet, of three thousand 
 new and undisciplined levies, stood on the western 
 bank of the Delaware, to contend in arms with the 
 British Lion, and to baffle the skill and energy of 
 the chosen champions of Britain, with ten times the 
 number of his shivering and emaciate host; the 
 stream of the Delaware, forming the only barrier be- 
 tween the proud array of thirty thousand veteran 
 Britons, and the scanty remnant of his dissolving 
 bands. Then it was that the glorious leader of our 
 3 
 
18 
 
 forces struck the blow, wliicli decided the issue of 
 the war. Tlien it was that the myriads of Britain's 
 warriors were arrested in their career of victory, by 
 the hundreds of our gallant defenders, as the sling 
 of the shepherd of Israel, prostrated the Philistine, 
 who defied the armies of the living God. And 
 in this career both of adverse and of prosperous for- 
 tune, James Monroe was one of that little Spartan 
 band, scarcely more numerous, though in the event 
 more prosperous, than they who fell at Thermopylae. 
 At the Heights of Haerlem, at the White Plains, at 
 Trenton he was present, and in leading the vanguard 
 at Trenton, received a ball, which sealed his patriotic 
 devotion to his country's freedom with his blood. — 
 The superintending Providence which had decreed 
 that on that, and a swiftly succeeding day, Mercer, 
 and Haselet, and Porter, and Neal, and Fleming, 
 and Shippen, should join the roll of w^arlike dead, 
 martyrs to the cause of liberty, reserved Monroe 
 for higher services, and for a long and illustrious ca- 
 reer, in war and in peace. 
 
 Recovered from his wound, and promoted in rank, 
 as a reward for his gallantry and suffering in the field, 
 he soon returned to the Army, and served in the 
 character of Aid-de-Camp to Lord Sterling, through 
 the campaigns of 1777 and 1778: during which, 
 he was present and distinguished in the actions 
 of Brandywine, Germantovvn, and Monmouth. But, 
 having by this been superseded of his lineal rank in 
 the Army, he withdrew from it, and failing, from the 
 exhausted state of the country, in the effort to raise 
 a regiment, for which, at the recommendation of 
 Washington, he had been authorized by the Legis- 
 
19 
 
 lature of Virginia, he resumed the study of the law, 
 under the friendly direction of the illustrious Jeffer- 
 son, then Governor of that Commonwealth. In the 
 succeeding years, he served occasionally as a volun- 
 teer, in defence of the State, against the distressing 
 invasions with which it was visited, and once, after 
 the fall of Charleston, South-Carolina, 1780, at the 
 request of Governor Jefferson, repaired, as a military 
 commissioner, to collect and report information with 
 regard to the condition and prospects of the southern 
 Army and States ; a trust, which he discharged to 
 the entire satisfaction of the Governor and Execu- 
 tive, by whom it had been committed to him. 
 
 In 1782, he was elected a member of the Legisla- 
 ture of Virginia, and, by them, a member of the 
 Executive Council. On the ninth of June, 1783, 
 he was chosen a member of the Congress of the 
 United States ; and, on the thirteenth of December, 
 of the same year, took his seat in that body, at An- 
 napolis, where his first act was, to sit as one of those 
 representatives of the nation into whose hands the 
 victorious leader of the American Armies surrendered 
 his commission. Mr. Monroe was now twenty- 
 four years of age, and had already performed that, 
 in the service of his country, which would have suf- 
 ficed for the illustration of an ordinary life. 
 
 The first fruits of his youth had been given to her 
 defence in war : the rigour and maturity of his man- 
 hood was now to be devoted to her w elfare in council. 
 The War of Independence closed as it had begun, by a 
 transaction new under the sun. The fourth of July, 
 1776, had witnessed the social compact of a self- 
 constituted nation, formed by Peace and Union, 
 
20 
 
 in the midst of a calamitous and desolating war. 
 To carry that nation through this war, the sole ob- 
 ject of which, thenceforward, was the perpetual es- 
 tablislinicut of that self-proclaimed Independence, 
 a Standing-Army became indispensable. Temporary 
 levies of undisciplined militia, and enlistments for a 
 few weeks, or months, were soon found inadequate 
 for defence against the veteran legions of the invader. 
 Enlistments for three years, were finally succeeded 
 by permanent engagements of service during the 
 war. These forces were disbanded at the peace. 
 Successive bands of warriors had maintained a con- 
 flict of seven years' duration, but Washington had 
 been the commander of them all. His commission, 
 issued twelve months before the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, had been commensurate with the war. 
 He was the great military leader of the cause ; and 
 so emphatically did he exemplify the position I have 
 assumed, that Providence prepares the characters of 
 men, adapted to the emergencies in which they are 
 to be placed, that, were it possible for the creative 
 power of imagination to concentrate in one human 
 individual person, the cause of American Independ- 
 ence, in all its moral grandeur and sublimity, that 
 person would be no other than Washington. His 
 career of public service was now at an end. The 
 military leaders of other ages had not so terminated 
 their public lives. Gustavus Vasa, William of Or- 
 ange, the Duke of Braganza, from chieftains of pop- 
 ular revolt, had settled into hereditary rulers over- 
 those whom they had contributed to emancipate. 
 The habit of command takes root so deep in the 
 human heart, that Washington is perhaps the only 
 
21 
 
 example in human annals of one in which it was 
 wholly extirpated. In all other records of humanity, 
 the heroes of patriotism have sunk into hereditary 
 Princes. Glorious achievements have always claim- 
 ed magnificent rewards. Washington, receiving 
 from his country the mandate to fight the battles of 
 her freedom, assumes the task at once with deep 
 humility, and undaunted confidence, disclaiming in 
 advance all reward of profit, which it might be 
 in her power to bestow. After eight years of 
 unexampled perils, labors, and achievements, the 
 warfare is accomplished ; the cause in which he had 
 drawn his sword, is triumphant ; the independence 
 of his country is established ; her union cemented by 
 a bond of confederation, the imperfection of which 
 had not yet been disclosed ; he comes to the source 
 whence he first derived his authority, and, in the 
 face of mankind, surrenders the truncheon of com- 
 mand, restores the commission, the object of which 
 had been so gloriously accomplished, and returns to 
 mingle with the mass of his fellow-citizens, in the 
 retirement of private life, and the bosom of domestic 
 felicity. 
 
 Three years, from 1783 to 17<S6, Mr. Monroe 
 continued a member of the Confederate Congress, 
 and had continual opportunity of observing the utter 
 inefficiency of that Compact for the preservation and 
 welfare of the Union. 
 
 The union of the North American Colonies, may 
 be aptly compared to the poetical creation of the 
 world : 
 
 From Harmony — from heavenly Harmony 
 
 This universal frame began ; 
 When Nature, underneath an heap 
 
2f 
 
 Of jarring atoms lay, 
 
 And could not heave her head — 
 The tuneful voice was heard from high 
 Arise, ye more than dead, 
 Then cold and hot, and moist and dry, 
 
 In order to their stations leap. 
 And Music's power obey. 
 
 Such, with more than poetical truth, was the crea- 
 tion of the American Union. 
 
 When, on the filth of September, 1774, a number 
 of the delegates chosen and appointed by the several 
 colonies and provinces in North America, to meet and 
 hold a Congress at Philadelphia, assembled at the 
 Carpenters' Hall, — on that same day, a new nation 
 was created : then, indeed, it was but in embryo. 
 Neither Independence, nor self-government, nor per- 
 manent confederation, were of the purposes for which 
 that Congress was convened. It was to draw up 
 and exhibit statements of the common grievances : 
 to consult and confer upon the common violated 
 rights ; to address their fellow-subjects of Great 
 Britain, and of the colonies, with complaint of wrongs 
 endured, and humbly to petition his most excellent 
 majesty, their most gracious sovereign, for redress. 
 These purposes were performed, and totally failed 
 of success ; but the Union was formed ; the seed of 
 Independence was sown ; and the Congress, after a 
 session of seven weeks, on the twenty-sixth of Octo- 
 ber, dissolved. 
 
 When the second Congress met, on the tenth of 
 May, 1775, the war had already commenced: blood 
 had flowed in streams at Concord and Lexington ; 
 and scarcely had they been a month in session, when 
 the fires of Charlcstown ascended to an avenging 
 
23 
 
 heaven ; and Warren fell a martyr to the cause of 
 the Union before that of Independence was even 
 born. Still, the powers and instructions of the del- 
 egates extended only to concert, agree upon, direct, 
 and order such further measures as should, to them, 
 appear to be best calculated for the recovery and 
 establishments of American rights and liberties, and 
 for restoring harmony between Great Britain and the 
 colonies. 
 
 These objects were pursued with steadiness, per- 
 severance, and sincerity, till the people, whom they 
 represented, sickened at the humiliations to which 
 they submitted ; till insult heaped upon injury, and 
 injury superadded to insult, aggravated the burden 
 to a point beyond endurance : the decree of the peo- 
 ple went forth : the whole people of the United 
 Colonies declared them Independent States : the 
 nation was born; like the first of the human race, 
 issuing, full grown and perfect, from the hands of 
 his Maker. 
 
 But while this Independence, thus declared, was 
 to be maintained by a war, — of the successful issue 
 to which, all spirit, but that of heroic martyrdom, 
 might well despair, — all the institutions of organized 
 authority were to be created. By an act of primi- 
 tive sovereignty, the people of the colonies annihi- 
 lated all the civil authorities by which they had been 
 governed : as one corporate body, they declared them- 
 selves a member of the community of civilized, but 
 independent, nations, — acknowledging the Christian 
 Code of natural and conventional laws, — united, al- 
 ready, by solemn compact, but without organized 
 government, either for the Union, or for the separate 
 
24 
 
 members ; also, corporate and associated bodies, of 
 which it was composed. 
 
 The position of the people of these colonies on 
 that dav, was indeed a new thine; under the sun. — 
 The nature and character of the war, was totally 
 changed. Their relations individual and collective, 
 towards one another, towards the government and 
 people of Great Britain, towards all the rest of man- 
 kind, were changed ; thej were men in society, and 
 yet had reverted to the state of nature ; they had no 
 government, no fundamental laws. Inhabiting a ter- 
 ritory more extensive than all Europe, previously di- 
 vided into thirteen communities, little sympathizing 
 with one another, and actuated by principles more 
 of mutual repulsion, than attraction, with elements 
 for legislation, not only various, but hostile to each 
 other ; they w ere called at one and the same time to 
 wage a war of unparalleled difficulty and danger. — 
 To transfer their duties of allegiance, and their rights 
 of protection from the Sovereign of their birth to the 
 new republic of their own creation ; and to rebuild 
 the superstructure of civil society, by a complicated 
 government, adequate to their wants ; a firm, com- 
 pact and energetic whole, composed of thirteen en- 
 tire independent parts. The first and most urgent 
 of their duties, because in its nature it admitted of 
 no delay, was to provide for the maintenance and 
 conduct of the war ; but Avith all its difficulties, that 
 was the least arduous of their duties. To organize 
 the government of a mighty empire, was a task, 
 which had never before been performed by man. — 
 The undertaking formed an aera, in the annals of 
 the human race ; an a^ra far surpassing in impor- 
 
tance all others since the appearance of the Saviour 
 upon earth. 
 
 There were fortunately a few fundamental princi- 
 ples upon which there was among the proclaimers of 
 Independence, a perfect unanimity of opinion. The 
 first, of these was that the Union already formed be- 
 tween the Colonies should be permanent — perpetual 
 — indissoluble. The second, that it should be a 
 confederated Union, of which each Colony should 
 be an independent State. Self-governed by its 
 own municipal Code — but of which each citizen, 
 should be also a citizen of the whole. The third, 
 that the whole confederation, and each of its mem- 
 bers, should be republican ; without hereditary mon- 
 arch, without privileged orders. On the tenth of 
 Ma}^, preceding the Declaration of Independence, 
 Congress had passed a resolution, recommending to 
 the several Colonies to adopt such Government as 
 should, in the opinion of the Representatives of the 
 people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of 
 their constituents in particular, and America in gener- 
 al; and in the preamble to this Resolution, adopted five 
 days later, they assigned as the reason for it the ne- 
 cessity that the exercise of every kind of authority 
 under the crown of Great Britain, should be totally 
 suppressed, and all the powers of Government exer- 
 cised under the authority of the people of the colo- 
 nies. 
 
 And on the eleventh of June, 1776, the same day 
 upon which the Committee was appointed to report 
 the Declaration of Independence, it was resolved to 
 appoint another Committee to prepare and digest the 
 form of a confederation to be entered into between 
 4 
 
^26 
 
 the colonies, and a third committee to prepare a 
 plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers. 
 
 Thus far, there had been no diversity of opinion 
 among those, whose minds were made up for the 
 Declaration of Independence. The people of each 
 colony were to construct their own form of Govern- 
 ment : a form of Confederation was to be prepared 
 for the whole. The history of mankind, ancient 
 and modern, presented several examples of confeder- 
 ated States, not one of a confederated Government : 
 and even of former confederations there was not one 
 which extended over a territory equal to that of one 
 member of the American Union. For a confederat- 
 ed Government, the people of the colonies were ut- 
 terly unprepared. The constitutions of the States 
 were formed without much difficulty, and, after 
 more than half a century, although we have witness- 
 ed frequent and numerous changes in their organiza- 
 tion, there have been scarcely any of important prin- 
 ciple. The great features of the political system 
 upon which American Independence was declared, 
 remain unchanged — bright in immortal youth. For 
 Union, for Independence, for self-government, the 
 elements were all at hand, and they were homo- 
 geneous. There was no seed of discord and of 
 strife among them. For the structure of the confed- 
 eracy it was not so. There was first a general spirit 
 of distrust and jealousy against the investment of the 
 federal head with power. There were then local 
 and sectional prejudices, interests and passions, tend- 
 ing to reciprocal discontents and enmities. There 
 were diversities in the tenure and character of prop- 
 erty in the different States, not altogether harmoniz- 
 
27 
 
 ing with the cause of Independence itself. There 
 were controversies of boundaries between many of the 
 contiguous colonies, and questions of deeper vitality, 
 to whom the extra-territorial lands, without the 
 bounds of the colonial charters, but within the com- 
 pass of the federative domain, would belong ? So 
 powerfully did these causes of discord operate, even 
 in the midst of the struggle for Independence, that 
 nearly five years elapsed after the Declaration, be- 
 fore the consent of the States could be obtained to 
 the Articles of Confederation. 
 
 This experiment, as is well known, proved a total 
 failure. The Articles of Confederation were ratified 
 by ten of the States as early as Jul}', 1778. Mary- 
 land withheld her assent to them, until March, 1781, 
 when it first went into operation ; and even then, one 
 of its principal defects was so generally perceived and 
 foreseen, that, on the preceding third of February, 
 Congress had adopted a Resolution, declaring it in- 
 dispensably necessary that they should be vested with 
 a power to levy an impost duty of five per cent, to 
 pay the public debt. Even this power, some of the 
 States refused to grant. 
 
 In December 1783, when Mr. Monroe took his 
 seat in Congress, the first act of that body should 
 have been to ratify the definitive treaty of peace with 
 Great Britain, which had been signed at Paris on the 
 preceding third of September. That treaty was 
 the transaction, which closed the revolutionary war, 
 and settled forever the question of American Inde- 
 pendence. It was stipulated, that its ratifications 
 should be exchanged within six months from the day 
 of its signature ; and we can now scarcely believe it 
 possible, that but for a mere accident, the faith of 
 
28 
 
 the nation would have been violated, and the treaty 
 itself cancelled, lor want of a power in Congress, to 
 l)ass it through the mere formalities of ratification. 
 By the articles of confederation, no treaty could be 
 concluded, without the assent of nine states. — 
 Against the Ratification, there was not a voice 
 throughout the union ; but only seven states were 
 assembled in Congress. Then came a captious de- 
 bate, whether the act of ratification was a mere for- 
 mality for w hich seven States w^ere as competent as 
 nine, or whether it was the very medullary substance 
 of a Treaty, which, unless assented to by nine States, 
 would be null and void — a monstrous and tyrannical 
 usurpation. 
 
 AH the powers of government, in free countries, 
 emanate from the people : all organized and opera- 
 tive power exists by delegation from the people. 
 Upon these two pillars is erected the whole fabric 
 of our freedom. That all exercise of organized 
 power should be for the benefit of the people, is 
 the first maxim of government ; and, in the delega- 
 tion of powder to the government, the problem to 
 be solved is, the most extensive possible grant of 
 power to be exercised for the common good ; with 
 the most effective possible guard against its abuse 
 to the injury of any one. Our fathers, who formed 
 the confederation, witnesses to the recent abuse of 
 organized power, and sufferers by it, mistook the 
 terms of the problem before them, and thought that 
 the only security against the abuse of power, was 
 stinginess of grant in its organization : not duly con- 
 sidering that power, not delegated, cannot be exer- 
 cised for the common good, and that the denial of it, 
 to their government, is equivalent to the abdication 
 
29 
 
 of it bj themselves. All impotence of the govern- 
 ment, therefore, thus becomes the impotence of the 
 people, who fornjed it; and, in its result, places the 
 nation itself on a footing of inferiority, compared 
 with others in the community of independent nations. 
 Nor did they sufficiently foresee that this excessive 
 caution to withhold beneficent power, in the organic 
 frame of government, necessarily and unavoidably 
 leads to usurpation of it. The Ordinance for the 
 Government of the north-western Territory, was a 
 signal example of this course of things, under the 
 Articles of Confederation. A perusal of the journals 
 of Congress, public and secret, from the year 1778, 
 when the Articles of Confederation were completed, 
 and partially adopted, till 1789, when they were su- 
 perseded by the present Constitution of the United 
 States, will give the liveliest and most perfect idea of 
 the character of the Confederation, and of the condi- 
 tion of tlie Union under it. Among the mischievous 
 consequences of the inability of Congress to admin- 
 ister the affairs of the Union, was the waste of time 
 and talents, of the most eminent patriots of the coun- 
 try, in captious, irritating, and fruitless, debates. 
 The commerce, the public debt, the fiscal con- 
 cerns, the foreign relations, the public lands, the ob- 
 ligations to the revolutionary veterans, the inter- 
 course of war and peace with the Indian tribes, were 
 all subjects upon which the beneficent action of Con- 
 gress was necessary ; while, at every step, and upon 
 every subject, they were met by the same insur- 
 mountable barrier of interdicted or undelegated pow- 
 er. Tiiese observations may be deemed not inappro- 
 priate to the apology for Mr. Mokroe, and for all 
 
30 
 
 the distinguished patriots associat(;d with him, during 
 his three years of service in the Congress of the Con- 
 federation, in contemplating the slender results of 
 benefit to the public in all the service, which it was 
 possible for them, thus cramped and crippled, to 
 render. 
 
 Within the appropriate sphere of action, however, 
 to which the powers of Congress were competent, 
 Mr. Monroe took a distinguished part. That body 
 often resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole, 
 to deliberate upon an empty Treasury, upon accumu- 
 lating debts, and clamorous creditors ; upon m'gent 
 recommendations to the State Legislatures, which 
 some of them would adopt, simply, and some, con- 
 ditionally; others, indefinitely postpone : some, leave 
 without answer ; and others, sturdily reject. This 
 Committee of the Whole referred every knotty sub- 
 ject to a Select Committee, from whom they would, 
 in due time, receive an able, and thoroughly reasoned, 
 Report, which they would debate by paragraphs, and 
 finally reject for some other debatable substitute, or 
 adopt with numerous amendments, and after many a 
 weary record of yeas and nays. 
 
 On the eighteenth of April, 1783, the Resolution of 
 Congress had passed, declaring it absolutely neces- 
 sary that they should be vested with a power to levy 
 an impost of five per cent. On the thirtieth of April, 
 1784, another Resolution was adopted, recommend- 
 ing to the Legislatures of the States to grant to Con- 
 gress the power of regulating commerce. And on 
 the thirteenth of July, 1785, Congress debated the 
 Report of a Committee, of which Mr. Monroe was 
 the Chairman, combining the objects of both those 
 
31 
 
 prior Resolutions, and proposing such alteration of tlie 
 Articles of the Confederation, as was necessary to 
 vest Congress with the power, both to regulate com- 
 merce, and to levj an impost duty. These meas- 
 ures were not abortive, inasmuch as they were pro- 
 gressive steps in the march towards better things. 
 They led first to the partial convention of delegates, 
 from five States, at Annapolis, in September, 178G ; 
 and then to the general convention, at Philadelphia, 
 in 1787, which prepared and proposed the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. Whoever contributed to 
 that event, is justly entitled to the gratitude of the 
 present age, as a public benefactor ; and among 
 them, the name of Monroe should be conspicuously 
 enrolled. 
 
 Among the very few powers, which, by the Arti- 
 cles of Confederation, had been vested in Congress, 
 was that of constituting a Court of Commissioners, 
 selected from its own body, to decide upon any dis- 
 puted question of boundary, jurisdiction, or any other 
 cause whatever, between any two States in the 
 Union. These Commissioners were, in the first in- 
 stance, to be chosen, with mutual consent, by the 
 agents of the two States, parties to the controversy ; 
 the final determination of which, was submitted to 
 them. 
 
 Such a controversy had taken place between ihe 
 States of Massachusetts and New- York, the agents 
 of which, attending in Congress in December, 1784, 
 agreed upon nine persons, to constitute the federal 
 court, to decide the question between the parties. 
 Of these nine persons, James Monroe was one : a 
 distinction, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, indi- 
 
32 
 
 rating the high estimation in which he was already 
 held throughout the Union. The subsequent history 
 of" this controversy, to its final and friendly settle- 
 ment, alTords an illustration coinciding with number- 
 less others of the imbecility of the confederacy. On 
 the twenty-first of March, 1785, Congress were in- 
 formed, by. a letter from Mr. Monroe, that he ac- 
 cepted the appointment of one of the judges of the 
 federal Court, to decide the controversy. On the 
 ninth of June following, the agents, from the con- 
 tending States reported to Congress, that they had 
 agreed upon three persons, whom they named, as 
 Judges of the federal Court, instead of three of those 
 who had been appointed, the preceding December, 
 but had declined accepting their appointment : and 
 the agents requested that a commission might be 
 issued to the Court, as finally constituted, to meet at 
 Williamsburg, in Virginia, on the third Tuesday of 
 November, then next, to hear and determine the 
 controversy. 
 
 On the second of November, of the same year, a 
 representation w^as made by the agents of the two 
 States, to Congress, that such had been the difficul- 
 ties and delays, in obtaining answers from several of 
 the judges, that the parties were left in suspense, 
 even to that hour ; a hearing had thus been prevent- 
 ed, and further procrastination was unavoidable. 
 They petitioned, therefore, that the hearing should 
 be remitted to such a day as the parties should agree 
 upon, and thereafter certify to Congress — and a Re- 
 solution passed accordingly. 
 
 On the fifteenth of May, 1786, a letter was re- 
 ceived by Congress, from Mr. Monroe, informing 
 
3S 
 
 them that some circumstances would put it out of his 
 power to act as a Judge for the decision of this con- 
 troversy, and resigning his commission. 
 
 On the twenty-seventh of September following, 
 Congress were informed by the agents of the parties, 
 that they had agreed upon a person to be a judge, 
 in the place of Mr. Monroe, and they requested that 
 a new commission might be issued to the Court. — 
 The Court never met, for on the sixteenth of De- 
 comber, 1786, the litigating parties, by their respect- 
 ive agents, at Hartford, in Connecticut, settled the 
 controversy, by agreement, between themselves, and 
 to their mutual satisfaction. Of this, the agents gave 
 notice to Congress, on the eighth of October, 1787, 
 and they moved, that the attested copy of the agree- 
 ment, between the two States, which they laid be- 
 fore Congress, should be filed in the Secretary's 
 office — which was refused : that body declining even 
 to keep upon their files the evidence of an accord, 
 between two members of the Union, concluded oth- 
 erwise than as the Articles of Confederation had 
 prescribed. 
 
 Mr. Monroe did not assign, in his letter to Con- 
 gress, his reasons for resigning the trust which he 
 had previously consented to assume. They were, 
 probably, motives of delicacy, highly creditable to 
 his character : motives, flowing from a source 
 
 " Beyond tlie fix'd and settled rules 
 " Of vice and virtue in the schools :" 
 
 motives, emanating from a deep and conscientious 
 morality, of \\ hich men of coarser minds are denied 
 the perception, and which, while exerting unresisted 
 5 
 
sway over the conduct actuated by thcni, retire into 
 the self-conviction of their own purity. Between 
 the period, when Mr. Monroe had accepted, and 
 that wlien he withdrew^ from the office of ajudge be- 
 tween tlie States of Massachusetts and New^-York, 
 discussions had arisen, in Congress, relating to a ne- 
 gotiation with Spain, in the progress of which, vary- 
 ing views of public policy were sharpened and stim- 
 ulated, by varying sectional interests, to a point of 
 painful collision. 
 
 After the conclusion of the general peace at Paris, 
 in 1783, Spain, then a feeble and superannuated 
 monarchy, governed by corrupt, profligate, and per- 
 fidious councils, possessed with other colonies of stu- 
 pendous territorial extent, the mouths of the Missis- 
 sippi, and both the shores of that father of the floods, 
 from his first entrance into this continent, to a con- 
 siderable extent inland. Above the thirtv-first de- 
 gree of latitude, the territorial settlements of the 
 United States were spreading in their incipient but 
 gigantic infancy, along his eastern banks and on both 
 shores of the mighty rivers, which contribute to his 
 stream. Spain, by virtue of a conventional, long 
 settled, but abusive principle, of international law, 
 disavowed by the law of nature, interdicted the 
 downward navigation of the Mississippi to the bor- 
 derers upon the shores, above her line ; on the bare 
 plea that both sides of the river were within her do- 
 main at the mouth. And well knowing that the nav- 
 igation was equivalent almost to a necessary of life 
 to the American settlers above, she formed the pro- 
 ject at once of dallying negotiation with the new 
 American Republic, to purchase by some commercial 
 
35 
 
 privilege, her assent to a temporary exclusion from 
 the navigation of the Mississippi, and of tampering 
 with the same American settlers, to seduce them 
 from their allegiance to their own country, by the 
 prospect of enjoying under her dominion as Spanish 
 subjects, the navigation of the river, from which they 
 were excluded as citizens of the United States. 
 
 In the collision between the claim of the United 
 States of right to navigate the Mississippi, by the laws 
 of nature, and the treaty of peace with Great Brit- 
 ain, and the actual interdiction of that navigation by 
 Spain, founded upon the usages of nations, hostilities 
 between the two nations had already taken place. 
 A citizen of the United States, descending the Mis- 
 sissippi, had been seized, and imprisoned at Natehez ; 
 and a retaliatory seizure of the Spanish post at Vin- 
 cennes had been effected by citizens of the Uni- 
 ted States. According to all appearances, an imme- 
 diate war with Sjiain, for the navigation of the Mis- 
 sissippi, or a compromise of the question by negotia- 
 tion, was the only alternative, which Congress had 
 before them, and here again appeared a melancholy 
 manifestation of the imbecility of the Union under the 
 Articles of Confederation. 
 
 A diplomatic agent of the lowest order, under the 
 title of Encargardo de Negocios, had been appointed 
 by the king of Spain to reside in the United States, 
 and had been with much formality received by Con- 
 gress, in July, 1785. Though possessed of full pow- 
 ers to conclude a treaty, he had not the rank of a 
 Minister Plenipotentiary, and his title, otherwise un- 
 exampled in European diplomacy, was significant of 
 the estimation in which his Catholic Majesty held 
 
36 
 
 the new American Republic. Immediately after his 
 reception, the Secretary of Congress for Foreign 
 Aftairs, John Jay, of New York, was commissioned 
 to negotiate with tlie Spanish Encargardo ; Ijiit in- 
 structed, previously to his making propositions to the 
 Spaniard, or agreeing with him on any article, com- 
 pact, or convention, to communicate the same to Con- 
 gress. On the 25th of August ensuing, this instruc- 
 tion was repealed, and another substituted in its 
 place, directing him, in his plan of treaty, particular- 
 ly to stipulate the right of the United States to their 
 territorial bounds and the free navigation of the Mis- 
 sissippi, from the source to the ocean, as established 
 in their treaties with Great Britain ; and to conclude 
 no treaty, compact, or convention with Mr. Gardoqui, 
 without previously communicating it to Congress, 
 and receiving their approbation. 
 
 The navigation of the Mississippi soon proved an 
 insurmountable bar, to the prpgress of the negocia- 
 tion. It was, de facto, interdicted by Spain. The 
 right to it could be enforced only by war, and vio- 
 lence on both sides had already taken place. Spain 
 denied the right of the people of the United States 
 to navigate the Mississippi, as pertinaciously, and in 
 as lofty a tone as Great Britain, denies to us, on the 
 same pretence, to this day, the right of navigating 
 the St. Lawrence. After many ineffectual confer- 
 ences with the Spanish negociator, the Secretary of 
 Foreign Affairs requested further instructions from 
 Congress, and in a personal address to that body, 
 recommended to them a compromise with Spain, by 
 the proposal of a commercial treaty, in which, for an 
 adequate equivalent of commercial advantages to the 
 
37 
 
 United States, tliey, without renouncing the right to 
 the navigation of the Mississippi, should stipulate a 
 forbearance of the exercise of that right for a term of 
 twenty-five or thirty years, to w^hich the duration of 
 the treaty should be limited. 
 
 This proposal excited the most acrimonious and 
 irritated struggle between the delegations from the 
 northern and southern divisions of the Unioji, which 
 had ever occurred. The representation from the 
 seven northern states, unanimously agreeing to au- 
 thorize the stipulation recommended by the Secreta- 
 ry, and the five southern states, with the exception 
 of one member, being equally earnest for rejecting it. 
 The state of Delaware was not then represented. 
 In the animated and passionate debates, on a series 
 of questions originating in this inauspicious contro- 
 versy, the delegates from Massachusetts, and among 
 them especially Rufus King, took a warm and distin- 
 guished part ill favour of the proposition of the Sec- 
 retary, while the opposition to it, was maintained 
 with an earnestness equally intense, and with ability 
 not less powerful, by the delegation from Virginia, 
 and among them, pre-eminently, by Mr. Monroe. 
 In reviewing, at this distance of time, the whole sub- 
 ject, a candid and impartial observer cannot fail to 
 perceive that much of the bitterness which mingled 
 itself unavoidably in the contest, arose from the na- 
 ture of the confederacy, and the predominant obliga- 
 tion under which each delegate felt himself to main- 
 tain the interests of his own state and section of the 
 Union. The adverse interests and opposite views of 
 policy brought into conflict by these transactions, pro- 
 duced a coldness and mutual alienation between the 
 
38 
 
 noithcm and southern divisions of the Union which 
 is not extinguished to this day. It gave rise to rank- 
 ling jealousies and festering prejudices, not only of 
 the north and south against each other, but of each 
 section against the ablest and most virtuous patriots 
 of the other. As by the articles of confederation, no 
 treaty could be concluded but with the concurrence 
 of nine states, the authority to make the proposal 
 recommended by the Secretary was not given. The 
 negociation with Spain was transferred to the gov- 
 ernment of the United States, as organized by the 
 present National Constitution. The right of navi- 
 gating the Mississippi from its source to the ocean, 
 w^ith a deposit at New Orleans, was within seven 
 years thereafter, conceded to the United States by 
 Spain, in a solemn treaty, and within twenty years 
 from the negociation Avith the Encargardo, the Mis- 
 sissippi himself with all his waters and all his shores, 
 had passed from the dominion of Spain, and become 
 part of the United States. 
 
 In all the proceedings, relating to the navigation 
 of the Mississippi, from the reception of Mr. Gardo- 
 qui, till the acquisition of Louisiana and its annexation 
 to the United States, the agency of Mr. Monroe 
 was conspicuous above all others. He took the lead 
 in the opposition to the recommendation of Mr. Jay. 
 He signed, in conjunction, with another eminent cit- 
 izen of the State of New- York, Robert R. Livingston, 
 the Treaty which gave us Louisiana : and, during 
 his administration, as President of the United States, 
 the cession of the Floridas was consummated. His 
 system of policy, relating to this great interest, was 
 ultimately crowned with complete success. That 
 
39 
 
 which he opposed, might have severed or dismem- 
 bered the Union. Far be it from me ; far, I know, 
 would it be from the heart of Mr. Monroe himself, 
 to speak it, in censure of those illustrious statesmen, 
 who, in the infancy of the nation, and in the help- 
 lessness of the Confederation, preferred a temporary 
 forbearance of a merely potential and interdicted 
 right, to the apparent and imminent prospect of una- 
 voidable war. Let those who would censure them 
 look to the circumstances of the times, and to the 
 honest partialities of their own bosoms, and then ex- 
 tend to the memory of those deceased benefactors of 
 their country that candour, in the construction of con- 
 duct and imputation of motives, which they will 
 hereafter assuredly need, themselves. - ' 
 
 It was in the heat of the temper, kindled by this 
 cause of discord, in the federal councils, that Mr. 
 Monroe resigned his commission, as a judge between 
 the states of Massachusetts and New-York. The opin- 
 ions of both those states, indeed coincided together, 
 in variance from that which he entertained upon the 
 absorbing interest of the right to navigate the Mis- 
 sissippi. But he beheld their countenance — " that 
 it was not toward him as before." He felt there 
 was no longer the same confidence in the dispositions 
 of north and south to each other, which had existed 
 when the selection of him had been made ; and he 
 withdrew from the invidious duty of deciding be- 
 tween parties, with either of whom he no longer en- 
 joyed the satisfaction of a cordial harmony. 
 
 By the Articles of Confederation, no delegate in 
 Congress, was eligible to serve more than three 
 years in six. Toward the close of 1786, the term of 
 
40 
 
 Mr. Monroe's service, in that capacity, expired. 
 During that term, and while Congress were in ses- 
 sion at New York, lie formed a matrimonial connex- 
 ion with Miss Kortright, daughter of Mr. L. Kort- 
 right, of an ancient and respectable family of that 
 state. This lady, of w^hose personal attractions and 
 accomplishments, it were impossible to speak in 
 terms of exaggeration, was, for a period little short of 
 half a century, the cherished and affectionate partner 
 of his life and fortunes. She accompanied him in all 
 his journeyings through this world of care, from 
 which, by the dispensation of Providence, she had 
 been removed only a few months before himself. 
 The companion of his youth was the solace of his 
 declining years, and to the close of life enjoyed the 
 testimonial of his affection, that with the external 
 beauty and elegance of deportment, conspicuous to 
 all who w^ere honoured with her acquaintance, she 
 united the more- precious and endearing qualities 
 which mark the fulfilment of all the social duties, 
 and adorn with grace, and fill with enjoyment, the 
 tender relations of domestic life. 
 
 After his retirement from service in the Confeder- 
 ation Congress, assuming, with a view to practice at 
 the bar, a temporary residence at Fredericksburg, he 
 was almost immediately elected to a seat in the Le- 
 gislature of Virginia ; and the ensuing year, to the 
 Convention, summoned, in that Commonwealth, to 
 discuss and decide upon the Constitution of the Uni- 
 ted States. 
 
 Mr. Monroe was deeply penetrated with the con- 
 viction that a great and radical change, in the Arti- 
 cles of Confederation, was indispensable, even for the 
 
41 
 
 preservation of the Union. But, in common with 
 Patrick Henry, George Mason, and many other pa- 
 triarchs of the Revolution, his mind was not al- 
 together prepared for that which was, in truth, a 
 revolution, far greater than the severance of the 
 United American Colonies from Great Britain : a 
 revolution accomplishing that which the Declaration 
 of Independence had only conceived and proclaimed : 
 substituting a Constitution of Government for a peo- 
 ])le, instead of a mere Confederation of States. So 
 great and momentous was this change, so powerful 
 the mass of patriotism mid wisdom, as well as of in- 
 terest, prejudice, and ])assion, arrayed against it, that 
 we should hazard little, in considering the final adop- 
 tion and establishment of the Constitution, ns the 
 greatest triumph of pure and peaceful intellect, re- 
 corded in tlie annals of the human race. By the 
 Declaration of Independence, the people of the Uni- 
 ted States had assumed and announced to the world 
 their united personality as a Nation, consisting of 
 thirteen Independent States. They had thereby as- 
 sumed the exercise of primitive sovereign power : 
 that is to say, the sovereignty of the people. The 
 administrative power of such a people, could, how- 
 ever, be exercised only by delegation. Their first 
 attem})t was to exercise it by confining the powers 
 oi' government, to the separate members of the Union, 
 and delegating only the powers of a confederacy to 
 the collective body. This experiment was deliber- 
 ately and thoroughly made and totallv failed. In 
 other ages and other climes the consequences of that 
 failure would have been anarchy : complicated and 
 long continued wars : perhaps, ultimately, one con- 
 solidated military monarchy — elective or hereditary : 
 G 
 
42 
 
 perhaps two or three confederacies — always militant ; 
 with border wars, occasionally intermitted, with bar- 
 rier treaties, impregnable fortresses, rivers hermet- 
 ically sealed, and the close sea of a Pacific Ocean. 
 One Standing Army would have bred its antagonist, 
 and between them they would have engendered a 
 third, to sit like chaos at the gates of Hell, 
 
 " tJmpire of the strife. 
 And, by decision, more embroil the fray." 
 
 Not so, did the people of the North American Un- 
 ion. They adhered to their first experiment of 
 Confederacy, till it was falling to pieces, in its im- 
 medicable weakness. After frequent, long and patient 
 ineffectual struggles, to sustain, and strengthen it, a 
 small and select body of them, by authority of a few 
 of the State Legislatures, convened together to con- 
 fer upon the evils, which the country was suffering, 
 and to consult upon the remedy to be proposed. 
 This body advised the Assembly of a Convention, in 
 which all the States should be represented. Eleven 
 of them did so assemble, with Washington at their 
 head ; with Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, King, 
 Langdon, Sherman, John Rutledge, and compeers of 
 fame, scarcely less resplendent, for members. They 
 immediately perceived that the Union, and a mere 
 Confederacy, were incompatible things. They pro- 
 posed, prepared, and presented, for acceptance, a 
 Constitution of Government for the whole people : a 
 plan, retaining so much of the federative character, 
 as to preserve, unimpaired, the independent and 
 wholesome action of the separate State Govern- 
 ments ; and infusing into the whole body the vital 
 energy necessary for free and efficient action upon 
 
all subjects of common interest and national concern- 
 ment. This plan Avas then submitted to the exam- 
 ination, scrutiny, and final Judgment, of the people, 
 assembled by Representative Conventions, in every 
 State of the Confederacy. To the small portion of 
 my auditory, whose memory can retrace the path of 
 time back to that eventful period, I appeal for the 
 firm belief that, when that plan was first exhibited to 
 the solemn consideration of the people, though pre- 
 sented by a body of men, enjoying a mass of public 
 confidence, far greater than any other, of equal num- 
 bers, then living, could have possessed, it was yet, 
 by a considerable, not to say a large numerical, ma- 
 jority, of the whole people, sincerely, honestly, and 
 heartily, disapproved. It was disapproved, not only 
 by all those who perseveringly adhered to the rejec- 
 tion of it, but by great numbers of those who reluc- 
 tantly voted for accepting it ; considering it then as 
 the only alternative to a dissolution of the Union : 
 and, of those w ho voted for it, of its most ardent and 
 anxious supporters, it may, w ith equal confidence, be 
 affirmed, that no one ever permitted his imagination 
 to anticipate, or his hopes to conceive the extent of 
 the contrast in the condition of the North American 
 people, under that new social compact, with what it 
 had been under the Confederation which it was to su- 
 persede. 
 
 It was, doubtless, among the dispensations of a 
 wise and beneficent Providence, that the severe and 
 pertinacious investigation of this Constitution, as a 
 whole, and in all its minutest parts, by the Conven- 
 tions of all the States, and in the admirable papers 
 of the Federalist, should precede its adoption and es- 
 
44 
 
 tablishment. It may be truly said to have passed 
 through au ordeal of more than burning plouglishares. 
 Never, in the action of a whole people, was obtained 
 so signal a triumph of cool and deliberate judgment, 
 over ardent feeling, and honest prejudices : and nev- 
 er was a people more signally rewarded for so splen- 
 did an example of popular self-controul. 
 
 That Mr. Monroe, then, was one of those enlight- 
 ened, faithful, and virtuous patriots, who opposed the 
 adoption of the Constitution, can no more detract 
 from the eminence of his talents, or the soundness 
 of his ])rinciples, than the project for the tempo- 
 rary abandonment of the right to navigate the Mis- 
 sissippi, can impair those of the eminent citizens of 
 New- York and Massachusetts, by whom that meas- 
 ure was proposed. During a Statesman's life, an 
 estimate of his motives will necessarily mingle itself 
 with every judgment u])on his conduct, and that judg- 
 ment will often be swayed more by the concurring 
 or adverse passions of the observer, than by reason, 
 or even by the merits of the cause. Candour, in the 
 estimate of motives, is rarely the virtue of an adver- 
 sary ; but it is an indispensable duty before the de- 
 finitive tribunal of posthumous renown. 
 
 When in the legislature of Virginia, the question 
 was discussed upon calling a State Convention to 
 decide upon the Constitution of the United States, 
 Mr. Monroe took no part in the debate. He then 
 doubted of the course which it would be most advis- 
 able to pursue. Whether to adopt the Constitution 
 in the hope that certain amendments which he deem- 
 ed necessary, would afterwards be obtained, or to 
 suspend the decision upon the Constitution itself, un- 
 
45 
 
 til those amendments should have been secured. 
 When elected to the Convention, he expressed those 
 doubts to his constituents assembled at the polls ; but 
 his opinion, having afterwards and before the meet- 
 ing of the Convention, settled into a conviction, that 
 the amendments should precede the acceptance of 
 the Constitution, he addressed to his constituents a 
 letter, stating his objections to that instrument, 
 which letter was imperfectly printed, and copies of 
 it were sent by him to several distinguished charac- 
 ters, among whom were Gen. Washington, Mr. Jef- 
 ferson, and Mr. Madison, who viewed it with liberal- 
 ity and candour. 
 
 In the Convention, Mr. Monroe took part in the 
 debate, and in one of his speeches entered fully into 
 the merits of the subject. He was decidedly for a 
 change, and a very important one, in the then exist- 
 ing system ; but the Constitution re])orted, had in his 
 opinion defects requiring amendment, which should 
 be made before its adoption. 
 
 The Convention, however, by a majority of less 
 than ten votes of one hundred and seventy, resolved 
 to adopt the Constitution, with a proposal of amend- 
 ments to be engrafted upon it. Such too, was the 
 definitive conclusion in all the other states, although 
 two of them lingered one or tw o years after it was 
 in full operation by authority of all the rest, before 
 their acquiescence in the decision. 
 
 By the course which Mr. Monroe had pursued on 
 this great occasion, although it left him for a short 
 time in the minority, yet he lost not the confidence 
 either of the people, or of the Legislature of Virginia. 
 At the organization of the government of the United 
 
46 
 
 States, the first senators from that state, were Rich- 
 ard Henry Lee, and William Grayson. The decease 
 of the latter in December 1789, made a vacancy 
 which was immediately supplied by the election of 
 Mr. Monroe ; and in that capacity he served until 
 May, 1794, when he was appointed, at the nomina- 
 tion of President ^Washinj^jton, Minister Plenipoten- 
 tiary to the Republic of France. 
 
 The two great parties which so long divided the 
 feelings and the councils of our common country, un- 
 der the denominations of Federal and Anti-federal, 
 originated with the Union. The Union itself had 
 been formed by the impulse of an attraction irresisti- 
 ble as the adamant of the magnet and scarcely less 
 mystical. It was an union however of subject colo- 
 nies, then making no claim or pretension to sovereign 
 power. But from the hour of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, it became necessary to provide for the 
 perpetuity of the Union and to organize the admin- 
 istration of its affairs. The extent of power to be 
 conferred on the representative body of the Union, 
 became from that instant an object of primary magni- 
 tude, dividing opinions and feelings. Union was de- 
 sired by all — but many were averse even to a confed- 
 eracy. They would have had a league or alliance, 
 offensive and defensive, but not even a permanent 
 confederacy or Congress. It was the party which 
 anxiously urged the adoption of the Articles of Con- 
 federation, who thereby acquired the appellation of 
 Federalists, as their adversaries were known by the 
 name of Anti-federalists. To shew the influence of 
 names over things, we may remark that when the 
 Constitution of the United States was debated, it 
 
47 
 
 formed the first great and direct issue between the 
 parties, which retained their names, but had in real- 
 ity completely changed sides. The Federalists of 
 the Confederacy had abandoned that sinking ship. 
 They might then with much more propriety have been 
 called Nationalists. The real Federalists were the 
 opposers of the Constitution ; for they adhered to the 
 principle, and most of them would have been willing 
 to amend the Articles of Confederation. This in- 
 congruity of name shortly afterwards became so glar- 
 ing, that the Anti-federalists laid theirs aside, and 
 assumed the name sometimes of Republicans and 
 sometimes of Democrats. The name of Republicans 
 is not a suitable denomination of a party of the Uni- 
 ted States, because it implies an offensive and unjust 
 imputation upon their op})onents, as if they were not 
 also Republicans. The truth is, as it was declared 
 by Thomas Jefferson, all are, and all from the De- 
 claration of Independence have been, Republicans. 
 Speculative opinions in favour of a more energetic 
 government on one side, and of a broader range of 
 Democratic rule on the other, have doubtless been 
 entertained by individuals, but both parties have been 
 disposed to exercise tlie full measure of their author- 
 ity when in power, and both have been equallj^ re- 
 fractory to the mandates of authority when out. In 
 the primitive principles of the parties, the Federalists 
 were disposed to consider the first principle of Soci- 
 ety to be the preservation of order ; while their op- 
 ponents viewed the benefit above all others in the en- 
 joyment of liberty. The first explosion of the 
 French Revolution, was cotemporaneous with the 
 first organization of the government of the United 
 
48 
 
 States ; and France and Great Britain were shortly 
 afterwards involved in a war of unparalleled violence 
 and fury. It was a war of opinions ; in which France 
 assumed the attitude of champion for freedom, and 
 Britain that of social order throughout the civilized 
 world. While under these pretences, all sense of jus- 
 tice was banished from the councils and conduct of 
 both ; and both gave loose to the frenzy of boundless 
 ambition, rapacity, and national hatred and revenge. 
 The foundations of the great deep were broken up. 
 The two elementary principles of human society 
 were arrayed in conflict with each other, and not yet, 
 not at this hour is that warfare accomplished. Free- 
 dom and order were also the elementary principles of 
 the two parties in the American Union, and as they 
 respectively predominated, each party sympathized 
 with one or the other of the great European combat- 
 ants. And thus the party movements in our own 
 country became complicated with the sweeping hur- 
 ricane of European politics and wars. The division 
 was deeply seated in the cabinet of Washington. It 
 separated his two principal advisers, and he endeav- 
 oured without success, to hold an even balance be- 
 tween them. . It pervaded the councils of the Union, 
 the two Houses of Congress, the Legislatures of the 
 States, and the people throughout the land. The first 
 partialities of the nation were in favour of France ; 
 prompted both by the remembrances of the recent 
 war for American Independence, and by the impres- 
 sion then almost universal, that her cause was iden- 
 tified with that which had so lately been our own. 
 But when Revolutionary France became one great 
 army ; when the first commentary upon her procla-r 
 
49 
 
 mations of freedom, and her disclaimer of conquest, 
 was the annexation of Belgium to her territories ; 
 when the blood of her fallen monarch was but a 
 drop of the fountains that spouted from her scaffolds, 
 when the goddess of liberty, in her solemn proces- 
 sions, was a prostitute ; when open atheism was 
 avowed and argued in her hall of legislation, and the 
 existence of an Omnipotent God, was among the 
 Decrees of her National Convention, then horror 
 and disgust took the place of admiration and hope in 
 the minds of the American Federalists. Then 
 France became to them an object of terror and dis- 
 may, and Britain, as her great and stedfast antag- 
 onist, the solitary anchor of their hope — the venerat- 
 ed bulwark of their religion. 
 
 At the threshold of tlie war, Washington, not 
 without a sharp and portentous struggle in his cabi- 
 net, followed by sympathetic and convulsive throes, 
 throughout the Union, issued a Proclamation of 
 Neutrality. Neutrality was the policy of his admin- 
 istration, but neutrality was not in the heart of any 
 portion of the American people. They had taken 
 their sides, and the Repul)licans and the Federalists 
 had now become, each at least in the view of the 
 other, a French and a British Miction. 
 
 Nor was the neutrality of AVashington more re- 
 spected by the combatants in Europe, than it was 
 congenial to the feelings of his countrymen. The 
 champion oi freedom and the champion of order were 
 alike regardless of the rights of others. They 
 trampled upon all neutrality from the outset. The 
 press-gang, the rule of the war of 1756, and the 
 order in council, combined to sweep all neutral com- 
 7 
 
.50 
 
 iliercc from the ocean. The requisition, the embar- 
 go, and the maximum left scarcely a tatter of un- 
 plundered neutral i)roperty in France. Britain, with- 
 out a blush, interdicted all neutral commerce with 
 her enemy. France, under the dove-like banners of 
 fraternity sent an Envoy to Washington, with the 
 fraternal kiss upon his lips, and the piratical com- 
 mission in his sleeve ; with the pectoral of right- 
 eousness on his breast, and the trumpet of sedition 
 in his mouth. Within one year from the breaking 
 out of hostilities between Britain and France, the 
 outrages of both parties upon the peaceful citizens af 
 this Union, were such as would have amply justified 
 war against either, and left to the government of 
 Washington no alternative, but that or reparation. 
 At the commencement of the war, the United States 
 were represented in France and England by two of 
 their most distinguished citizens, both, though in dif- 
 ferent shades, of the Federal school; by Thomas 
 Pinckney at London, and by Gouverneur Morris in 
 France. The remonstrances of Mr. Pinckney 
 against the frantic and reckless injustice of the Brit- 
 ish government, were faithful, earnest and indefati- 
 gable ; but they were totally disregarded. Mr. 
 Morris had given irremissible offence to all the revo- 
 lutionary parties in France, and his recall had been 
 formally demanded. From a variety of causes, the 
 popular resentments in America ran with a much 
 stronger current against Britain than against France, 
 and movements tending directly to war, were in 
 quick succession, following each other in Congress. 
 Washington arrested them by the institution of a 
 special mission to Great Britain. To give it at 
 
51 
 
 once a conciliatory character, and to impress upon 
 the British government a due sense of its importance, 
 the person selected for this mission was John Jay, 
 then Chief Justice of the United States. 
 
 James Monroe, was shortly afterwards appoint- 
 ed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republic of 
 France. In the selection of him, the same principle 
 of conciliation to the government neai- which he was 
 accredited, had been observed. But Washington 
 was actuated also by a further motive of holding the 
 balance between the parties at home by this appoint- 
 ment. Mr. Jay was of the Federal party, with a 
 bias of inclination favourable to Britain ; Mr. Mon- 
 roe, of the party which then began to call itself the 
 Republican party, inclining to favour t4ie cause of 
 Republican France. This party was then in ardent 
 opposition to the general course of Washington's 
 administration — and that of Mr. Monroe in the 
 Senate had not been inactive. To conciliate that 
 party too, was an object of Washington's most ear- 
 nest solicitude. From among them he determined 
 that the successor of Mr. Morris, in France, should 
 be chosen, and the members of the Senate of that 
 party were by him informally consulted to designate 
 who of their number would, by receiving the ap- 
 pointment, secure for it their most cordial satisfac- 
 tion. Their first indication was of another person. 
 Him, Washington, from a distrust of individual 
 character, declined to appoint. But he nominated 
 Mr. Monroe, and the concurrence of the senate in 
 his appointment was unanimous. This incident, 
 hitherto unknown to the public, has been followed 
 by many consequences, some of them perhaps little 
 
52 
 
 suspected, in our liistory. The discrimination of 
 character in the judgment of the first President of 
 the United States, is alike creditable to him and 
 Mr. Monroe. It was not without hesitation tliat he 
 availed himself of the preference in his favour, nor 
 without the entire approbation of the party with 
 whom he had acted, including even the individual 
 who had been rejected by the prophetic preposses- 
 sion of Washington. 
 
 The cotemporaneous missions of Mr. Jay to Great 
 Britain, and of Mr. Monroe to France, arc among 
 the most memorable events in the history of this 
 Union. There are in the annals of all nations oc- 
 casions, when wisdom and patriotism, and the bright- 
 est candour mid the profoundest sagacity, are alike 
 unavailing for success. There are sometimes ele- 
 ments of discord, in the social relations of men, 
 which no human virtue or skill can reconcile. Mr. 
 Jay and Mr. Monroe, each within his own sphere of 
 action, executed with equal faithfulness, perhaps 
 with equal ability, the trust committed to him, in 
 the spirit of his appointment and of his instructions. 
 But neutrality was the duty and inclination of the 
 American administration, and neutrality was what 
 neither of the great European combatants might 
 endure. In the long history of national animosities 
 and hatreds between the French and British nations, 
 there never was a period when they were tinged 
 with deeper infusions of the wormwood and the gall, 
 than at that precise point of time. 
 
 Each of the parties, believed herself contending 
 for her national existence ; each proclaimed, perhaps 
 believed, herself the last and only barrier, Britain 
 
63 
 
 against the subversion of social order, France against 
 the subversion of freedom throughout the world. 
 
 Mr. Jay, in the fulfilment of his commission, con- 
 cluded a Treaty with Great Britain, which estab- 
 lished, on immovable foundations, the neutrality pro- 
 claimed by Washington : it reserved the faithful 
 performance of all the previous engagements of the 
 United States with France ; some of which were, in 
 their operation at that time, not consonant with en- 
 tire neutrality : but, in return for great concessions, 
 on the British side, it yielded some points, also, 
 which bore as little the aspect of neutrality in their 
 operation upon France. Mr. Monroe, himself, fa- 
 vored the cause of France. Both Houses of Con- 
 gress had passed Resolution's, scarcely consistent, at 
 least, with impartiality, and Washington, under ad- 
 vice, perhaps overswaycd by the current of popular 
 feeling, afterwards answered an address of tlu; Min- 
 ister of France, in words of like sympathy with her 
 cause. Arriving in France, at the precise moment 
 when the excesses of the revolutionary parties were 
 on the turning spring tide of tlieir highest flood, Mr. 
 Monroe was received, with s})U^ndid formality, in 
 the bosom of the National Convention, when not an- 
 other civilized nation upon earth, had a recognized 
 representative in France. He there declared, in 
 perfect consistency with his instructions, the frater- 
 nal friendship of his country and her government, for 
 the French people, and their devoted attaclmient to 
 her cause, as the cause of Freedom. The President 
 of the Convention answered him in language of 
 equal kindness and cordiality ; though even then so 
 little of real benevolence towards the United States, 
 
54 
 
 was there in the Committee of Public Safety, then 
 the executive power of France, that it was to cut 
 short their protracted deliberations, whether Mr. 
 Monroe should be received at all, that he had ad- 
 dressed himself, in the face of the world, for an an- 
 swer to that inquiry to the National Convention 
 itself. Strong expressions of kindness are the ordi- 
 nary common-places of the diplomatic intercourse 
 between nations : and, like the customary civilities 
 of epistolary correspondence between individuals, 
 they are never understood according to the full im- 
 port of their meaning ; but extreme jealousy and 
 suspicion at that time pervaded all the public coun- 
 cils of France. 
 
 She professed to be willing that the United States 
 should preserve their neutrality, but she neither re- 
 spected it herself nor acquiesced in the measures 
 which it dictated. They were no sooner informed 
 that Mr. Jay had signed a Treaty with Lord Gren- 
 ville, than they began to press Mr. Mojnroe with 
 importunities to be informed, even before it had been 
 submitted to the American Government, of all its 
 contents. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no position more awkward and 
 distressing," than that of being compelled to reject an 
 unreasonable request from those whose friendship it 
 is important to retain ; for unreasonable requests are 
 precisely those which will be urged with the great- 
 est pertinacity. To enable Mr. Monroe to decline 
 indulging the Committee with a copy of the Treaty, 
 before it was ratified, he was under the necessity of 
 declining to receive a confidential communication of 
 its contents from Mr. Jay. The difficulties of his 
 
55 
 
 situation became much greater after the Treaty had 
 been ratified, and was made public. The people of 
 the United States were so equally divided, with re- 
 gard to the merits of the Treaty, that it became the 
 principal object of contention between the parties, 
 and they were bitterly exasperated against each other. 
 The French Government, which, during the progress 
 of these events, had passed from a frantic Committee 
 of Public Safety, to a profligate Executive Directory, 
 took advantage of these dissensions in the American 
 Union. They suspended the operation of the Trea- 
 ties existing between the United States and France ; 
 they issued orders for capturing all American vessels, 
 bound to British Ports, or having property of their 
 enemies on board ; their diplomatic correspondence 
 exhibited a series of measures, alike injurious and 
 insulting to the American Government ; and they 
 recalled their Minister from the United States, with- 
 out appointing a successor. It was, perhaps, rather 
 the misfortune of all, than the fault of any one, that 
 the views of Mr. Monroe, with regard to the policy 
 of the American Administration, did not accord with 
 those of President Washington. He thought that 
 France had just cause of complaint ; and, called to 
 the painful and invidious task of defending and jus- 
 tifying that which he personally disapproved, al- 
 though he never, for a moment, forgot the duties of 
 his station, it was, perhaps, not possible that he 
 should perform them entirely to the satisfaction of 
 his Government. He was recalled, towards the 
 close of Washington's administration, and Charles 
 Cotesworth Pinckney was appointed in his place. 
 
56 
 
 To the history of our subsequent controversies 
 with France, until the Peace of Amiens, it will not 
 be necessary for me to advert. Ui)on Mr. Monroe's 
 return to the United States, the administration had 
 passed from the hands of President Washington, 
 into those of his successor. In vindication of his 
 own character, Mr. Monroe felt himself obliged to 
 go before the tribunal of the public, and published 
 his " View of the conduct of the Executive in the 
 foreign affairs of the United States, connected with 
 the mission to the French Republic, during the years 
 1794, '95, and '96. 
 
 Upon the propriety of this step, as well as with 
 regard to the execution of the work, opinions were, 
 at the time, and have continued, various. The 
 policy of Washington, in that portentous crisis in 
 human affairs, is, in the main, now placed beyond 
 the reach of criticism. It is sanctioned by the 
 nearly unanimous voice of posterity. It will abide, 
 in unfading lustre, the test of after ages. Nor will 
 the well-earned fame of Mr. Monroe, for distin- 
 guished ability, or pure integrity, suffer from the 
 part which he acted in these transactions. In the 
 fervour of political contentions, personal animosities, 
 belong more to the infirmities of man's nature, than 
 to individual wrong, and they are unhappily sharp- 
 ened in proportion to the sincerity with which con- 
 flicting opinions are avowed. It is the property of 
 wise and honorable minds, to lay aside these resent- 
 ments, and the prejudices flowing from them, when 
 the conflicts, which gave rise to them, have passed 
 away. Thus it was that the great orator, statesman, 
 and moralist, of antiquity, when reproached for re- 
 
57 
 
 conciliation with a bitter antagonist, declared that he 
 wished his enmities to be transient, and his friend- 
 ships immortal. Thus it was, that the congenial 
 mind of James Monroe, at the zenith of his public 
 honours, and in the retirement of his latest days, 
 cast. off, like the suppuration of a wound, all the 
 feelings of unkindness, and all the severities of 
 judgment, which might have intruded upon his bet- 
 ter nature, in the ardour of civil dissension. In 
 veneration for the character of Washington, he har- 
 monized w ith the now unanimous voice of his coun- 
 try ; and he has left recorded, with his own hand, a 
 warm and unqualified testimonial to the pure patriot- 
 ism, the pre-eminent ability and the spotless integ- 
 rity of John Jay. 
 
 That neither the recall of Mr. Monroe, from his 
 mission to France, nor the publication of his volume, 
 had any effect to weaken the confidence reposed in 
 him by his fellow-citizens, was manifested by his im- 
 mediate election to the Legislature, and soon after- 
 wards to the office of Governor of Virginia, in which 
 he served for the term, limited by the Constitution, 
 of three years. In the mean time, the Directory of 
 France, with its Council of five hundred, and its 
 Council of Elders, had been made to vanish from the 
 scene, by the magic talisman of a soldier's sword. 
 The Government of France, in point of form, was 
 administered by a Triad of Consuls : in point of 
 fact, by a successful warrior, then Consul for ten 
 years — soon to be Consul for life : hereditary Em- 
 peror and King of Italy ; with a forehead, burning for 
 a diadem ; a soul, inflated by victory ; and an imag- 
 ination, fired with visions of crowns and sceptres, 
 8 
 
58 
 
 in prospect before him. He had extorted, from the 
 prostrate imbecility of Spain, the province of Louis- 
 iana, and compelled her, before the delivery of the 
 territory to him, to revoke the solemnly stipulated 
 privilege, to the citizens of the United States, of a 
 deposit at New-Orleans. A military colony was to 
 be settled in Louisiana, and the materials, for an 
 early rupture with the United States, were indus- 
 triously collected. The triumph of the republican 
 party, here, had been marked by the election of 
 Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency : just before 
 which, our previous controversies with France had 
 been adjusted by a Treaty of Amity and Commerce, 
 and shortly after which, a suspension of arms, be- 
 tween France and Britain, had been concluded, un- 
 der the fallacious name of a Peace at Amiens. The 
 restless spirit of Napoleon, inflamed, at the age of 
 most active energy in human life, by the gain of fifty 
 battles, dazzling with a splendour, then unrivalled 
 but by the renown of Caesar, breathing, for a mo- 
 ment, in the midway path of his career, the con- 
 queror of Egypt, the victor of Lodi, and of Marengo, 
 the trampler upon the neck of his country, her peo- 
 ple, her legislators, and her constitution, was about 
 to bring his veteran legions, in formidable proximity, 
 to this Union. The transfer of Louisiana to France, 
 the projected military colony, and the occlusion, at 
 that precise moment, of the port of New-Orleans, 
 operated like an electric shock, in this country. 
 The pulse of the West, beat, instaneously, for war : 
 and the antagonists of Mr. Jefferson, in Congress, 
 sounded the trumpet of vindication to the rights of 
 the nation ; and, as they perhaps flattered them- 
 selves, of downfall to his administration. In this 
 
59 
 
 crisis, Mr. Jefferson, following the example of his 
 first predecessor, on a similar occasion, instituted a 
 special and extraordinary mission to France ; for 
 which, in the name of his country, and of the high- 
 est of human duties, he commanded, rather, than 
 invited, the services and self-devotion of Mr. Mon- 
 roe. Nor did he hesitate to accept the perilous, 
 and, at that time, most unpromising charge. He was 
 joined, in the Commission Extraordinary, with Rob- 
 ert R. Livingston, then Resident Minister Plenipo- 
 tentiary, from the United States, in France, well 
 known as one of the most eminent leaders of our 
 Revolution. Mr. Monroe's appointment was made 
 on the eleventh of January, 1803 ; and, as Louisiana 
 was still in the possession of S})ain, he was appoint- 
 ed, also, jointly with Charles Pinckney, then Minis- 
 ter Plenipotentiary, of the United States at INIadrid, 
 to an Extraordinary Mission to negotiate, if neces- 
 sary, concerning the same interest there. The in- 
 tended object of these negotiations was to acquire, 
 by purchase, the island of New-Orleans, and the 
 Spanish territory, cast of the Mississippi. Mr. Liv- 
 ingston had, many months before, presented to the 
 French Government a very able memorial, shewing, 
 by conclusive arguments, that the cession of the 
 Province to the United States, would be a measure 
 of wise and sound policy, condusive not less to the 
 true interests of France than to those of the Federal 
 Union. At that time, however, the memoir was 
 too widely variant from the wild and gigantic pro- 
 jects of Napoleon. 
 
 How often are we called, in#iis world of vicissi- 
 tudes, to testify that 
 
60 
 
 " There 'a a Divinity, who shapes our ends, 
 Bough licw tliern how we will." 
 
 When Mr. Monroe arrived in France, all was 
 changed in the Councils of the Tuileries. The vol- 
 canic crater was re-blazing to the skies. The war 
 between France and Britain was rekindling, and the 
 article of most immediate urgency to the necessities 
 of the first consul was money. The military colony 
 of twenty thousand veterans already assembled at 
 Helovet-Sluys to embark for Louisiana, received 
 another destination. The continent of America was 
 relieved from the imminent prospect of a conflict 
 with the modern Alexander, and Mr. Monroe had 
 scarcely reached Paris, when he and his colleague 
 were informed that the French government had re- 
 solved for an adequate compensation in money, to 
 cede to the United States, the whole of Louisiana. 
 The acquisition, and the sum demanded for it, trans- 
 cended the powers of the American Plenipotentiaries, 
 and the amount of the funds at their disposal ; but 
 they hesitated not to accept the offer. The negotia- 
 tion was concluded in a fortnight. The ratifications 
 of the treaty, with those of a convention appro- 
 priating part of the funds created by it to the adjust- 
 ment of certain claims of citizens of the United 
 States upon France, were within six months ex- 
 changed at Washington, and the majestic valley of 
 the Mississippi, and the rocky mountains, and the 
 shores of the Pacific Ocean became integral parts of 
 the North American Union. 
 
 From France, immediately after the conclusion of 
 the treaties, Mr. MormoE proceeded to England w here 
 he was commissioned as the successor of Rufus King 
 
61 
 
 in the character of Minister Plenipotentiary of the 
 United States. Mr. King was, at his own request, 
 returning to his own country, after a mission of seven 
 years, in which he had enjoyed the rare advantage of 
 giving satisfaction alike to his own government, and 
 to that to which he was accredited. Mr. Monroe car- 
 ried with him the same dispositions, and had the 
 temper of the British government continued to be 
 marked with the same good humour and moderation 
 which had prevailed during the mission of Mr. King, 
 that of Mr. Monroe would have been equally suc- 
 cessful. But with the renewal of the war revived 
 the injustice of belligerent pretentions, followed by 
 the violence of belligerent outrages upon neutrality. 
 After the conclusion of the treaty with Mr. Jay, and 
 especially towards the close of the preceding war, 
 the British government had gradually abstained from 
 the exercise of those outrages which had brought 
 them to the verge of a war with the United States, 
 and at the issue of a correspondence with Mr. King, 
 had disclaimed the right of interference with the 
 trade between neutral ports and the colonies of her 
 enemies. Just before the departure of Mr. King, a 
 convention had been proposed by him in which Bri- 
 tain abandoned the pretension of right to impress 
 seamen, which failed only by a captious exception 
 for the narrow seas, suggested by a naval oflicer, 
 then at the head of the admiralty. But after the 
 war recommenced, the odious pretensions and op- 
 pressive practices of unlicensed rapine returned in its 
 train. In the midst of his discussions with the Brit- 
 ish government on these topics, Mr. Monroe was 
 called away to the discharge of his extraordinary 
 mission to Spain. 
 
62 
 
 In the retrocession of Louisiana, by France to 
 Spain, no limits of the province had been defined. 
 It was retroceded with a reference to its original 
 boundaries as possessed by France, but those boun- 
 daries had been a subject of altercation between 
 France and Spain, from the time \Ahen Louis the 
 14th had made a grant of Louisiana to Crozat. Na- 
 poleon took this retrocession of the province, well 
 aware of the gordian knot with w hich it was bound, 
 and fully determined to sever it with his accustomed 
 solvent the sw ord. His own cession of the province 
 to the United States, however, relieved him from the 
 necessity of resorting to this expedient, and propor- 
 tionably contracted in his mind the dimensions of the 
 province. He ceded Louisiana to the United States 
 without waiting for the delivery of possession to him- 
 self, and used with regard to the boundary in his 
 grant, the very words of the conveyance to him by 
 Spain. The Spanish government solemnly protest- 
 ed against the cession of Louisiana to the United 
 States, alledging that in the very treaty by which 
 France had reacquired the province she had stipu- 
 lated, never to cede it away from herself. Soon ad- 
 monished, however, of her own helpless condition, 
 and encouraged to transfer her objections from the 
 cession to the boundary, she \\ ithdrew her protest 
 against the whole transaction, and took ground, upon 
 the disputed extent of the province. The original 
 claim of France had been from the Pcrdido East to 
 the Rio Bravo West of the Mississippi. Mobile had 
 been originally a French settlement, and all West 
 Florida, was as distinctly within the claim of France, 
 as the Mouth of the Mississippi ^first discovered by 
 
63 
 
 La Salle. Such was the understanding of the Ameri- 
 can Plenipotentiaries, and of Congress who accord- 
 ingly authorised President Jefferson to establish a 
 collection district on the shores, waters and inlets 
 of the bay and river Mobile, and of rivers both East 
 and West of the same. But Spain on her part re- 
 duced the province of Louisiana to little more than 
 the Island of New-Orleans. She assumed an atti- 
 tude menacing immediate war ; refused to ratify a 
 convention made under the eye of her own govern- 
 ernment at Madrid, for indemnifying citizens of the 
 United States, plundered under her authority during 
 the preceding war. Harrassed and ransomed the citi- 
 zens of the Union and their property on the waters 
 of Mobile ; and marched military forces to the bor- 
 ders of the Sabine, where they were met by troops 
 of the United States, with whom a conflict was spar- 
 ed only by a temporary military convention between 
 the respective commanders. It was at this emer- 
 gency that Mr. MoiNRok proceeded from London to 
 Madrid to negotiate together with Mr. Pinckney, 
 upon this boundary, and for the purchase of the rem- 
 nant of Spain's title to the territory of Florida. He 
 passed through Paris on his way, precisely at the 
 time to witness the venerable Pontiff of the Roman 
 Church invest the brows of Napoleon with the hered- 
 itary imperial Crown of France, in the Cathedral of 
 Notre Dame. While in Paris, Mr. Monroe addressed 
 to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Talleyrand, 
 a letter reminding him of a promise somewhat in- 
 definite, at the time of the cession of Louisiana, that 
 the good offices of France, in aid of a negotiation 
 with Spain for the acquisition of Florida should be 
 
64 
 
 yielded : stating that he was on his way to Madrid 
 to enter upon that negotiation, and claiming the ful- 
 filment of that promise of France. He also pre- 
 sented the view taken by the goTernnient of the 
 United States, that the limits of Louisiana as ceded 
 by France to them extended from the Perdido to the 
 Rio Bravo. This letter was promptly answered by 
 the Minister Talleyrand, with an earnest argument 
 in behalf of the Spanish claim of boundary Eastward 
 of the Mississippi, but expressing no opinion with 
 regard to her pretensions Westward of that river. 
 His Imperial Majesty had discovered, not only that 
 West Florida formed no part of the Territory of Louis- 
 iana ; but that he never had entertained such an 
 idea, nor imagined that a retrocession of the province 
 as it had been possessed by France, could include 
 the District of Mobile. This argument was pressed 
 with so much apparent candour and sincerity, that it 
 may give interest to the anecdote which I am about 
 to relate as a commentary upon it. It happened that 
 a member of the Senate of the United States was at 
 New Orleans, when the Commissioner of Napoleon 
 authorized to receive possession of the province ar- 
 rived there, and before the cession to the United 
 States. This commissioner in conversation with the 
 American senator, told him that the military colony 
 from France might be soon expected. That there 
 was perhaps some difference of opinion between the 
 French and Spanish governments as to the boundary; 
 but that when the colony arrived, his orders were 
 quietly to take possession to the Perdido and leave 
 the diversities of opinion to be afterwards discussed 
 in the Cabinet. This anecdote was related on the 
 
65 
 
 floor of the Senate of the United States, bj the 
 member of that body, who had been a party to the 
 conversation. 
 
 But with this forgetful change of opinion in the 
 new crowned head of the Imperial Republic, there 
 was little prospect of success for the mission of Mr. 
 Monroe at Madrid; to which place he proceeded. 
 There in the space of five months, together with his 
 colleague Charles Pinckney, he unfolded the princi- 
 ples, and discussed the justice ofhis country's claims, 
 in correspondence and conferences with the Prince 
 of the Peace, and Don Pedro Cevallos with great 
 ability, but without immediate effect. The questions 
 which Napoleon would have settled by the march of 
 a detachment from his military colony, were to abide 
 their issue by the more lingering, and more deliber- 
 ate march of time. The state papers which passed 
 at that stage of the great controversy with Spain, re- 
 mained many years buried in the archives of the gov- 
 ernments respectively parties to it. They have since 
 been published at Washington; but so little of attrac- 
 tion have diplomatic documents of antiquated date, 
 even to the wakeful lovers of reading, that in this 
 enlightened auditory how many — might I not with 
 more propriety inquire how few there are, by whom 
 they have ever been perused ? It is nevertheless due 
 to the memory of Mr. Monroe and of his colleague 
 to say that among the creditable state papers of this 
 nation they will rank in the highest order : — that they 
 deserve the close and scrutinizing attention of every 
 American statesman, and will remain solid, howev- 
 er unornamentcd, monuments of intellectual power 
 9 
 
6(5 
 
 applied to national claims of right, in the land of our 
 fathers and the ago which has now passed away. 
 
 In June 1805, Mr. Monroe returned to his post 
 at London, where new and yet more arduous labours 
 awaited him. A new ministry, at the head of which 
 Mr. Pitt returned to power, had succeeded the mild 
 but feeble administration of Mr. Addington, and Lord 
 Mulgrave as Minister for Foreign Affairs, had taken 
 the place of the Earl of Harrow^by. The war be- 
 tween French and British ambition was spreading 
 over Europe, and Napoleon, by threats and prepara- 
 tions, and demonstrations of a purposed invasion of 
 Great Britain, had aroused the spirit of that island to 
 the highest pitch of exasperation. Conscious of their 
 inability to contend with him upon the continent of 
 Europe, confident in their unquestionable but not then 
 unquestioned supremacy over him upon the ocean, the 
 Britishgovernmentsaw withan evil eye, the advanta- 
 ges which the neutral nations were deriving from their 
 commercial intercourse with France and her allies. 
 Little observant of any principle but that of her own 
 interest, British policy then conceived the project of 
 substituting a forced commerce between her own sub- 
 jects and their enemies, by annihilating the same com- 
 merce enjoyed by her enemies through the privileged 
 medium of the neutral flag. In her purposes of man- 
 ifesting for her own benefit the superiority of her 
 power upon the seas, British policy, has, as her occa- 
 sions serve, a choice of expedients. In the present 
 instance, for the space of two full years, she had suf- 
 fered neutral navigation to enjoy the benefit of prin- 
 ciples in the law of nations, formerly recognized by 
 herself, in the (Correspondence between Mr. King and 
 
67 
 
 Lord Hawkesbuiy, shortly before the close of the pre- 
 ceding war. In the confidence of this recognition? 
 the commerce and navigation of the United States 
 had grown and flourished beyond all former example, 
 and the ocean whitened with their canvass. Sudden- 
 ly, as if by a concerted signal throughout the world 
 of waters which encompass the globe, our hardy and 
 peaceful, though intrepid mariners, found tliemselves 
 an*estcd in their career of industry and skill ; seized 
 by the British cruizers ; their vessels and cargoes 
 conducted into British ports, and by the spontane- 
 ous and sympathetic illumination of British Courts 
 of Vice Admiralty, adjudicated to the captors, be- 
 cause they were engaged in a trade with the ene- 
 mies of Britain, to which they had not usually been 
 admitted in time of peace. Mr. Monroe had scarce- 
 ly reached London, when he received a report from 
 the Consul of the United States at that place, an- 
 nouncing that about twenty of their vessels, had, 
 within a few weeks been brought into the British 
 ports on the Channel, and that by the condemnation 
 of more than one of them, the Admiralty Court had 
 settled the principle. 
 
 And thus was revived the stubborn contest be- 
 tween neutral rights and belligerent pretensions, 
 which had sown, for so many years, thickets of 
 thorns in the path of the preceding administrations ; 
 wliich Washington had with infinite difficulty avoid- 
 ed, and which his successor had scarcely been fortu- 
 nate enough to avoid. And from that day to the 
 peace of Ghent, tlic biography of James JNIoiNROE is 
 the history of that struggle, and in a great degree 
 the history of this nation — an eventful period in the 
 
68 
 
 annals of mankind ; a deeply momentous crisis in 
 the affairs of our Union. A rapid sketch of the 
 agency of Mr. Monroe in several successive and im- 
 portant stations, through this series of vicissitudes, is 
 all that the occasion will permit, and more, I fear, 
 than the time accorded by the indulgence of my au- 
 ditory will allow. The controversy was opened by 
 a note of mild, but indignant remonstrance from Mr. 
 Monroe to the Earl of Mulgrave, answered by that 
 nobleman verbally, with excuse, apology, qualified 
 avowal, equivocation, and a promise of written dis- 
 cussion, which never came. Mr. Pitt died ; his min- 
 istry was dissolved, and he was succeeded as the 
 head of the administration, by the great rival and 
 competitor of his fame, Charles Fox. In the mean 
 time .the navies of France and Spain had been anni- 
 hilated at Trafalgar, and the imperial crowns of 
 Muscovy and of Austria, had cowered under the 
 blossoming sceptre of the soldier of fortune at Aus- 
 terlitz. Mr. Fox, liberal in his principles but tram- 
 melled by the passions, prejudices, and terrors of his 
 countrymen and his colleagues, disavowed the new 
 practice of capturing neutrals, and the new princi- 
 ples in the Admiralty Courts which had so simulta- 
 neously made their appearance : but Mr. Fox issued 
 a paper blockade of the whole coast, from the 
 Elbe to Brest. He revoked the orders under which 
 the British cruizers had swept the seas, and released 
 the vessels already captured, upon which the sen- 
 tence of the Admiralty had not been passed, but he 
 demurred to the claim of indemnity for adjudications 
 already consummated. Of the excitement and agi- 
 tation, raised in our country by this inroad upon the 
 
I 
 
 69 
 
 laws of nation^, and upon neutral commerce, an ade- 
 quate idea can now scarcely be conceived. The 
 complaints, the remonstrances, the appeals for pro- 
 tection to Congress, from the plundered merchants, 
 rung throughout the Union. A fire spreading from 
 Portland to New Orleans, would have scarcely been 
 more destructive. Memorial upon memorial, from all 
 the cities of the land, loaded the tables of the Legis- 
 lative Halls, with the cry of distress and the call up- 
 on the national arm for defence, restitution and in- 
 demnity. Mr. Jefferson instituted again a special 
 and extraordinary mission to London, in which Wil- 
 liam Pinkney, perhaps the most eloquent of our 
 citizens then living, was united with Mr. Monroe. 
 Had Mr. Fox lived, their negotiation might have 
 been ultimately successful. While he lived, the 
 cruizers upon the seas and the Admiralty Courts up- 
 on the shores, suspended their concert of deprada- 
 tion upon the American commerce, and a treaty was 
 concluded between the Ministers of our country, and 
 Plenipotentiaries selected by Mr. Fox, which, with 
 subsequent modifications, just and reasonable, sug- 
 gested on our part, might have restored peace and 
 harmony, so far as it can subsist, between emulous 
 and rival nations. As transmitted to this country, 
 however, the treaty was deemed by Mr. Jefferson, 
 not to have suflSciently provided against the odious 
 impressment of our seamen, and it was clogged 
 with a declaration of the British Plenipotentiaries, 
 delivered after the signature of the treaty, suspend- 
 ing the obligation upon an extraneous and inad- 
 missible condition. Mr. Jefl^erson sent back the 
 treaty for revisal, but the mature and conciliatory 
 
70 
 
 spirit of Fox, was no longer to bo found in the 
 councils of Britain. It had been succeeded by the 
 dashing and flashy spirit of George Canning. He 
 refused to resume the negotiation. Under the au- 
 spices, not of positive orders, but of the well known 
 temper of his administration, Berkley committed 
 the unparalleled outrage upon the Chesapeake^ 
 disavowed, but never punished. Then came the 
 orders in council of November 1807; the procla- 
 mation to sanction man-stealing from American 
 merchantmen by royal authority ; and the mockery 
 of an olive branch in the hands of George Rose — 
 our embargo ; the liberal and healing arrangement 
 of David Erskine, disavowed by his government as 
 soon as known — but not unpunished ; a minister 
 fresh from Copenhagen, sent to administer the 
 healing medicine for Erskine's error, in the shape 
 of insolence and defiance. Insult and injury fol- 
 lowed each other in foul succession, till the smiling 
 visage of Peace herself, flushed with resentment, 
 and the Representatives of the nation responded to 
 the loud and indignant call of their country for 
 war. When the British government refused to re- 
 sume the negotiation of the treaty, the Extraordi- 
 nary Mission in which Monroe and Pinckney had 
 been joined, was at an end. Mr. Monroe, even 
 before the commencement of that negotiation, had 
 solicited and obtained permission to return home — 
 a determination, the execution of which had by 
 that special joint mission been postponed. He 
 suffered a further short detention, in consequence 
 of the exploit of Admiral Berkley upon the Chesa- 
 peake, and returned to the United States at the 
 
71 
 
 close of the year 1807. After a short interval pass- 
 ed in the retirement of private life, he was again 
 elected Governor of Virginia, and upon the resig- 
 nation of Robert Smith, was in the spring of 1811, 
 appointed by President Madison, Secretary of State. 
 This office he continued to hold during the remain- 
 der of the double Presidential term of Mr. Madi- 
 son, with the exception of about six months at the 
 close of the late war with Great Britain, when he 
 discharged the then still more arduous duties of the 
 War Department. On the return of peace he was 
 restored to the Department of State ; and on the 
 retirement of Mr. Madison in 1817, he was elected 
 President of the United States — re-elected without 
 opposition in 1821. On the third of March, 1825, 
 he retired to his residence in Loudon county, Vir- 
 ginia. Subsequent to that period, he discharged 
 the ordinary judicial functions of a magistrate of 
 the county, and of curator of the University of Vir- 
 ginia. In the winter of 1829 and '30, he served as 
 a member of the Convention called to revise the 
 Constitution of that Commonwealth; and took an 
 active part in their deliberations ; over which he 
 was unanimously chosen to preside. From this 
 station, he was, however, compelled, before the 
 close of the labours of the Convention, by severe 
 illness, to retire. The succeeding summer, he was, 
 in the short compass of a week, visited by the be- 
 reavement of the beloved partner of his life, and of 
 another near, affectionate, and respected relative. 
 Soon after these deep and trying afflictions, he re- 
 moved his residence to the city of New- York ; 
 where, surrounded by filial solicitude and tender- 
 
n 
 
 11CS3, the flickering lamp of life held its lingering 
 flame, as if to await the clay of the nation's birth 
 and glory; when the soldier of the Revolution, the 
 statesman of the Confederacy, the chosen chieftain 
 of the constituted nation, sunk into the arms of 
 slumber, to awake no more upon earth, and yielded 
 his pure and gallant spirit to receive the sentence 
 of his Maker. 
 
 Of the twenty years, which intervened between his 
 first appointment, as Secretary of State, and his de- 
 cease, to give even a summary, would be to encroach 
 beyond endurance upon your time. He came to the 
 Department of State at a time, when war, between 
 the United States and Great Britain, was impend- 
 ing and unavoidable. It was a crisis in the affairs 
 of this Union full of difficulty and danger. The 
 Constitution had never before been subjected to 
 the trial of a formidable foreign war ; and one of 
 the greatest misfortunes, which attended it, was the 
 want of unanimity in the country for its support. 
 This is not the occasion to revive the dissensions 
 which then agitated the public mind. It may suf- 
 fice to say that, until the war broke out, and during 
 its continuance, the duties of the offices held by 
 Mr. Monroe, at the head, successively, of the De- 
 partments of State and War, were performed with 
 untiring assiduity, with universally acknowledged 
 ability, and, with a zeal of patriotism, which counted 
 health, fortune, and life itself, for nothing, in the 
 ardour of self-devotion to the cause of his country. 
 It is a tribute of justice to his memory to say, that 
 he was invariably the adviser of energetic councils ; 
 nor is the conjecture hazardous, that, had his ap- 
 
73 
 
 pointment to the Department of War, preceded, by 
 six months, its actual date, the heaviest disaster of 
 the war, heaviest, because its remembrance must 
 be coupled with the blush of shame, would have 
 been spared as a blotted page in the annals of our 
 Union. It should have been remembered, that, in 
 war, heedless security, on one side, stimulates des- 
 perate expedients on the other ; and that the en- 
 terprise, surely fatal to the undertaker, when en- 
 countered by precaution, becomes successful a- 
 chievement over the helplessness of neglected pre- 
 paration. Such had been the uniform lesson of 
 experience in former ages ; such had it, emphatical- 
 ly, been in our own Revolutionary War. Strange, 
 indeed, would it ap[)car, had it been forgotten by 
 one who had so gloriously and so dearly purchased 
 it at Trenton. By him it was not forgotten : nor 
 had it escaped the calm and deliberate foresight of 
 the venerable patriot, who then presided in the ex- 
 ecutive chair ; and, at this casual and unpremedi- 
 tated remembrance of him, boar with me, my fellow- 
 citizens, if, pausing for a moment from the con- 
 templation of the kindred virtues of his successor, 
 co-patriot, and friend, T indulge the effusion of grat- 
 itude, and of public veneration, to share in your 
 gladness, that he yet lives — lives to impart to you, 
 and to your children, the priceless jewel of his in- 
 struction : lives in the hour of darkness, and of dan- 
 ger, gathering over you, as if from the portals of 
 eternity, to enlighten, and to guide. 
 
 Among the severest trials of the war, was the de- 
 ficiency of adequate funds to sustain it, and the pro- 
 gressive degradation of the national credit. 15y an 
 10 
 
74 
 
 unpropitious combination of rival interests, and of 
 political prejudices, the first Bank of the United 
 States, at the very outset of the war, had been de- 
 nied the renewal of its charter : a heavier blow of 
 illusive and contracted policy, could scarcely have 
 befallen the Union. The polar-star of public credit, 
 and of commercial confidence, was abstracted from 
 the firmament, and the needle of the compass wan- 
 dered at random to the four quarters of the heavens. 
 From the root of the fallen trunk, sprang up a 
 thicket of perishable suckers — never destined to 
 bear fruit: the ofi*spring of summer vegetation, with- 
 ering at the touch of the first winter's frost. Yet, 
 upon them was our country doomed to rely : it was 
 her only substitute for the shade and shelter of the 
 parent tree. The currency soon fell into frightful 
 disorder : Banks, with fictitious capital, swarmed 
 throughout the land, and spunged the purse of the 
 people, often for the use of their own money, with 
 more than usurious extortion. The solid Banks, 
 even of this metropolis, were enabled to maintain 
 their integrity, only by contracting their operations 
 to an extent ruinous to their debtors, and to them- 
 selves. A balance of trade, operating like univer- 
 sal fraud, vitiated the channels of intercourse be- 
 tween North and South : and the Treasury of the 
 Union was replenished only with countless millions 
 of silken tatters, and unavailable funds: chartered 
 corporations, bankrupt, under the gentle name of 
 suspended specie payments, and without a dollar of 
 capital to pay their debts, sold, at enormous discounts, 
 he very evidence of those debts; and passed off, upon 
 the Government of their country, at par, their rags — 
 
75 
 
 purchasable, iii open market, at depreciations of 
 thirty and forty pur cent. In the meantime, so de- 
 graded was the credit of the nation, and so empty 
 their Treasury, that Mr. Monroe, to raise the funds 
 indispensable for tiie defence of New-Orleans, 
 could obtain them only by pledging his private in- 
 dividual credit, as subsidiary to that of the nation. 
 This he did without an instant of hesitation, nor 
 was he less ready to sacrifice the prospects of laud- 
 able ambition, than the objects of personal interest, 
 to the suflering cause of his country. 
 
 Mr. Monroe was appointed to the Department 
 of War, towards the close of the campaign of 1814. 
 Among the first of his duties, was that of preparing 
 a general plan of military operations for the suc- 
 ceeding year : a task rendered doubly arduous by 
 the peculiar circumstances of the time. When the 
 war, between the United States and Britain, had 
 first kindled into flame, Britain, herself, was in the 
 convulsive pangs of a struggle, which had often 
 threatened her existence, as an independent na- 
 tion — in the twentieth year of a war, waged with 
 agonizing exertions, which had strained, to the vital 
 point of endurance, all the sinews of her power, 
 and absorbed the resources, not only of her people 
 then on the theatre of life, but of their posterity, for 
 long after-ages. In the short interval of two years, 
 from the commencement of her war with America, 
 in a series of those vicissitudes by which a myste- 
 rious Providence rescues its impenetrable decrees 
 from the presumptuous foresight of man, Britain 
 liad transformed the mightiest monarchies ofEuropc, 
 from inveterate enemies into devoted allies ; and, 
 
76 
 
 in the metropolis of her most dreaded, and most 
 detested foe, was dictating to him terms of humilia- 
 tion, and lessons of political morality. The war 
 had terminated in her complete and unqualified tri- 
 umph ; her numerous victorious veteran legions, 
 flushed with the glory, and stung with the ambition 
 of long-contested, and heard-earned, success, were 
 turned back upon her hands, without occupation for 
 their enterprise, eager for new fields of battle, and 
 new rewards of achievement. Ten thousand of 
 these selected warriors had already been detached 
 from her multitudes in arms, commanded by a fa- 
 vorite lieutenant, and relative of Wellington, to 
 share the beauty and booty of New-Orleans, and 
 to acquire, for a time which her after-consideration 
 and interest were to determine, the mastery of the 
 Mississippi, his waters, and his shores. The fate 
 of this gallant host, sealed in the decrees of heaven, 
 had not then been consummated upon earth. They 
 had not matched their forces with the planters and 
 ploughmen of the western wilds — nor learnt the 
 difference between a struggle with the servile and 
 mercenary squadrons of a military conqueror, and 
 a conflict with the free-born defenders of their fire- 
 sides, their children, and their wives. Besides that 
 number of ten thousand, she had myriads more 
 at her disposal — burdens at once upon her grati- 
 tude and her revenues, and to whom she could fur- 
 nish employment and support, only by transporting 
 them to gather new laurels, and rise to more ex- 
 alted renown upon the ruins of our Union. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs, and such the pros- 
 pects of the coming year when immediately after 
 
77 
 
 the successful enterprise of the enemy upon our 
 metropolis, Congress was convened upon the smok- 
 ing ruins of the Capitol, and Mr. Monroe was 
 called, without retiring from the duties of the De- 
 pEirtment of State, to assume in addition to them 
 those of presiding over the Department of War. 
 Such was the emergency for which it became his 
 duty to prepare and mature plans of military oper- 
 ations. It is obvious that they must be far beyond 
 the range of the ordinary means and resources on 
 which the government of the Union had been ac- 
 customed to rely. They were such as to call forth 
 not only the voluntary but the unwilling and reluct- 
 ant hand of the citizen to defend his country. 
 They summoned the Legislative voice of the Union 
 to command the service of her sons. The army, 
 already authorized by Acts of Congress had risen 
 in numbers to upwards of sixty thousand men: Mr. 
 Monroe proposed to increase it to one hundred 
 tliousand, besides auxiliary military force ; and, in 
 addition to all the usual allurements to enlistment, 
 to levy all deficiencies of eftective numbers, by 
 drafts upon the whole body of the people. This 
 resort, though familiar to the usages of our own 
 revolutionary war, was now in the clamours of polit- 
 ical opposition, assimilated to the conscriptions of 
 revolutionary France and of Napoleon. It was ob- 
 noxious not only to the censure of all those who 
 disapproved the war, but to the indolent, the luke- 
 warm and the weak. It sent the recruiting officer 
 to ruffle the repose of domestic retirement. It au- 
 thorized him alike to unfold the oates to the masr- 
 nificent mansion of the wealthy and to lift the latch 
 
78 
 
 of the cottage upon tlic mountains. It sounded the 
 trumpet in tlic nursery. It rang "to arms" in the 
 bed-chamber. Mr. Monroe was perfectly aware 
 that the recommendation to Congress of such a 
 plan, must at least for a time deeply alTect the per- 
 sonal popularity of the proposer. He believed it 
 to be necessary, and indispensable to the triumph 
 of the cause. The time for the people to prepare 
 their minds for fixing the succession to the presi- 
 dential chair was approaching. Mr. Monroe was 
 already prominent among the names upon which 
 the public sentiment was now concentrating itself 
 as a suitable candidate for the trust. It was fore- 
 seen by him, that the purpose of defeating the plan, 
 would connect itself with the prospects of the en- 
 suing presidential election, and that the friends of 
 rival candidates, otherwise devoted to tlie most en- 
 ergetic prosecution of the war, might take a di- 
 rection adverse to the adoption of the plan, not 
 from the intrinsic oI)jections against it, but from the 
 popular disfavour which it might shed upon its au- 
 thor. After consultation with some of his confi- 
 dential friends, he resolved in the event of the 
 continuance of the war, to withdraw his name at 
 once from thf? complicated conflicts of the canvass, 
 by publicly declining to stand a candidate for elec- 
 tion to the presidency. He had already authoriz- 
 ed one or more persons distinguished in the coun- 
 cils of the Union, to announce this as his intention, 
 which would have been carried into execution, but 
 that the motives by which it was dictated, were sus- 
 pended by the conclusion of the peace. 
 
 That event was the sera of a new system of pol- 
 
79 
 
 icy, and new divisions of parties in our federal 
 Union. It relieved us from many of the most in- 
 flammatory symptoms of our political disease. It 
 disengaged us from all sympathies witli foreigners 
 predominating over those due to our own country. 
 We have now, neitiier in the hearts of personal ri- 
 vals, nor upon the lips of political adversaries the 
 reproach of devotion to a French or a British fac- 
 tion. If we rejoice in the triumpii of European 
 arms, it is in the victories of the cross over the cres- 
 cent. . If we gladden with the native countrymen 
 of LaFayette or sadden with those of Pulaski and 
 Kosciusko, it is the gratulation of freedom rescued 
 from oppression, and the mourning of kindred spir- 
 its over the martyrs to their country's independ- 
 ence. We have no sympathies but with the joys 
 and sorrows of patriotism; no attachments but to 
 the cause of liberty and of man. 
 
 The first great object of national policy, upon the 
 return of peace was the redemption of tlie Union 
 from fiscal ruin. Thi^ was in substance accom- 
 plished during the remnant of Madison's admin- 
 istration, principally by the reestablishment of a 
 National Bank, with enlarged capacities and capi- 
 tal : enacted by Congress under the recommend.a- 
 tion of the Executive, not through the Department, 
 but with the concurrence of Mr. Monroe. He upon 
 the cessation of the war, had retired from thi5 easy 
 though laborious duties of its department, and de- 
 voted all his faculties to the political intercourse of 
 the nation with all others. There was a remnant 
 of war with the pirates of Algiers, to which the 
 gallant and lamented Decatur carried peace and 
 
80 
 
 freedom from tribute forever, at the mouth of the 
 cannon of a single frigate. There were grave and 
 momentous negotiations of commerce, of fisheries, 
 of boundary, of trade with either India, of extinc- 
 tion to tlie slave trade, of South American free- 
 dom, of indemnity for enticed and depredated 
 slaves, with Great Britain ; others on various topics 
 scarcely less momentous with France, with Spain, 
 with Sweden ; and with almost every nation of 
 Europe there were claims unadjusted for outrages 
 and property plundered upon the seas, or, with more 
 shameless destitution of any just or lawful pretext, 
 in their own ports. There was a system of policy 
 to be pursued with regard to the embryo states of 
 Southern America, combining the fulfilment of the 
 duties of neutrality, with the rightful furtherance of 
 their emancipation. 
 
 Turning from the foreign to the domestic inter- 
 ests of the united republic, there were objects ris- 
 ing to contemplation not less in grandeur of design ; 
 not less arduous in preparation for the effective 
 agency of the national councils. 
 
 The most painful, perhaps the most profitable 
 lesson of the war was the primary duty of the na- 
 tion to place itself in a state of permanent prepar- 
 ation for self-defence. This had been the doctrine 
 and the creed of Washington, from the first organ- 
 ization of the government. It had been encoun- 
 tered by opposition so determined and persevering, 
 sustained by prejudices so akin to reason and by 
 sensibilities so natural to freemen, that all the in- 
 fluence of that great and good man, aided by the 
 foresight, and argument and earnest solicitude of 
 
81 
 
 his friends to carry it into effect had proved abor- 
 tive. An extensive and expensive system of forti- 
 fication upon our shores; an imposing and well con- 
 stituted naval establishment upon the seas, had 
 been urged in all the ardour and sincerity of convic- 
 tion by the federalists of the Washington school, 
 not only without producing upon the majority of the 
 nation the same conviction, but with the mortifica- 
 tion of having their honest zeal for the public wel- 
 fare turned as an engine of personal warfare upon 
 themselves. By the result of this course of popu- 
 lar feelings, it happened that when the war in 
 all its terrors and all its dangers came, it was to be 
 managed and supported by those who to the last 
 moment preceding it, had resisted, if not all, at least 
 all burdensome and effective preparation for meet- 
 ing it. A solemn and awful responsibility was it, 
 that they incurred ; and with brave and gallant 
 bearing did they pass through the ordeal which 
 they had defied. Well was it for them that a su- 
 perintending Providence shaped the ends, rough- 
 hewn by them : but it produced conviction upon 
 their minds ; and it overcame the repugnances of 
 the people. A combined system of eflicient forti- 
 fication arming the shores and encircling the soil 
 of the republic, and the gradual establishment of a 
 powerful navy, were from the restoration of the 
 peace unto his latest hour, among the paramount 
 and favorite principles in the political system of 
 Mr. Monroe for the government of the Union. In 
 these objects, he had the good fortune to be sup- 
 ported as well by the opiniors of his immediate pre- 
 decessor, as by the predominant sentiments of the 
 11 
 
82 
 
 people. Tlie system in both its branches was 
 Gommcneed in the administration and with the full 
 concurrence of Mr. Madison. It has continued with- 
 out vital modification to this day. May it live and 
 flourish through all the political conflicts, to which 
 you may be destined hereafter, and survive your 
 children's children, till augury becomes presumption. 
 There was yet another object of great and nation- 
 al interest, brought conspicuously into view by the 
 war, which pressed its unwieldy weight upon the 
 Councils of the Union, from the conclusion of the 
 peace. It was the adaptation of the just and impar- 
 tial action of the federal government to the various 
 interests of which the Union is composed, with 
 regard to revenue, to the payment of the public 
 debt, to the industrious pursuits of the farmer and 
 planter, of the pioneers of the wilderness, of the 
 merchant and navigator, of the manufacturer and 
 mechanic, and of the intellectual labourer of the 
 mind, including all the learned professions and teach- 
 ers of literature, religion and morals. To all this, a 
 system of legitimate and equal governmental action 
 was to be adapted ; and vast and comprehensive as 
 the bare statement of it will present itself to your 
 minds, it was rendered still more complicated by the 
 necessity of accommodating it, to the adverse ope- 
 ration upon the same interests of foreign and rival 
 legislation through the medium of commercial inter- 
 course with our country. At the very moment of 
 the peace, the occasion was seized of tendering to 
 all the commercial nations of Europe a system of 
 intercourse founded upon entire reciprocity, and a 
 liberal and perfect equalization of impost and ton- 
 nage duties. This ofler was very partially accepted, 
 
83 
 
 but has gradually extended itself to several of the 
 European nations, and to all those of Southern Ameri- 
 ca. It is yet incomplete, and its destiny hereafter is 
 uncertain. It must perhaps ever so remain, as it 
 must forever depend upon the enduring and concur- 
 rent will of other independent nations. The fair, 
 the free, the fraternal system is that of entire reci- 
 procity ; and as the principles flowing from these 
 impulses speed their progress in the civilization of 
 man, there are grounds for hope that they may in 
 process of time, universally prevail. 
 
 But there were otiier interests of high import 
 calling for the legislative action to support them. 
 The war had cut off the supply to a great extent of 
 many articles of foreign manufacture, of universal 
 consumption, and necessary for the enjoyment of the 
 comforts of life. This had necessarily introduced 
 large manufacturing establishments, to which the ap- 
 plication of heavy masses of capital had been made. 
 The competition of foreign manufactures of the same 
 articles, aided by bounties and other encouragements 
 from their own governments, would have crushed in 
 their infancy all such establishments here, had they 
 not been supported by some benefaction from the 
 authority of the Union. The adventurer in the 
 Western territories, needed the assistance of the na- 
 tional arm to his exertions for converting the wilder- 
 ness into a garden. Secure from the assaults of 
 foreign hostility, the whole people had leisure to 
 turn their attention to the improvement of their own 
 condition. And hence the protection of domestic 
 industi*y and the improvement of the internal com- 
 munications between the portions of the Union re- 
 
84 
 
 mote from each other, formed an associated system of 
 policy, embraced by many of our most distinguished 
 citizens, and pursued with sincere and ardent patriot- 
 ism. This system, however, was destined to encounter 
 two obstacles of the gravest and most formidable char- 
 acter. The first, a question how far the people of the 
 Union had delegated to their general government the 
 power of providing for their welfare, of promoting their 
 happiness, of improving their condition ? The sec- 
 ond, whether domestic industry and internal im- 
 provement, limited by localities less extensive than 
 the whole Union can be protected and promoted 
 without sacrifice of the interests of one portion of 
 the Union for the benefit of another. The divisions 
 of opinion and the collisions of sentiment upon 
 these points have been festering since the first ad- 
 vances of the system, till they have formed an im- 
 posthume in the body politic threatening its total dis- 
 solution. Mr. Monroe's opinion was, that the power 
 of establishing a general system of internal improve- 
 ment, had not been delegated to Congress ; but that 
 the power of levying and appropriating money for 
 purposes of national importance, military or com- 
 mercial, or for transportation of the mail was among 
 their delegated trusts. These subjects have been 
 discussed under various forms in the deliberations of 
 Congress from that period to the present day, and 
 they are yet far from being exhausted. An appro- 
 priation of ten millions of dollars annually to the 
 discharge of the principal and interest of the public 
 debt, was one of the earliest measures of Mr. Madi- 
 son's administration after the peace, and that pur- 
 pose steadily pursued has reduced that national bur- 
 
86 
 
 den to so small an amount, that the total extinc- 
 tion of the debt can scarcely be protracted beyond a 
 term of two or three years from this time. 
 
 On the retirement of Mr. Madison from the office 
 of chief magistrate in 1817, Mr. MoiNROe was elect- 
 ed by a considerable majority of the suffrages in the 
 electoral colleges as his successor. This election 
 took place at a period of tranquillity in the public 
 mind, of whicli there had been no previous example 
 since the second election of Wasiiington. To this 
 tranquillity, many concurring causes, such as are 
 never likely to meet again, contributed, and among 
 them, of no inferior order was the existing state of 
 the foreign, and especially the European world. It 
 continued through the four years of his first Presi- 
 dential term, at the close of which he was re-elected 
 without a show of opposition, and by the voice little 
 less than unanimous of the whole people. These 
 halcyon days were not destined to endure. The 
 seeds of new political parties were latent in the 
 withering cores of the old. New personal rivalries 
 were shooting np from the roots of those which had 
 been levelled with the earth. New ambitions were 
 kindling from beneath the embers that had ceased to 
 smoke. No new system of policy, had marked the 
 administration of Mr. Monroe. The acquisition of 
 the Floridas had completed that series of negotia- 
 tions (perhaps it were no exaggeration to say, of 
 Revolutions) which had commenced under the con- 
 federation with the Encargardo de Negocios of Spain. 
 Viewed as a whole, throughout its extent, can there 
 be a doubt in considering it as the most magnificent 
 supplement to our national Independence presented 
 
86 
 
 by our history, and will there arise an historian of 
 this Republican empire, who shall fail to perceive or 
 hesitate to acknowledge, that throughout the long 
 series of these transactions, which more than dou- 
 bled the territories of the North- American Confeder- 
 ation, the leading mind of that great movement in 
 the annals of the world, and thus far in the march of 
 human improvement upon earth, was the mind of 
 James Monroe? 
 
 In his Inaugural Address, delivered according to a 
 prevailing usage, upon his induction to office, he took 
 a general view of the existing condition and general 
 interests of the nation, and marked out for himself a 
 path of policy, which he faithfully pursued. The 
 first of the objects to which he declared that his pur- 
 poses would be irected, was the preparation of the 
 country for future defensive war. Fortification of 
 the coast and inland frontiers — peace establishments 
 of the army and navy, with an improved system of 
 regulation and discipline for the militia, were the 
 means by which this was to be effected, and to 
 which his indefatigable labours were devoted. The 
 internal improvement of the country, by roads and 
 canals ; the protection and encouragement of domes- 
 tic manufactures ; the cultivation of peace and friend- 
 ship with the Indian tribes — tendering to them, al- 
 ways, the hand of cordiality, and alluring them by 
 good faith, kindness, and beneficent instruction, to 
 share and to covet the blessings of civilization ; a 
 prudent, judicious, and economical, administration of 
 the Treasury ; with the profitable, and, at the same 
 time liberal, management of the public lands, then 
 first beginning to disclose their active and appreciat- 
 
87 
 
 ing value, as national property : all these were an- 
 nounced as the interests of the great community, 
 which he surveyed as committed to his charge, and 
 to the faithful custody and advancement of which, 
 his unremitted exertions should be directed : and 
 never was pledge with more entire self-devotion re- 
 deemed. 
 
 At the first Session of Congress, after his election 
 to the Presidency, Mr. Monroe deemed it his duty, 
 in his annual message to that body, to declare to 
 them his opinion, that the power to establish a sys- 
 tem of Internal Improvement by the construction of 
 roads and canals, was not possessed by Congress. 
 But, being also opinion, that no country of such vast 
 extent ever offered equal inducements to improve- 
 ments of this kind, and that, never were consequen- 
 ces, of such magnitude, involved in them, he ear- 
 nestly recommended to Congress, to urge upon the 
 States the adoption of an amendment ^vhich should 
 confer the right upon them ; and with it, the right of 
 instituting seminaries of learning, for the all-important 
 purpose of diffusing knowledge among our fellow- 
 citizens throughout the United States. Of the adop- 
 tion of such an amendment, if proposed at that time, 
 he scarcely entertained a doubt ; but a majority of 
 both Houses of the National Legislature, were firmly 
 of opinion that this power had already been granted : 
 nor has the majority of any Congress, since that time, 
 been enabled to conciliate the conclusions that a pow- 
 er, competent to the annexation of Louisiana to this 
 Union, was incompetent to the construction of a post- 
 road, to the opening of a canal, or to the diffusion of 
 the light of Heaven upon the mind of after-ages, by 
 the institution of seminaries of learning. 
 
88 
 
 Notwithstanding the manifestation of these opin- 
 ions of Mr. Monroe, a subsequent Congress did pass 
 an act for tlie maintenance and reparation of the 
 Cumberland Road, and for the erecting of toll-gates 
 upon it. Firm and consistent in the constitutional 
 views which he had taken, he deemed it his duty to 
 apply to this act his presidential arresting power ; 
 and, in returning the Bill to the House where it orig- 
 inated, justified his exercise of prerogative in an able 
 and elaborate exposition of the reasons of his opin- 
 ions. This work, probably, contains whatever of 
 argument the intellectual povyer of man can evisce- 
 rate from reason, against the exercise, by Congress, 
 of the contested power. It arrested, to a considera- 
 ble extent, the progress of Internal Improvement ; 
 and, succeeded by similar scruples in the mind of one of 
 his successors, has held them in abeyance to this day. 
 
 The opinions of James Monroe upon doubtful or 
 controverted points of Constitutional Law, can never 
 cease to be deserving of profound respect. They were 
 never lightly entertained. They were always deliber- 
 ate, always disinterested, always sincere. At a subse- 
 quent period of his administration, as it drew to- 
 wards its close, a modification suggested itself to his 
 mind, warranting a compromise between the doc- 
 trines of those who invoked the beneficent action of 
 of Congress for national improvement, and of those 
 who denied to the Supreme Councils of the nation 
 the right of conferring blessings upon the people. 
 In his annual Message to Congress on the 2d of De- 
 cember 1823, he announced his belief that Congress 
 did possess the power of appropriatirig 7noney for 
 the construction of a Canal to connect together the 
 waters of the Chesapeake and the Ohio (the juris- 
 
89 
 
 diction remaining to the States through which the 
 Canal would pass.) This of course included the 
 concession of the same right of appropriating money 
 for all other like objects of national interest, and it 
 was accompanied with a recommendation to Con- 
 gress to consider the expediency of authorizing by 
 an adequate appropriation the employment of a suita- 
 ble number of the Officers of the Corps of Engineers, 
 to examine tlic unexplored ground during the ensuing 
 season, and to report their opinion thereon ; extend- 
 ing also their examination to the several routes through 
 which the waters of the Ohio, might be connected, by 
 Canals, with those of Lake Eric. Under this recom- 
 mendation, an Act of Congress was passed, and on 
 the 30th of April, 1824, received the signature of 
 Mr. Monroe, appropriating the sum of thirty thou- 
 sand dollars ; authorizing and enabling the President 
 of the United States, to cause the necessary sur- 
 veys, plans and estimates to be made of the routes of 
 such Roads and Canals as he might deem of nation- 
 al importance, in a commercial or military point of 
 view, or necessary for the transportation of the pub- 
 lic mail ; designating in the case of each Canal, what 
 parts might be made capable of sloop navigation. The 
 results of the surveys to be laid before Congress. And 
 the President was authorized to employ Civil Engi- 
 neers, with such officers of the several military corps 
 in the public service as he might detail for that ser- 
 vice, to accomplish the purposes of the Act. 
 
 " Sink down, ye mountains ! and ye vallies — rise !" 
 
 Rise ! Rise, before your forefathers, here assembled, 
 ve unborn a2:es of after-time. Rise ! and bid the 
 feeble and perishing voice, which now addresses 
 12 
 
90 
 
 them, proclaim vour gratitude to your and their 
 Creator, for having disposed the hearts of that por- 
 tion of their Representatives, who then composed 
 their Supreme National Council, to the passage of 
 that Act. Exult and shout for jo v I Rejoice ! that, 
 if for you, there are neither Rocky Mountains, nor 
 Oasis of the Desert, from the rivers of the Southern 
 Ocean to the shores of the Atlantic Sea : Rejoice ! 
 that, if for you, the waters of the Columbia mingle 
 in union with the streams of the Delaware, the lakes 
 of the St. Lawrence, and the floods of the Missis- 
 sippi : Rejoice ! that, if for you, every valley has 
 been exalted, and every mountain and hill has been 
 made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places 
 plain : Rejoice ! that, if for you. Time has been di- 
 vested of his delays, and Space disburthened of his 
 obstructions: Rejoice! that, if for you, the distant 
 have been drawn near, and the repulsive allured to 
 mutual attraction : That, if for you, the North 
 American Continent swarms with unnumbered mul- 
 titudes ; of hearts, beating as if from one bosom ; 
 of voices, speaking but with one tongue ; of free- 
 men, constituting one confederated and united Re- 
 public ; of brethren, never to rise, nation against na- 
 tion, in hostile arms ; of brethren, to fulfil the blessed 
 prophecy of ancient times, that war shall be no more : 
 to the power of applying the superfluous revenues of 
 these, your fore-fathers, by their representatives in 
 the Congress of this Union, to the improvement of 
 your condition, you are, under God, indebted for the 
 enjoyment of all these unspeakable blessings. 
 
 The system of Internal Improvement, then, though 
 severely checked, by the opinion that the people of 
 this Union have practically denied to themselves the 
 
91 
 
 power of bettering their own condition, by restrain- 
 ing their Government from the exercise of the facul- 
 ties, by which alone it can be made effective, was 
 commenced under the administration of James Mon- 
 roe : commenced with his sanction : commenced at 
 his earnest recommendation. And if, in after-ages, 
 every leaf, in the chaplct of his renown, shall be ex- 
 amined by the scrutinizing eye of grateful memory, 
 to fmdjin the perennial green of all, one of more un- 
 fading verdure than the rest, that leaf shall unfold 
 itself from the stem of Internal Improvement. 
 
 It is not Avithin the scope of your intention, nor is 
 it the purpose of this discourse, to review the nu- 
 merous and important Acts of Mr. Monroe's admin- 
 istration. In the multitude of a great nation's pub- 
 lic affairs, there is no oflicial act of their Chief Magis- 
 trate, however momentous, or liowevcr minute, but 
 should be traceable to a dictate of duty, pointing to 
 the welfare of the people. Such was the cardinal 
 principle of Mr. Monroe. In his first address, upon 
 his election to the Presidency, he had exposed the 
 general principles by which his conduct, in the dis- 
 charge of his great trust, would be regulated. In 
 his second Inaugural Address, he succinctly reviewed 
 that portion of the career through which he had 
 passed, fortunately sanctioned by public approbation ; 
 and promised perseverance in it, to the close of his 
 public service. And, in his last annual Message to 
 Congress, on the seventh of December, 1824, an- 
 nouncing his retirement from public life, after the 
 close of that session of the Legislature, he reviewed 
 the whole course of his administration, comparing it 
 with the pledges which he had given at its com- 
 mencement, and at its middle term, appealing to the 
 
92 
 
 judgment and consciousness of those whom he ad- 
 dressed, for its unity of principle as one consistent 
 whole, not exempt indeed, from the errors and infir- 
 mities incident to all human action, but characteristic 
 of purposes always honest and sincere, of intentions 
 always pure, of labours outlasting the daily circuit of 
 the sun, and outwatching the vigils of the night — 
 and what he said not, but a faithful witness is bound 
 to record ; of a mind anxious and unwearied in the 
 pursuit of truth and right ; patient of inquiry ; pa- 
 tient of contradiction ; courteous, even in the colli- 
 sion of sentiment ; sound in its ultimate judgments ; 
 and firm in its final conclusions. 
 
 Such my fellow citizens was James Monroe. 
 Such was the man, who presents the only example 
 of one whose public life, commenced with the War 
 of Independence, and is identified with all the im- 
 portant events of your history from that day forth 
 for a full half century. And now, what is the pur- 
 pose for which we have here assembled to do honour 
 to his memory ? Is it to scatter perishable flowers 
 upon the yet unsodded grave of a public benefactor ? 
 Is it to mingle tears of sympathy and of consolation, 
 with those of mourning and bereaved children ? Is 
 it to do honour to ourselves, by manifesting a be- 
 coming sensibility, at the departure of one, who by 
 a long career of honour and of usefulness has been 
 to us all as a friend and l)rother ? Or is it not ratlier to 
 mark the memorable incidents of a life signalized by 
 all the properties which embody the precepts of vir- 
 tue and the principles of wisdom ? Is it not to pause 
 for a moment from the passions of our own bosoms, 
 and the agitations of our own interests, to survey in 
 its whole extent the long and little-beaten path of 
 
93 
 
 the great and the good : to fix with intense inspec- 
 tion our own vision, and to point the ardent but un- 
 settled gaze of our children upon that resplendent 
 row of cresset lamps, fed with the purest vital air, 
 which illuminate the path of the hero, the states- 
 man and the sage. Have you a son of ardent feel- 
 ings and ingenuous mind, docile to instruction, and 
 panting for honorable distinction ? point him to the 
 pallid cheek and agonizing form of James Monroe, 
 at the opening blossom of life, weltering in his blood 
 on the field of Trenton, for the cause of his country. 
 Then turn his eye to the same form, seven years 
 later, in health and vigour, still in the bloom of youth, 
 but seated among the Conscript Fathers of the land 
 to receive entwined with all its laurels the sheathed 
 and triumphant sword of Washington. Guide his 
 eye along to the same object, investigating by the 
 midnight lamp, the laws of nature and nations, and 
 unfolding them, at once with all the convictions of 
 reason and all the persuasions of eloquence to dem- 
 onstrate the rights of his countrymen to the contest- 
 ed Navigation of the Mississippi, in the Hall of Con- 
 gress. Follow him with this trace in his hand, 
 through a long series of years, by laborious travels 
 and intricate Negotiations, at Imperial Courts, and 
 in the Palaces of Kings, winding his way amidst the 
 ferocious and party coloured Revolutions of France, 
 and the life-guard favourites and Camarillas of Spain. 
 Then look at the Map of United North America, as 
 it was at the definitive peace of 1783. Compare it 
 with the maj) of that same Empire as it is now ; 
 limited by the Sabine and the Pacific Ocean, and 
 say, the change, more than of any other man, living or 
 dead, was the work of James Monroe. See him 
 
94 
 
 pass successively from the Hall of the Confederation 
 Congress to the Legislative Assembly of his native 
 Commonwealth ; to their Convention which ratified 
 the Constitution of the North American people ; to 
 the Senate of the Union ; to the Chair of Diplo- 
 matic Intercourse with ultra Revolutionary France ; 
 back to the Executive honours of his native state ; 
 again to embassies of transcendant magnitude, to 
 France, to Spain, to Britain ; restored once more to 
 retirement and his country ; elevated again to the high- 
 est trust of his State ; transferred successively to the 
 two preeminent Departments of Peace and War, in 
 the National Government ; and at the most momentous 
 crisis burthened with the duties of both — and finally 
 raised, first by the suffrages of a majority, and at 
 last by the unanimous call of his countrymen to the 
 Chief Magistracy of the Union. There behold him 
 for a term of eight years, strengthening his country 
 for defence by a system of combined fortifications, 
 military and naval, sustaining her rights, her dignity 
 and honour abroad ; soothing her dissensions, and con- 
 ciliating her acerbities at home ; controuling by a firm 
 though peaceful policy the hostile spirit of the Euro- 
 pean Alliance against Republican Southern America ; 
 extorting by the mild compulsion of reason, the 
 shores of the Pacific from the stipulated acknowl- 
 edgment of Spain ; and leading back the imperial 
 autocrat of the North, to his lawful boundaries, from 
 his hastily asserted dominion over the Southern 
 Ocean. Thus strengthening and consolidating the 
 federative edifice of his country's Union, till he was 
 entitled to say like Augustus Caesar of his imperial 
 city, that he had found her built of brick and left her 
 constructed of marble. 
 
95 
 
 In concluding this discourse, permit me, fellow 
 citizens to revert to the sentiment with which it 
 commenced ; and if it be true that a superintending 
 Providence, adapts the talents and energies of men 
 to the trials bj which they are to be tested, it is fit- 
 ting: for us to be admonished that the trial mav also 
 be adapted to the talents destined to meet it. Our 
 country by the bountiful dispensations of gracious 
 Heaven, is, and for a series of years has been blessed 
 with profound peace ; but when the first father of 
 our race had exhibited before him by the Archangel 
 sent to announce his doom and to console him in his 
 fall, the fortunes, and the misfortunes of his descend- 
 ents, he saw that the deepest of their miseries would 
 befall them, w-hile favoured with all the blessings of 
 peace, and in the bitterness of his anguish he ex- 
 claimed 
 
 " Now I sec 
 Peace to corrupt, no les? than war to waste." 
 
 It is the very fervour of the noon-day sun, in the 
 cloudless atmosphere of a summer sky, which breeds 
 
 " the sweeping whirlwind's sway, 
 That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey." 
 
 You have insured the gallant ship, which j)loughs 
 the waves, freighted with your lives and your chil- 
 dren's fortunes, from the fury of the tempest above, 
 and from the treachery of the wave beneath. Be- 
 ware of the danger against which you can alone in- 
 sure yourselves — the latent defect of the gallant ship 
 herself. Pass but a few short days, and forty years 
 will have elapsed since the voice of him, who ad- 
 dresses you, speaking to your fathers, from this hal- 
 lowed spot, gave for you, in the face of Heaven, the 
 solemn pledge, that if, in the course of your career 
 
96 
 
 upon earth, emergencies should arise, calling for the 
 exercise of those energies and virtues which, in times 
 of tranquillity and peace, remain, by the will of 
 Heaven, dormant in the human bosom, you would 
 prove yourselves not unworthy of the sires who had 
 toiled and fought and bled, for the independence of 
 their country. Nor has that pledge been unredeem- 
 ed. You have maintained, through times of trial 
 and of danger, the inheritance of freedom, of union, 
 of independence, bequeathed you by your forefathers. 
 It remains for you only to transmit the same peer- 
 less legacy, unimpaired, to your children of the next 
 succeeding age. To this end, let us join in humble 
 supplication, to the Founder of empires and the Cre- 
 ator of all worlds, that he would continue to your 
 posterity, the smiles which his favour has bestow- 
 ed upon you : and since " it is not in man that walk- 
 eth to direct his steps," that he would enlighten and 
 lead the advancing generation in the way they should 
 go. That in all the perils and all the mischances 
 which may threaten or befall our United Republic, in 
 after times, he would raise up from among your sons, 
 deliverers to enlighten her Councils, to defend her 
 freedom, and if need be to lead her armies to victo- 
 ry. And should the gloom of the year of Independ- 
 ence ever again overspread the sky, or the metropo- 
 lis of your empire be once more destined to smart un- 
 der the scourge of an invader's hand, that there never 
 may be found wanting among the children of your 
 country a warrior to bleed, a statesman to counsel, a 
 chief to direct and govern, inspired with all the vir- 
 tues, and endowed with all the faculties, which have 
 been so signally displayed in the life of James 
 Monroe. 
 
APPEI¥DIX. 
 
 Order of Exercises at the Old South Church, commemorative of 
 the death of James Monroe, on Thursday, Jiug. 25, 1851. 
 
 i....voLtrNTARY ON THE ORGAN — by Gcorge J. Webb. 
 
 II....INTRODUCTORT SENTENCES. 
 
 By Rev. George W. Doane.... Rector of Trinity Church. 
 
 I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord ; he that 
 believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and 
 whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. 
 
 I heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto me, write, from 
 henceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so 
 saith the spirit; for they rest from their labours. 
 
 We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that 
 we can carry nothing out. 
 
 The Lord gave, and the Lord hath takethaway; blessed be 
 the name of the Lord. 
 
 Just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints. Right- 
 eousness and judgment are the habitation of thy seat. 
 
 Who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the 
 shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency. 
 
 Let us Pray. 
 
 Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy 
 kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven; 
 give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespass- 
 es, as we forgive those who tresspass against us; and lead us 
 not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the 
 kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. 
 Amen. 
 
 Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to 
 hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either 
 we desire or deserve, pour down upon us the abundance of 
 
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98 
 
 thy mercy, forgiving us those things whereof our conscience 
 is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not 
 worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus 
 Christ, thy Son our Lord. Amen. 
 
 Ahnighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou 
 hast made, and dost forgive tlie sins of all those who are pen- 
 itent, create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, 
 worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretch- 
 edness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect re- 
 mission and forgiveness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.— 
 A31EN. 
 
 Lord of all power and might, who art the Author and Giv- 
 er of all good things, graft in our hearts the love of thy name, 
 increase in us true religion, nourishes us with all goodness, 
 and, of thy great mercy, keep us in the same through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those who 
 depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the 
 faithful, after they are delivered from the burthen of the flesh, 
 are in joy and felicity; we give thee hearty thanks for the 
 good examples of all those thy servants, who having fin- 
 ished their course in faith, do now rest from their labours. 
 And w^e beseech Thee that we, with all those who are depart- 
 ed in the true faith of thy holy name, may have our perfect 
 consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thy eternal 
 glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, the Maker and 
 Disposer of the hearts of men, and Sovereign Lord of all, 
 who hast in every age, made known thy power and truth, in 
 the deliverance, protection, and preservation of states and em- 
 pires, we have heard with our ears, and our fathers have de- 
 clared unto us, the noble works which, in behalf of this our fa- 
 voured land, thou didst vouchsafe to do in their days, and in 
 the old time before them. We adore thy name, that in their day 
 of darkness and dismay, thou wast their pillar of cloud and 
 fire, for guidance and guardianship and deliverance from the 
 iron bondage of the oppressor. We acknowledge that it was 
 because thou wentest forth with their armies and didst fight 
 for them, that their little one was enabled to chase a thousand, 
 and that victory crowned their arms. And we confess that when 
 the din of battle had subsided, and thy spirit, moving on the 
 troubled waters, had lulled them all to peace, it was by thy 
 wisdom that their counsels were directed, and of thy goodness, 
 that their signal sacrifices, and generous efforts, were con- 
 ducted to that fair result in which our hearts rejoice. We 
 thank thee with a gratitude more pure and fervent for the so- 
 
99 
 
 lemn service which to-day assembles us together, for the dis- 
 tinguished warriors and able counsellors, to vindicate and to 
 mainfain our liberties, whom, in the great time of our necessi- 
 ty, thy holy arm raised up; and for the mercy and goodness 
 which, following us still, have blessed our country, in the se- 
 renity of peace, with wise and faithful men to fill with dignity 
 the highest stations of the public trust, and to discharge with 
 energy and skill the arduous responsibilhies which they in- 
 volve. Especially we praise thee, for the public services and 
 private virtues of the distinguished soldier, patriot, and states- 
 man, whose recent death we now affectionately deplore. Raise 
 up, we pray thee, others, after him, and through all coming 
 time, to administer worthily the free and happy institutions 
 with which thy providence hath blessed us; that ruling in thy 
 fear, they may be instruments of thine in extending that true 
 wisdom and knowledge which can alone be the stability of our 
 times, in promoting that righteousness which only can exalt a 
 nation, and in establishing that pure and undefiled religion 
 which, subduing all our hearts to thy obedience, shall make 
 our land a name, and a blessing, and a praise in all the earth. 
 Encompass with thy heavenly favour, and endue with thy 
 abundant grace, thy servants, the President of the United 
 States, and all in authority under him, the officers of the gov- 
 ernment of this Commonwealth, and the municipal authorities 
 of the City in which we are assembled. Let thy continual 
 pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and upon all the minis- 
 ters of thy holy word and ordinances pour down the dew of 
 thy continual blessing, that both by their life and doctrine, 
 they may set forth thy true and living word, and the people 
 obediently follow the same. Take to thy holy keeping, God 
 and Father of us all, and, as thou seest best for us, sustain, 
 direct, and bless, tiie various institutions of our common coun- 
 try, and the several interests, social, domestic, and personal, 
 which concern us as communities, as families, and as individ- 
 ual men. And, finally, give us all grace so to walk in the 
 way of our holy profession, that thou mayest delight to dwell 
 among us, and to do us good; and that all the temporal and spirit- 
 ual blessings with which thou hast favoured us, even from of old, 
 and beyond all other nations, may, through thy good providence 
 be continued to us, and to our children, a possession forever. 
 Let thy protection and thy blessing be with us in this place, and 
 on this solemn occasion. Fill the hearts of all who are here 
 present with a deep sense of human mortality, and of human 
 accountability. May the duties of the day be ably and faith- 
 fully discharged, to the instruction, improvement, and advan- 
 tage of us all. And may thy blessing go with us, when we go 
 hence, to follow us all the days of our life, and at the last, to 
 lead us to that high and holy place, which is prepared for 
 those who faithfully serve thee. Grant this, O Lord, for Je- 
 sus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and advocate. 
 
100 
 
 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, 
 and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all ever- 
 more. Amen. 
 
 IV. ...FUNERAL AWTHEM....(fliande/.) 
 
 How are the mighty fallen! they that were great among 
 the Nations, and Rulers of the People. — The People will tell 
 of their wisdom! The righteous shall be had in everlasting, 
 remembrance, and the wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
 firmament. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name 
 liveth evermore. 
 
 v....iSulofl2 tjfi f^on, Joi^n ^. strains. 
 
 VI.. ..HYMN.. ..(Tune Trivoli.) 
 
 Cease, ye mourners, cease to languish 
 
 O'er the grave of those you love; 
 
 Pain, and death, and night, and anguish, 
 
 Enter not the world above. 
 
 They are blessed, they are blessed, 
 Who their country's cause have served. 
 
 While our silent steps are straying. 
 Lonely through night's deepening shade, 
 Glory's brightest beams are playing 
 Round the immortal spirit's head. 
 
 They are blessed, &c. 
 
 Light and peace at once deriving. 
 From the hand of God most high ; 
 In His glorious presence living. 
 They shall never — never die! 
 
 They are blessed, &c. 
 
 vri.... BENEDICTION, by Rev. William Croswell.