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AN 
 
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 DELIVERED 
 
 ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1829, 
 
 THE CELEBRATION OF 
 
 AMERICAN IJVDEPEI^DE^J^CB, 
 
 CITY OF BOSTON. 
 
 BY JAMES T. AUSTIN. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 JOHN H. EASTBUKN, CITY PRINTER. 
 
 1829. * 
 

ORATIOIV, 
 
 A PKOPLE, satisfied with hereditary honor, might repose on 
 the large inheritance derived from the fathers of the American 
 revolution. Providence assigned to them a duty of immeas- 
 urable interest, and endowed them with feelings, manners and 
 principles for hs successful accomplishment. 
 
 In their adventurous courage chivalry revived again ; and the 
 armies of liberty rivalled in glory the soldiers of the cross. Their 
 self devotion repeated the examples of apostolic zeal in a cause 
 almost as holy, and joined in kindred veneration the martyrs of 
 freedom and the evangelists of faith. Their country combined 
 and concentrated every motive of action, and enforced the obedi- 
 ence of their souls, even when she seemed to require them, like 
 the Patriarch of Israel, to bind their ovvm children on the altar 
 of patriotism, and with their own hands to offer an oblation dear- 
 er than life. 
 
 But the declaration of national independence — their enduring 
 ■claim on the gratitude of posterity and the admiration of man- 
 kind — is not to be considered as the commencement of Amer- 
 ican liberty. More justice is due to the earlier settlers of Mas- 
 sachusetts, and more liberality to the country whence they sprang. 
 
 Our ancestors came here freemen, and by the blessing of 
 God neither they nor their posterity ever were slaves. 
 
Before they left the fragile bark, which bore on its deck the 
 fortunes of a future empire, they framed a constitution of gov- 
 ernment suited to their humble condition and their better hopes. 
 When they appointed Mr. John Carver to be their Governor, 
 for the truly republican reason that " he would not adventure 
 upon any thing of moment, without consent of the rest;" when 
 they placed all military rule in the hands of a "gentleman very ex- 
 pert in matters of that nature, one Capt. IMiles Standish, by name, 
 by whom they were all willing to be ordered in these concerns," 
 they established their little commonwealth on the principles of 
 civil liberty. When subsequently they assembled to carry on 
 the business of legislation, " every man being a member of the 
 General Court," there was a practical illustration of a pure de- 
 mocracy, which convenience and not compulsion induced them 
 afterwards to change. 
 
 Their allegiance to the British Crov/n was little more 
 than a convenient compromise to pay easily for the pro- 
 tection they required ; and hung so lightly that they 
 would not permit the royal flag to float in their capital, because 
 the cross in the standard of St. George ofiended their scrupu- 
 lous consciences with its emblem of popery. 
 
 Laws were made by their own delegates, expounded by their 
 own cidzens, and generally administered without cause of com- 
 plaint. No man was harmed in body or estate, but by judg- 
 ment of his peers. The whole subject of ecclesiastical polity 
 was under dicir controul. Education, the great bulwark of rational 
 liberty, was under their sole direction, and was so early, tho- 
 roughly, permanently and generously provided for, that it may 
 be doubted if the vast improvement of the human mind be here 
 owing to any one cause more decidedly than to the wise liberal- 
 ity of the founders of New-England. For more than a century 
 and a half they enjoyed all the immunities of freedom, which 
 their local situation and their spaise population would admit, and 
 when at length the hand of arbitrary power was ontslrclrlied to 
 oppress them, it found intelligence, wliich could not be deceived, 
 resolution, which could not be broken down, confidence, which 
 
could not be conquered ; physical strength in awful disparity, to 
 be sure, with their formidable foe, but directed by a high moral 
 feeling, which is not to be measured by any mere human stand- 
 ard, for it is the instrument of Providence for tlie accomplish- 
 ment of its grandest designs. 
 
 Resistance began, when oppression began. We do not know, 
 said one of the leaders of the people, that this matter is deter- 
 mined upon — hut the report of it ought to alarm us. 
 
 In the official enumeration of the colonies' complaints, none 
 are mentioned beyond the administration of the then reigning mon- 
 arch. There were therefore no chains to be destroyed, for none 
 had been forged ; — no yoke to be broken, for their gallant spirits 
 had never bowed themselves to bondage. Danger existed only 
 in prospect — The Stamps were sent back again — The ocean had 
 drunk up the tea — The soldiers of the King had retired from this 
 place at the voice of the people — The sympathy of a continent 
 baffled the vengeance of the ministry, and the rays of royal in- 
 dignation concentrated upon Boston, "illumined, but could not 
 consume her." Mihtary force attempted to compel submission, 
 and lives were lost; but the blood that was shed, hke dragon's 
 teeth, sprung up armed anew. The musket, that had rusted since 
 the French war, was brightened again ; and the bayonet, if there 
 were one, drawn from its worm-eaten scabbard. The little gun 
 powder on hand was collected into arsenals, and sand deposited in 
 barrels to prevent the enemy from knovving how very httle there 
 was. Valor supplied the place of experience. Against the 
 veterans of the King, rich in military equipment, and proud of 
 the blazonry of arms, a half fed and worse clad yeomanry made 
 bare the sword of the Lord and of Washington. 
 
 We venerate the men of the revolution, for renouncing the 
 colonial character, when its humble condition no longer comport- 
 ed with their dignity and honor ; but we should not be unjust to 
 the British Government, whose gentle and tolerant authority 
 had prepared the way to indcjienuence. The spirit, which sus- 
 tained it, grew out of habits and manners, which the mother 
 
G 
 
 country had fostered. The intelligence which conducted the 
 revolution, was the result of laws and institutions she had en- 
 couraged ; and the moral sentiment of the people, if it had un- 
 proved on her example, was supported by her character. 
 
 We are proud that the restraints of society were unbroken in 
 the wildest commotions of civil war ; — that the record of those 
 days is not as elsewhere, a catalogue of crimes ; that religion 
 maintained her authority ; that her temples were not deserted, 
 nor her ministers neglected, nor her duties forgotten — Such a 
 state of public feeling, such propriety of public manners could 
 be formed among colonists only under the influence of liberal gov- 
 ernment ; they could not be found among a people, whose spirit 
 had been depressed by slavery, or broken down beneath the fet- 
 ters of despotism. 
 
 Had these States been the colonies of France, we might have 
 been as dull and insensible as the Canadian peasantry, and quite 
 as incapable of freedom. Had they been placed under Spanish 
 domination we might have struggled through the dark night of 
 ignorance in all the horrors of a gloomy superstition, and if at 
 some period auspicious to the enterprise, a temple was erected 
 to freedom, instead of the intelligence, and truth, and moderation 
 and piety, which are the only acceptable offerings at its shrine, 
 its altars would have streamed with a constant sacrifice of blood. 
 
 Not only did civil liberty exist here anterior to national inde- 
 pendence, but the actual independence of Massachusetts was an- 
 terior to that of the nation. 
 
 Massachusetts is the mother of the revolution. Her efforts 
 in its commencement are too honorable to be omitted in the her- 
 aldry of her fame. Earliest and alone, without aid, without allies, 
 connections or confederacy, singly, by her own will, she dissolved 
 the royal power within her own territory and over her own peo- 
 ple, and assumed to herself the prerogatives of independence. 
 
 When it was yet unknown how far the generosity of her sister 
 colonies would support her in her extremest need, when it was 
 not impossible that ancient loyally might identify resistance with 
 
rebellion, when it was uncertain how wide might be the desolation 
 of the storm to which she exposed herself, and how fatal the 
 consequences of a disaster beyond her own resources to repair, 
 by a magnanimous effort of resolution — by the force of that attach- 
 ment to freedom which education and law and habit and the re- 
 corded example of her pilgrim fathers had infused into the very 
 soul of her people, she broke from the ancient connexion, and 
 achieved her own independence, unassisted and alone. 
 
 When her Congress of delegates assembled at Watertown, in 
 defiance of the royal chai'ter, and spurned the representative of 
 the crown, and assumed the powers of civil government, and 
 took possession of the public treasury, and levied taxes, and es- 
 tablished a navy, and commissioned that American vessel of war, 
 that first captured a British Ship on the ocean, and erected 
 maritime courts, and appointed Judges, and administered justice 
 to belligerent and neutral by the law of nations, and raised an 
 army, and nominated officers, and gathered soldiers under the 
 pine-tree banner of IVIassachusetts, and poured out a rich liba- 
 tion of blood on the battle-field of freedom, the colonial charac- 
 ter was at an end. The revolution had begun. The State was 
 then free, sovereign and independent. 
 
 It might be that the strength of a confederated continent 
 would come to her assistance. She might hope for the sup- 
 port, and she received the support, the full, generous, noble sup- 
 port of the country ; but she began the revolution alone, — she 
 took tlie first step in the march of independence resolutely, fear- 
 lessly, unaided and alone. 
 
 Yield to tlie honorable emulation of our friendly competitors 
 all that may be challenged by their gallantry and zeal. Con- 
 cede the debatable propositions that the first suggestion of com- 
 mittees of correspondence originated with them ; that their 
 chivalrous spirits projected the grand Congress of 1776. 
 
 While those committees were discussing the great interests of 
 the country, and before that Congress had assembled, Massachu- 
 setts had ceased to be a colony of the crown. If the declara- 
 
8 
 
 tlon of independence was moved for by the most eloquent of 
 their ])atriots, and draughted by the most eminent of their states- 
 men, independence itself was first established in Massachusetts, 
 and its principles acted out by the humblest of our citizens. 
 
 Bring to the imagination that band of determined men as- 
 sembled at Watertown, unarmed and defenceless within cannon 
 shot of a disciplined army; their fortunes in the camp of a military 
 commander, whose dignity they had offended ; their persons liable 
 to be seized and sent to Europe for trial as traitors ; their con- 
 duct impeached in a public proclamation, and two of them pro- 
 scribed as rebels whose offences were too heinous for the par- 
 don of the King. Judge of their anxiety in that time that tried 
 men's souls ; their immense responsibility to the country, whose 
 destiny they directed ; to their children for the protection that 
 was due to them ; to posterity for that political condition, w'hich 
 would be a legacy of honor or of shame ; to their God before 
 whom they were answerable, — and felt themselves answerable, 
 for all the blood of a war they might accelerate or prevent. 
 How indistinct their vision of the future even when a strong faith 
 threw its light upon their soul. How difficult their task to keep 
 up the courage of the timid, the hopes of the desponding, tlie 
 strength of the feeble ; to enlighten the ignorant, restrain the 
 rash, supply die destitute, and impart to all tlie pure motives, 
 which consecrate success. Here was no mad ambition, no lust 
 of power, no allurement of interest, no scheme of personal dis- 
 tinction. Few of them are remembered in history. Yet these 
 are they, whose light gave promise of a coming dawn. If they 
 recede from the general gaze, it is in the noon tide splendor of a 
 brighter day. 
 
 They set as sets the morning star, which goes 
 Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides • 
 Obscured among the tempests of the sky. 
 But melts away into the light of heaven. 
 
 Had these men proved incompetent to the task, the battle for 
 diat generation would have been lost when it began. Indepen- 
 
9 
 
 dence might indeed have been obtained, for no foreign power 
 could long hold a continent in its grasp ; but the struggle must 
 have been made in this age, and not that; and the desolation of 
 civil war which marks the times of our forefathers, would have 
 been the melancholy history of our own. 
 
 Appropriate honors have ever been accorded to the states- 
 men and soldiers of the revolution, yet it is not these classes 
 alone that the successful issue of the conflict is chiefly to be at- 
 tributed. The springs of the revolution lay deeper, and farther 
 in the interior. It gushed not from one, or two great fountains. 
 It rolled onward like our broad and fair rivers swollen by uni- 
 versal accessions from every point in the vast territories through 
 which they flow. There was a quiet, unobtrusive, determined 
 and patient spirit among the people, which submitted to sacrific- 
 es from devotion to liberty, and found a recompense for suiTer- 
 ings in consciousness of duty. 
 
 Let it be remembered that all the usual occupations of life 
 were at a stand. Commerce was annihilated ; the fisheries de- 
 stroyed ; agriculture deprived of her laborers ; the mechanic 
 arts suspended ; the currency a depreciated paper, which 
 mocked all calculations of mercantile acuteness ; the treasury '9 
 
 empty ; credit at an end ; private fortunes embarrassed ; desti- .^ 
 
 tution and want bringing up their spectacles of wo, and many a 
 voice Hke the widow of Jerusalem exclaiming in agony, " as 
 the Lord thy God liveth I have not a cake, but only a handful 
 of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruise, and I am gather- 
 ing two sticks that I may go in and dress it, for me and my son, 
 that we may eat it and die." 
 
 But there was a prophet's miraculous power in the spirit of 
 patriotism. 
 
 Famihes were fed, and children educated, and taxes paid, 
 and recruits raised, and personal services rendered for precau- 
 tion and defence — but how it was done — with what effort and 
 exertion and toil and tears, may escape the researches of history 
 and be lost to the gaze of the world, but it spreads itself to the 
 2 
 
10 
 
 observation of that beneficent being, who disdains not the hum- 
 ble annals of the poor. 
 
 Nor in recuring to those agitating times should the country 
 forget its obhgations to the sex, whose influence in society is in 
 proportion to civilization, and not the less powerful that it is unob- 
 trusive and silent. 
 
 The revolution depended on opinion, and they cultivated high 
 sentiments of honor, and proud })rinciples of duty. It depended 
 on enthusiasm, and their buoyant spirits reflected in wider cir- 
 cles tlie sunshine of success, and threw the brighter coloring of 
 their hopes on the clouds of misfortune. It depended on effort 
 and exertion, and there was no useful employment too humble for 
 their assiduity. It depended on sacrifices, and they made them. 
 No disaster fell upon the State, but a full share of it pressed up- 
 on them ; no victory imparted confidence to tlie country, but 
 their joy was chastened by the private suffering with which it 
 was purchased. The course of the revolution was through trou- 
 ble, and grief, and priv^ation, and distress, and it was their pecu- 
 liar office to soften the sorrows that could not be prevented, and 
 to assuage the anguish of wounds, for which kindness is some- 
 times a cure. 
 
 In our hours of ease, 
 Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, 
 And variable as the shade. 
 By the light quivering aspen made ; 
 When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
 A min'string angel thou. 
 
 We are too often ungenerous to our own fame. The story of 
 the British matron following the fortunes of our northern cam- 
 paign has been repeated with pathetic tenderness, till the world 
 wonders at her constancy ; but the wives and mothers of the 
 American soldiery are confounded with the common followers of 
 an European camp, because history is too lofty, and poetry too 
 fastidious to recount their interesting and romantic agency. 
 
 But go to the survivors of those days. Ask the veteran chil- 
 led now bv the frosts of aqce, who yet remembers those perilous 
 
11 
 
 and piercing times, ask him at wiiat privation of domestic com- 
 fort the haversack and the canteen of the recruit were furnished 
 with their scanty store ? Ask him, vi^ho traversed the field of bat- 
 tle, to quench the burning thirst of the wounded, and parted with 
 their garments for bandages, and when the wine and oil were 
 wanting, ministered in the humblest offices of humanity widi their 
 tears ? Who found their weary way to the prison door of the 
 captive, to cheer him with the kindness of friendly salutation ; 
 whose generosity supplied the destitute hospital and fed the 
 famishing, and watched the sick, and soothed the last moments 
 of the dying soldier? He will tell you that these angel visits of 
 mercy were paid by the daughters of the country. And the 
 old man's countenance brightens at the recollection of their 
 sympathy, and the animation of youth returns again as the im- 
 mages of their benevolence croud freshly on his mind. 
 
 It is decorous on suitable occasions, of which this anniversary 
 is one, to open the treasury of ancestorial honor, and examine 
 the splendid inheritance of glory derived from illustrious progen- 
 itors ; not vainly to boast of it ; not wastefully to expend it ; not 
 idly to rest upon its wealth ; but to indulge in solemn feelings 
 of gratitude for the blessings it confers, and to recognize at the 
 same time the obligations it imposes. 
 
 We may gaze upon it with emotions of honest pride. It is a 
 treasure incorruptable, immortal. We may feel a laudable self 
 satisfaction in possessing it, with a hope that the virtue, which 
 acquired, may be continued to preserve it ; that it will extend 
 and multiply the bounties of a beneficent providence, when the 
 rays of divine favor shine on oiu* country, and moderate the 
 rage of the elements, when tempests, which spare no human in- 
 institution, sweep through the land. 
 
 We may feel some confidence that when contentions arise 
 among the heirs of this noble inheritance, it may check the 
 wantonness of dissention and repress even the acrimony of mu- 
 tual reproach. 
 
 When they, to whom was bequeathed this legacy of honor, — 
 
12 
 
 as times change and parlies arise, and elections are to be carried 
 — are charged with every possible violation of the political deca- 
 logue; when some, it is successively said, submit to foreign influ- 
 ence fatal to the public peace, or are corrupted by the examples of 
 a demoralizing democracy; or are bewildered by the fascinations 
 of imperial splendor; or are seduced by the meritricious charms 
 of a titled aristocracy ; or when invidious distinctions are made 
 at home to our desparagement, and a yankee state is spoken 
 of as somethfng different from a patriot State ; or when in am- 
 biguous phrase unnamed but distinguished leaders of the people 
 are denounced as traitors to the constitution and the laws, the 
 indignant genius of the land may proclaim with a voice as re- 
 sistless as the elements in triumphant refutf-tion ; These are the 
 descendants of the puritans of New England. These are the 
 sons of the patriots of the revolution. These are they, 
 born on the modern Marathon of the republic, nursed in the 
 cradle of liberty, baptized at the altar of their country's inde- 
 pendence ! 
 
 Could such men forget the example of their ancestors, the 
 claims of posterity, their duty to God, the yawning graves would 
 give back again their antiquated dead, and multitudes of regen- 
 erated patriots start from their unquiet repose to antedate the 
 final retribution of mankind, and involve in premature conflagra- 
 gration the worthless tenants of a useless world. 
 
 But the glory, which belongs to the age of independence, 
 would be remembered on these occasions with very litde utility, 
 if it did not impress on each successive generation its own high 
 responsibility. 
 
 The duties of the citizen may change, but they never can 
 cease. When great efforts are required large honors are the 
 reward ; when the task is comparatively easy the neglect of it 
 is followed with severe reprobation. The public treasure, like 
 the private fortune of individuals, cannot be secured without 
 care, vigilance and discretion. It is exposed to the bad passions 
 of the community, and must be surrounded by a rampart of as 
 generous hearts as were concerned in procuring it. 
 
i3 
 
 Disseiitions endr.iiger it. la the violence of party zeal altars 
 are erected to strange Gods, and the true worship is neglected. 
 Competition ensues not to advance the interests of the State, but 
 to promote the success of a party ; not for the prosperity of the 
 people by wise laws, but the gratification of individuals by lu- 
 crative office. 
 
 Parlies will exist in a republic, for were there is aright of pri- 
 vate judgment there will be a difference of opiniofi. Sparks 
 stricken off in collision fall on matter inflamable enough to blaze 
 always with fierceness, and sometimes with danger. But the 
 materials are not inexhaustible. It is not the holy fire, which 
 burns without being consumed. The tendency of party strife to 
 cease in one form and revive in another is the compensating 
 power that prevents its producing the ravages it threatens. The 
 ever varying interests and the multiplied circumstances of polit- 
 ical excitement in an active and enlightened community pre- 
 vent any dominion over the public mind for a period long enough 
 to derange it. — The restless ingenuity of dissention traces out 
 the lines of party with as much earnestness as if the record was 
 to remain for ever, but the returning tide of time mocks this 
 perishable industry, and smooths its shores for a nev/ impression^ 
 equally interesting and equally transient. 
 
 One set of circumstances form one combination of men, but 
 another set arise, and the former confederacy have no common 
 interest to combine them as partizans. New events bring old 
 opponents into the same ranks, and their better acquaintance soft- 
 ens former animosities, and reconciles conflicting opinions- 
 Whoso endeavors to prolong the strife, beyond the existence of 
 the causes whence it sprang, does violence to the spirit of the 
 constitution, and impairs the principles of civil liberty. 
 
 Gur history is replete with occurrences, which excited the 
 rage, and almost the madness of rival factions, until their tempo- 
 rary importance yielded to others that seemed at the time quite 
 as formidable. 
 
 Lidependence was not determined upon by universal consents 
 
14. 
 
 There were men ; — good men too, — who expected defeat, and 
 would not encourage resistance. But are there any who would 
 now draw the permanent lines of a party between the descendants 
 of the Tories and the Rebels, the Loyalists and Republicans of 
 1776. The constitution wasproposed to a people divided in almost 
 equal numbers on its fundamental provisions; but the original caus- 
 es of dissatisfaction are forgotten by all parties, while some restless 
 spirits, who call themselves its friends, are incessantly proposing 
 alterations which never perplexed the controversy of its contem- 
 porary critics. 
 
 The French revolution, the British Treaty, the decrees of 
 Napoleon, the orders in council, our own embargo, non inter- 
 course and war, multiplied causes of quarrels and mutual re- 
 proach. But the revolution has burnt out ; the treaty has ex- 
 pired ; the Emperor is dead ; the orders are repealed. And 
 the embargo, non intercourse and war have gone down to one 
 common grave together. 
 
 These were topics of fierce controversy between republicans 
 and federalists. But the causes of the quarrel have ceased, 
 and the parties to it have changed. The majority of the active 
 men of the present day know as little, and care as little about 
 their details, as they do about the prosecution of the Quakers or 
 the persecution of the witches in the early history of New Eng- 
 land — And an attempt to new marshal the ranks of republicans 
 and federalists, as in other days, is as idle and hopeless as to 
 revive here that grave dispute, which the historian of Lilliput 
 informs us shook to its centre that mighty commonwealth, 
 Whether when a man was about to eat an egg, it should be first 
 broken on the big end, or the little end of the shell ? 
 
 Some part of the acrimony of past contention may still linger 
 in the recollection of the comparatively few, who were most in- 
 timately concerned in it; but even this is passing away. We 
 do not believe the aspersions, which were cast on the eminent 
 men of other days and earlier parties. We have sense enough 
 to know, and candor enough to admit, that there were honest 
 
15 
 
 men, and wise men, and great men in tlie ranks of both the con- 
 tending parties ; and that there were qnestions at issue about 
 which the most expanded minds and the most honest hearts 
 might reasonably differ. Ahhough on these questions we ad- 
 here to our original principles and still entertain our former sen- 
 timents, and continue to believe that our former opponents were 
 wrong, yet the practical consequences of such opinions are at 
 an end. They belong to history and philosophy, and not to 
 private passions or personal interest ; and they do not come, and 
 they cannot be forced to come from their present insignificance, 
 into causes for individual hostility or political division. 
 
 We have now other causes of difference. We divide now 
 about Tariffs and Rail roads, about reform and removals, about 
 the mode of making a president and who he shall be. We are 
 Adamsites or Jacksonites or follow the standard of some other 
 one of the half dozen great men who divide public opinion. 
 When the old republican party, which once in the integrity of 
 its strength shook down its adversaries' battlements, and planted 
 its standard on the Capitol, — and sent forth its triumphant de- 
 tachments into every section of the country, is now called to- 
 gether on some general election, it comes like the gathering of 
 the clans on the highlands, where each has its own leader, and 
 its own piper, and its own pibroch — mingling their discordant 
 notes in one wild din of dissonant confusion. 
 
 And the great federal party, which claims to have erected 
 the palace of constitutional liberty, and to have swayed the 
 sceptre of public opinion, and to have set, like a monarch on 
 his throne, with an empire at their feet, comes out now on some 
 gala occasion like a decayed gentleman, whose pride has lasted 
 longer than his fortune ; and when he would assemble the re- 
 tainers of his house to display its accustomed magnificence, finds 
 his ancient tenantry are dead ; that the younger have sought 
 other service ; that his equipments for the field are marvelously 
 out of fashion ; and that only a few family servants remain to 
 preserve the ancient honors of his rank, and to prove, amid the 
 
16 
 
 dilapidation of his estates, their attachment to his character, ar 
 their fidelity to his principles. 
 
 The preservation of our free institutions depends on the dit 
 semination of pure principles, sound morals and a general regari 
 to honest and honorable conduct. There is in these respect 
 an imperative duty on the guardians of public liberty. And al 
 the people are its guardians. To this office they are appointee 
 by that good providence, which placed them in a country o. 
 freedom. They may not neglect it without the most alarming 
 direlictiou of duty. Each man in the sphere of his influence, and 
 each woman in her domestic circle is bound to this task by all 
 the obligations of natural allegiance. 
 
 A profligate people cannot long continue free. Public virtue 
 is an inseperable condition of national freedom. To live under 
 free institutions and wise laws is the highest and noblest condition 
 of man in civil society, and cannot long be enjoyed by a people 
 licentious and dissolute. Where the public mind is essentially 
 corrupt, there is no capacity for the enjoyment of rational liberty. 
 We need not look back upon antiquity for the collosal ruins of 
 free states. History preserves the records of no empire to com- 
 pare with this country in the extent of its civil and religious free- 
 dom. Such a condition marks the progress of man, the expan- 
 sion of his capacity, the enlargement of his moral power, by 
 which self government becomes good government, and judge- 
 ment, and reason, and integrity, and honor, and religion are the 
 household troops of the republic. It is not vain glory to say, that 
 the first practical experiment of this government was made by 
 a people, by education and character morally and religiously in 
 advance of the rest of mankind. None other could comprehend 
 its value. None other can sustain it. If the age recedes in 
 virtue it cannot advance in freedom. If a people do not pre- 
 serve a high distinction for purity of manners, sound principles, 
 love of order, and voluntary obedience to the laws, they can- 
 not keep possession of an intelligent liberty. 
 
 The sons and the daughters of this land, are called upon 
 
17 
 
 therefore, by the most solemn adjurations of patriotism, to pre- 
 serve the characteristic quahties of their honorable ancestry. If 
 the strictness and simplicity of the puritans must yield to the re- 
 finement and luxury of more opulent times, the integrity of their 
 conduct; the steadiness of their faith, the temperance of their 
 lives, their zeal for virtue and disinterested exertions for the 
 public good are examples, the true spirit of which this com- 
 munity must not abandon, if they would preserve the institutions 
 of their fathers. A disposition to extravagant expenditure in 
 dress, equipage and social intercourse, beyond the limits of in- 
 dividual fortune, demands that public sentiment should be awa- 
 kened to its ruinous consequences; and that blasting sin of in- 
 temperance, which has threatened to become a national vice, 
 should rouse the indignant eloquence of the patriot as well as 
 the Christian, and be marked with equal reprobation by every 
 lover of his country, and every worshipper of his God. 
 
 The nature of our political institutions more than of any other 
 nation, places a peculiar responsibihty on every individual citi- 
 zen, because every one and all of them result from the aggre- 
 gate of individual efi::it. Each man does a little, and no man 
 does more. Single ballots select the public officers, and single 
 actions form the pubhc character. This is the consequence of 
 a popular government. But we talk of popular governments 
 without always understanding the magnitude of the agency, by 
 which they are moved. The power of the people, almost infi- 
 nitely divisible in its component parts, is yet in its aggregate a 
 new display of power, very feebly developed in the republics of 
 antiquity, little knovv'n as yet beyond the territory of the United 
 States. 
 
 In other ages and other nations it was the monarch, or the 
 nobles, or the clergy, or the rich, or the eminent, soldiers who 
 had gained splendid victories — emperors, kings, consuls who 
 concentrated upon themselves the glory of the nation, for whose 
 benefit government was ordained and the people permitted to 
 exist. With us the order is changed ; the government and its 
 3 
 
IS 
 
 magistrates, its civil functional ies and its military officers are but 
 parts of the people, from whom they proceed, for whom they 
 are created, and by whom they hvc, and move, and have a be- 
 ing on the earth. And this great power is uncontrolled and mi- 
 controUable but by God. It is illimitable in its strength, resist- 
 less in its energy, awful in its passion, tremendous in its rage. 
 It but breathes in its anger, and the institutions it had erected 
 fall like the gigantic architecture of human skill, w hen the earth 
 shakes the monuments of ages from her surface, and crumbles 
 them into dust. 
 
 He little understands the nature of a popular government, 
 who affects to despise its democracy, or little knows his own in- 
 significance when he attempts to resist it. All the tendencies of 
 things among us enlarge and invigorate it. The advocates of 
 strong government, if any remain, who thought it could be 
 bound down by ingenious contrivances, may shudder at their 
 imbecility of skill ; and more jealous republicans, who appre- 
 hended that the ligatures provided in the Constitution were too 
 tight, have not less occasion for alarm at the utter futility of 
 their fears. 
 
 Its giant strength shakes off the fetters that would bind it 
 Like dew drops from the Lion's mane. 
 Look for a single moment at some of the theoretical impedi- 
 ments to its power. The Senate of the United States, intended 
 to stand like an island among the waves and throw its beacon 
 light of safety over their angry surges, is itself but a vessel on 
 the same ocean, driven by all tlie impulses that move the ele- 
 ments about it. The Executive, placed on an eminence, as was 
 supposed, whence it might overlook the turbulent atmosphere at 
 its feet, finds the clouds rising to its own level and must be borne 
 away by the blast unless it 
 
 Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm. 
 
 The House of Representatives, where this power should 
 chiefly take an official form under constitutional limitations 
 
19 
 
 and restraint, is gradually increasing its prerogatives, for- 
 getting all checks upon its will, and taking possession by its 
 standing committees of every department of the administration, 
 with a grasp tliat there is no where either ability or inchnation 
 to resist. 
 
 But confidence is placed in the judicial department. It is 
 said, and said truly, that the national judiciary is a citadel of im- 
 pregnable strength. Within the range of its formidable battery it 
 commands obedience and respect ; while those of the states like 
 myrtillo towers in advance of the main position, delay the assault 
 and repel the incursion of the most adventurous invader. The 
 security is delusive. So long as they stand, the flag of the consti- 
 tution will float proudly on their bastions. But they stand on the 
 territory of the people. If public opinion cannot direct their 
 artillery it dismantles it. If it cannot control the garrison it lev- 
 els the ramparts with the adjacent soil ; not indeed by right but 
 by power ; but when did supreme power ever take council of 
 any thing but its will ? * 
 
 Such is the potency of the popular principle, which resistless 
 as lightning, melts even the materials intended to conduct it in 
 safety. 
 
 Instruction and of course education is the only instrument of 
 security for public liberty against its dangerous movements, as a 
 director of its inclinations, not as a check on its power ; but while 
 the liberality and the wisdom of the generous and the eminent 
 are devising schools and universities for this purpose an engine 
 of mighty machinery confounds their calculations with an effect 
 more summary than the laws, with results severer than the crim- 
 inal code, and with an universality of operation as searchingj. 
 penetrating and expansive as the element of steam. 
 
 Li the desire of the people to acquire information, in the influ- 
 ence to be obtained by those, who communicate it, and in that 
 indisposition for exertion, which had rather receive opinions than 
 
 *See debate in the Senate on the Judicial decisions of the United States 
 Courts, 1822. 
 
20 
 
 originate them, the periodical and daily press has established a 
 weight in this community, as far beyond the anticipations of the ' 
 founders of the government, as are the inventions of modern sci- 
 ence over the dull limits of antiquity. A power is thus formed, 
 which in the hands of educated and honest men is capable of 
 vast force in improving and elevating the public mind ; and under 
 the direction of the ignorant, the profligate or the intemperate, 
 of adventurers, who seek notoriety for extravagant par?,dox, or 
 retailers of scandal, whose poverty takes pay for the poison 
 which they sell, corrupts the fountains of the public health and 
 scatters the miasma of leprosy and pestilence. 
 
 As regards individual, social and family happiness the domi- 
 ciliary visits of this messenger of a modern inquisition is not un- 
 worthy of a more extended inquiry than this occasion allows: on 
 the state of public liberty its operation cannot be much increased 
 without serious alarm. 
 
 When the periodical and daily press may secure the election 
 of a chief magistrate with the expectation of dividing in its own 
 corps the ample donative that first gratitude and afterwards cus- 
 tom may be willing to bestow, it will be here as it was in those 
 degenerate days when the Roman world was exposed to sale 
 by public auction, not a question whether Pertinax be worthy 
 to retain his honors, or Julian to supercede him,* but which of 
 them will pay the largest price in promises, in offices, or in 
 gold. 
 
 Such a power as that of the whole people exercised with its 
 full weight upon all the institutions of government, and all the 
 forms of public administration, and all the intimacies of private 
 life can be safe only when it is intelligent, and beneficial only when 
 its moral energy is in due proportion to its physical strength. 
 The rash hand, which seized the promethean fire to animate the 
 marble, raised a Demon instead of a man, by not giving him 
 moral capacity ; theirs would be an act more extensively fatal, 
 who having imparted to a people the principles of civil liberty, 
 
 *lst rol. Gibbon's Rome, d 172. 
 
2] 
 
 and thus enabled dieni to do as they please, should not provide 
 a moral and intellectual energy, that they may please to do only 
 what is right. 
 
 Hence that ability of mind which is necessary to understand 
 the true interests of the State, that firmness which maintains 
 them, that coolness and steadiness which preserves itself against 
 sudden excitement, and rash execution, that discrimination, 
 which distinguishes between flatterers and friends, and that high 
 mindedness, which honors integrity even in its errors more than 
 duplicity and artifice when they may chance to be right, are ac- 
 quirements which must designate a people who would preserve 
 the invaluable privileges of self-government. And these acquire- 
 ments must be general ; — they must form a public sentiment ; — 
 they must be ingrafted into the pubhc mind ; and early, extensive 
 and thorough education providing a moral and intellectual ali- 
 ment that will assimilate with the constitution in these respects 
 must be as extensive as the right of suffrage. 
 
 That cultivation of mind, which merely controls the boldness 
 of brutal strength, is not competent to advance the high destinies 
 of a free people. Public liberty is intimately connected with a 
 national literature. The general diffusion of knowledge can be 
 secured only by high individual attainments — and the standard 
 should be an elevated one, that the community may hold the na- 
 tional literature as it does the national courage, the national 
 strength, the national honor, a possession of which all may be 
 proud, and each do something to maintain. 
 
 There is infinite danger in a community like ours of giving a 
 wrong direction to individual ambition. The emotion itself is a 
 noble one ; inherent, expansive, aspiring. The decorations of 
 nobility inspire it in some countries, great wealth and its con- 
 comhants in others, but military glory is every where its idol 
 and will every where collect its votaries unless some nobler ob- 
 ject fastens itself on the affections of the people. National liter- 
 ature may be made a successful rival of military renown. It 
 may provide for the cultivation of the arts of peace and the im- 
 
22 
 
 proveaicut of those of war. The advancenieiu of legislation 
 and jurisprudence, the development of the resources and wealth 
 of the nation, devising larger means of general prosperity and 
 new arrangements for individual happiness, are as legitimate ob- 
 jects of its attention as the cultivation of poetry and the fine arts 
 to which it is sometimes supposed to be confined. 
 
 When the public mind is engaged in the advancement of a 
 national literature it commands the exertions of genius and learn- 
 ing ; and thus the richness and softness of their coloring is thrown 
 upon the community itself. The fierceness and rudeness which 
 seek occasion for strife, and promote foreign war and domestic 
 dissention, are softened and smoothed, and a better direction giv- 
 en to the public feeling, which is taught more thoroughly to ad- 
 mire and more ardently to cherish the institutions of the country. 
 
 It is not a wise economy, which in a country like ours pre- 
 vents the endowment of high seminaries of learning ; nor is the 
 argument against their republican utihty w^ell founded in fact, 
 that because their advantages cannot be enjoyed directly by 
 every member of the community they are exclusively the privi- 
 leges of their immediate beneficiaries. 
 
 The advancement of a free people in intelligence, the pro- 
 gress of mind and refinement of manners among them are ob- 
 jects of as much public consequence as the increase of the general 
 wealth ; probably more ; — for a poor people may be free, an ig- 
 norant people cannot continue so. But neither learning nor 
 wealth can be equally distributed. Under the best order of 
 things there must be some poor and some ignorant. — Yet the poor 
 and the rich are required in every community to preserve those 
 channels by which property is acquired, and to maintain the ac- 
 quisitions which only one class possesses for the common benefit 
 it secures to all ; so the wise and the uneducated are bound to 
 •give facilities according to their means for the enlargement and 
 ■preservation of the intellectual property of the public. 
 
 The obligation in this respect — fellow citizens — is peculiarly 
 yours. The high and honorable rank you hold in the Union 
 
23 
 
 imposes it upon you. Your liberal system of general education, 
 your early taste for intellectual improvement, your state of free- 
 dom which is not shaded by the darkness of domestic slavery, 
 your eminent means ia point of wealth, which even under present 
 embarrassments hold an enviable superiority over most other sec- 
 tions of the country, the habits of our community ac(|uired in 
 schools and churches, which adorn every village of the Com- 
 monwealth, and some progress already made and promised, have 
 consigned to your care this glorious task, that as you began the 
 revolution and supported it, so you may erect the first pillars of 
 a national literature, and preserve in its temples your own and 
 your country's honor to the last syllable of recorded time. 
 
 The preservation of public liberty depends on preserving the 
 character of eminent public men. To great minds honorable 
 fame is a motive and rew^ard for exertions, which neither power 
 nor wealth could of themselves command. Thus it was in the 
 revolution. Thus it has been in the great crises of the country. 
 Thus it may always be if the people protect the reputation ac- 
 quired in their service. 
 
 The spirit of detraction is an evil spirit, which infests the land. 
 That universal desecration of character, of which in the late can- 
 vass for President most lamentable instances have been given by 
 all parties, should no longer be tolerated. It should be under- 
 stood that we will not refer to posterity the payment of that 
 praise due to talents and virtue exerted in the public service ; 
 that we will no longer give the rivals of our statesmen the ad- 
 vantage of upbraiding them with a want of estimation by their 
 immediate constituents. Massachusetts has sent into every 
 department of the public service both of the State and the Na- 
 tion men of as great minds and as pure hearts as ever counselled 
 for the happiness of a people ; but she has too frequently de- 
 prived herself of the benefit of their exertions, by suffering their 
 characters to be abused at home, and neglecting that maternal 
 care of their reputation, which her more politic sisters have used 
 in their own case with signal advantage. 
 
24 
 
 Public liberty depends on the opinion of its vitality. It is 
 the duty of every American to inculcate a belief of its immor- 
 tal nature. He may not encourage feverish apprehensions. 
 He may not indulge in prophecies of evil, which sometimes 
 contribute to their own accomplishment. He is not required to 
 be insensible to danger, but it is for preparation and not for 
 alarm. Times of depression are not those of despair. None 
 could be more discouraging than in the infancy of the republic ; 
 but the patriots of the revolution stayed themselves on the 
 goodness of their cause, the greatness and grandeur of their 
 purposes, the enlargement of the moral powers of their race, 
 which was the object of their pursuits, and the consequent diffusion 
 of general happiness which was to be elaborated by their indi- 
 vidual sufferings. 
 
 It is our equal duty to keep up the life of hope ; to restrain 
 that sickly imagination, which in the shadows of occasional 
 darkness conjures up the ghost of ruin, and peoples the politi- 
 cal atmosphere with images of terror. 
 
 It cannot be that tKe good providence of God will desert us 
 if we do not desert our duty. It cannot be that the soul which 
 once had strength enough to break away from the fetters of ig- 
 norance and despotism can be reclaimed again as their slave. 
 There is an enlarging, a purifying, a preserving spirit in civil 
 and religious liberty, which like the immortal nature of man, is 
 destined to a never ending existence. 
 
 The present time brings with it both opportunity and demand 
 for exercising this paramount duty. The administration of the 
 general government has been changed in opposition to the almost 
 unanimous vote of New England, and while as yet its definitive 
 policy is not fully disclosed, enough is apparent to excite con- 
 sternation and regret. 
 
 But the influence of New England cannot be destroyed, if 
 she be faithful to her principles, her interests and her fame, and 
 where her influence is felt there is liberty. Her diffusive intel- 
 ligence, her abundant wealtli, her hardy industry and adventu- 
 
25 
 
 rous enterprise are the elements of a power which no adminis- 
 tration may despise with impunity, nor distnrb even without con- 
 sequences fatal to itself. 
 
 Let her maintain her place in the confederacy without fac- 
 tious hostility. Submitting to the voice of the people, which 
 removed her own candidates from authority, it is her duty, in 
 the spirit of the constitution, to wage no war of extermination 
 against their successors, merely because they are not the favor- 
 ites of her choice. 
 
 But while on the one hand that partizan temper, which for its 
 own personal aggrandizement would put down an administration 
 even if it was as pure as the angels of light, belongs not to the dig- 
 nity of the New England character, so on the other hand a 
 prompt adhesion to the powers that be, merely because they 
 exist, beyond a respectful obedience to the laws, is little capa- 
 ble of being reconciled to the duty of a public spirited and en- 
 lightened community. 
 
 Let the administration be judged by their measures, and 
 wait the development of their measures for the means of a dis- 
 passionate opinion. Distrust is allowable, for the mode, in 
 which they acquired power, is not calculated to give confidence 
 in its useful exercise ; and its first movements, under the name 
 of reform, look like payment from the public treasury for individ- 
 ual exertions in a successful cause. But New England has high- 
 er interests in the general government than the participation of its 
 emoluments or office. If the great concerns of her commerce, 
 her manufactures and her agriculture be protected ; if peace be 
 secured by wise counsels, and the honor of the nation maintained 
 in its diplomacy, she will look with proud indifference on the 
 distribution of executive patronage. 
 
 It is impossible to destroy her title to consideration until the 
 influences of the moral world are suspended, and the laws of na- 
 ture itself shall be changed. Out of the very arrangements to 
 diminish her inherent power are generated ample causes for its 
 speedy restitution. The successors of Alexander contended 
 4 
 
■^ 
 
 26 
 
 among themselves for empire, and here, also, ambitious men an- 
 ticipate the time when tlie chair of the presidency will be a 
 subject of new competition. "* 
 
 The umpirage of New England will assign its honors to the 
 most worthy. He who may most advance the great interests of 
 the nation, who places his claims, not on local prejudices, or 
 sectional feelings, or the partizan temper of intriguing men, but 
 on liberal exertions for the prosperity of the nation, on fidelity to 
 the constitution and the great institutions of the country ; he 
 Avhose large and comprehensive policy rises above tlie misty 
 atmosphere of personal contention, and looks out on the broad 
 ocean he is appointed to navigate, with a consciousness of his 
 immense responsibility to all the citizens of this increasing em- 
 pire, to posterity whose destiny he may controul, and to the 
 cause of civil and religious liberty embarked under the protec- 
 tion of the American people, whether such a man be found on 
 this or the other side of the Potomac, whether he dwell on the 
 shores of the Atlantic or the farthest mountains of the west, lie 
 will command the confidence and receive tlie support of New 
 England. It will be her proud prerogative to decide between 
 conflicting claims, and the knowledge that her confidence must 
 be won for success and can be won only by merit, will ensure 
 her that respect and consideration which ambitious men pay to 
 power, wise men to intelligence, honorable men to high charac- 
 ter, and the whole people to that chivakous and gallant bearnig, 
 winch spurning the paltry advantages of sectional interest, is de- 
 voted to the permanent prosperity of this vast Republic,