THE HERITAGE OF THE PILGRIMS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM M. EVARTS. 
 
Avery Arc hitlc tlral and Fine Arts Library 
 Gu t of Skymolr B. Ol rst Old York Library 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE PILGRIMS. 
 
 AN ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 ISTEW E^^aL^ISTD SOCIETY 
 
 m t|£ Citu of felir fork, 
 
 IN CELEBRATION OF THE 
 
 TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOURTH ANNIVERSARY 
 OF THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM M. EVARTS. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCTETY; 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 346 & 348 BROADWAY. 
 1855. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/heritageofpilgriOOevar 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE PILGEIMS. 
 
 ^it ©ration 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM M. EVARTS. 
 
' QUORUM GLORIA NEQUE PROFUIT QUISQUAM LAUDAN 
 NEC VITUPERANDO QUISQUAM NOCUIT." 
 
ORATION. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England Society : 
 
 The custom by which we celebrate this anniver- 
 sary would find its sufficient support in the sentiment 
 of ancestral veneration. " The glory of the children 
 is their fathers." Of every worthy stock the not 
 degener;\te sons cherish the names of those from 
 whom by an authentic lineage they trace their 
 honorable descent. With zealous affection and a 
 pious reverence they explore all sources of know- 
 ledge respecting their lives, their characters, their 
 motives, their acts. In a spiiit neither arrogant nor 
 envious, they are yet jealous for a just estimate of 
 the virtue and the power which marked the founders 
 of their line ; careful that no malign or reckless in- 
 fluence shall distort the record, or obscure the re- 
 membrance, of their deeds ; earnest in the deter- 
 mination that their latest descendants shall lose 
 nothing of their heritage in these great names, in the 
 
6 
 
 course of its descent. N(jr should it be for a rao- 
 raent supposed that the spirit of our institutions and 
 the structure of our society, which have discarded 
 the hereditary transmission of rank and power, dis- 
 couraged even the succession of wealth, and made 
 ridiculous the culture of a vulgar family pride, have 
 at all weakened or diverted the force of those natural 
 ties which connect us alike with our ancestry and 
 our posterity, and sustain jukI protect, as a perpetual 
 and imperishable possession, the glory and worth of 
 our forefathers. Say rather that, as you strip from 
 this heritable relation, all that is false or factitious, 
 all that is casual or valueless, you give new force to 
 this genuine lineage of noble character, this true 
 heirship to greatness of purpose and of action. 
 Upon the recurrence of this day, then, although the 
 great transaction which has made it illustrious, had 
 drawn after it no such magnificent train of conse- 
 quences as history now attributes to it, although the 
 noble undertaking had attained to no proportionate 
 grandeur of result, it would become us to meet with 
 sincere filial devotion, and add one stone to the 
 monument inscribed in honor of the Puritan Exiles, 
 one note to the anthem of their fame. 
 
 But the actual course of history has not left the 
 " Landing of the Pilgrims " an isolated or fruitless 
 occurrence, buried in the grave of the past, nor con- 
 
1 
 
 fined its interest to the private and peculiar consider- 
 ations which should affect the inheritors of their 
 blood and names. It is as the principal and initial 
 in a still continuing series of great events, as the 
 operative and unexhausted cause of large results al- 
 ready transpired, and larger yet surely to ensue, 
 that we chiefly applaud the transaction of this day. 
 Upon the Rock of Plymouth was pressed the first 
 footstep of that energetic and creative power in hu- 
 man affairs which has since overrun the continent, 
 and is stopped in its sublime progress, if it be stopped 
 at all, only with the shores of the all-containing sea. 
 Through the actual aspect of the scene of the debar- 
 kation, made up of wintry sea and gloomy sky, and 
 bleak and desolate coast, we see breaking the efful- 
 gence of those moral elements of light and hope 
 which have ever since shone with so conspicuous 
 splendor, and the spot seems to us the brightest and 
 the warmest on the face of the earth ; hriglit^ as the 
 source and fountain of those radiant glories of free- 
 dom in whose glad light we live : warm^ with the fer- 
 vent glow of that beneficent activity which pervades 
 and invigorates the life of this whole nation, which 
 has secured the progress of the past and forms the 
 hope of the future. 
 
 ' lile terrarum mihi, prseter omnes, 
 Angulus riJet." 
 
8 
 
 It is New England, as she was first founded, as 
 she has since been established and ]>uilt up, as she 
 now is, — mother of men, source of great ideas, nurse 
 of great principles, battle-ground of great conflicts, — 
 that we celebrate in this commemoration. 
 
 There is one circumstance in our situation, as as- 
 sembled here, which cannot escape our attention. 
 We are without the borders of New England, yet 
 no exiles from our country ; we are beyond the pro- 
 tection of those governments that still rule over the 
 soil of the Puritan plantations, yet we have neither 
 lost our birthright there, nor are we strangers here ; 
 however generous and cordial has been our reception 
 in the community in which we live, yet we have 
 come hither, and here remain, neither by sufferance 
 nor by any title of courtesy or hospitality ; we are 
 here of right and at home. As it is with us in this 
 central metro^jolis, so is it with our brethren, the 
 descendants of our common ancestors, in the fair 
 cities of the South, and in the wide valley of the 
 West; 
 
 "And where the san. with softer fires, 
 Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep ; 
 The children of the Pilgrim sires, 
 This hallowed day, like us, do keep." 
 
 New England has enlarged the dominion of her 
 laws over no wider territorial limits than at the first, 
 
9 
 
 yet for her expanding population, for her institutions, 
 her customs, her moral, social, political and religious 
 influences, she has received a truly imperial exten- 
 sion. As an integral portion of the great Federal 
 Eepublic, produced by the double act of Indepen- 
 dence and of Union, in which she took so large and 
 decisive a part, IS^ew England — ^losing nothing of her 
 local identity and her express individuality — yet has 
 her chief duties and responsibilities at present and 
 in the future; and in every just estimate of what 
 the vital forces of the Puritan character have hither- 
 to effected, or may yet be expected to accomplish, 
 this relation of New England must be largely con- 
 sidered. 
 
 While the influences of the occasion direct our 
 view mainly to the past, still our contemplations, as 
 it seems to me, would not wisely take the course 
 either of antiquarian curiosity, or historical research, 
 or controversial attack or vindication. All consul- 
 tation of the past is vain, unless our questioning find 
 out some key and guide to the future. Man escapes 
 from the unsatisfying present, and lengthens the 
 brief span of his personal existence, by laying hold 
 upon the past, and reaching forward to the future ; 
 but of the past only is he secure, and in it he must 
 find the forest and the quarry from which to hew 
 out the shapely structu^^es of the future. It was an 
 
10 
 
 annual custom among the Romans, in the more re- 
 ligious period of their history, as the year appi oached 
 its close, for the augurs and other liigh priests to make 
 a solemn observation of the signs, l>y which they 
 might predict the fortunes of the republic for the 
 coming year. This '''' aur/urmm mliUU-^'' this pre- 
 sage of the public welfare, may well attend our pious 
 homage to the memory of those who laid the foun- 
 dations of our commonwealth, for in these founda- 
 tions shall we find the surest indications of its future 
 fortunes, propitious or adverse. Nor to ourselves 
 shall a brief communion with the stern natures, the 
 elevated motives, the inspiring example of these re- 
 markable men, be without a personal benefit ; our 
 feebler spirits and lapsing energies may catch some 
 new vigor from this contact with their embalmed 
 virtue, as of old the dead even Avas revived by touch- 
 ing the bones of the prophet Elisha. 
 
 These reflections seem naturally to present as an 
 appropriate theme, for such consideration as the 
 limits of the occasion will permit, Tiie Heritage of 
 THE PiLGRBis — OS we liave received it from them^ as 
 we are to transmit it to our descendants. 
 
 In attempting some analysis of the character, the 
 principles, the conduct of the first settlers of New 
 England, and an estimate of the extent to which 
 they have affected our past, and are to shape our 
 
11 
 
 future, history, I should feel greatly embarrassed, 
 were I not assured that the whole general outline of 
 the subject is already in your minds and memories, 
 that the true spirit and temper for its consideration 
 are included in the disposition which unites you in 
 this celebration. Much more should I feel oppressed, 
 did I for a moment suppose that the interest of the 
 occasion was at all dependent upon any novelty of 
 fact or of illustration, or demanded a brilliant rhe- 
 toric or elaborate oratory. I know not what impres- 
 sions the near examination of the acts and motives 
 of the Puritan emigrants may produce upon others, 
 but to myself their simple grandeur seems to need 
 no aid from vivid coloring or artful exaggeration, 
 nor to incur much peril from imperfect or inadequate 
 conceptions. Resting upon the imperishable basis 
 of real greatness of soul, their fame no praise can 
 brighten and no censure dim. 
 
 The seeds of the movement which was to eman- 
 cipate religion from prelatical control, and re-estab- 
 lish the equality of men before their common Father, 
 were sown in the English mind by Wickliffe. Though 
 their dissemination had not been sufficient greatly to 
 disturb the quiet of the Church or break the peace 
 of the realm, yet when, one hundred and fifty years 
 afterwards, Luther and Zuingle proclaimed, as with 
 a trumpet, the great Reformation, and raised high 
 
12 
 
 the torch of religious liberty, the people of England, 
 from this previous preparation, the more readily ac- 
 cepted the glad tidings, and welcomed the new light. 
 While the pure flames of religious enthusiasm were 
 burning in the hearts of his people, their sovereign, 
 Henry VIII., threw off the Papal dominion upon a 
 question, personal to himself, in which the Pope had 
 proved uncomplaisant to his wishes. He usurped — 
 for, in great measure at least, it was usurpation — the 
 same supremacy in matters of religion which he had 
 wrested from the Pope, and declared himself the 
 head of the English Church, subjected the whole 
 control of its doctrine and discipline to the temporal 
 power, gave to the prelates a new master, but in no 
 degree satisfied the true demand of the movement 
 among his people, freedom of conscience and inde- 
 pendency in religion. Preserving still an attach- 
 ment to the religious tenets of the Church of Rome, 
 he looked with equal disfavor, among his subjects, 
 upon adhesion to the Eoman pontiff, and desertion 
 of the Romish faith. The succeeding reigns of his 
 son Edward ani his daughter Maiy, gave aid and 
 succor, the one to the new religion, the other to the 
 ancient faith ; and when Elizabeth, near the middle 
 of the sixteenth century, assumed the crown, she 
 found a people distracted by religious contentions. 
 The singular position taken by King Henry had 
 
13 
 
 tended to divide the realm into three parties, — the 
 Popish recusants, who refused to acquiesce in the 
 royal usui-pation of the Pope's spiritual dominion, — 
 the Protestant malcontents, unsatisfied with the re- 
 jection of the Pope's temporal authority while so 
 much of the corruption of Popery remained in the 
 ritual and worship, — and the supporters of the Church 
 of England. From the accession of Elizabeth, by 
 education and profession a Protestant, the more 
 zealous reformers counted upon an active cooperation 
 on the part of the Crown in the further emanci- 
 pation and purification of religion. As matter of 
 personal conviction, the Queen was not so fully 
 weaned from the old faith, but that she retained the 
 crucifix in her own chapel, and attempted its resto- 
 ration in the churches ; and through her whole reign 
 she refused a legal sanction to the marriage of the 
 clergy. But as matter of state policy and govern- 
 ment she early adopted, and steadily pursued, a sys- 
 tem still more fatal to the hopes of the party of 
 progress in the church. That great and politic com- 
 promise, the Church Establishment, for reasons wise 
 or unwise, she and her statesmen adopted as the true 
 and safe solution of the religious distractions of her 
 people, and confm'mity to its dogmas and its cere- 
 monies, was exacted alike from the sullen Catholic 
 and the ardent Protestant. What till now had been 
 
14 
 
 a war of opinion, and about matters in theraselves of 
 much indifferency, between the two divisions of 
 Protestants, became a war of persecution by the 
 Government upon the offending faction. For non- 
 conformity, to every degree of disfavor and annoy- 
 ance, were gradually added the graver punishments 
 of stripes, imprisonment, and death. 
 
 The party which contended for a more thorough 
 and complete reformation of religion, and against 
 whom the state-craft of Elizabeth conceived these 
 machinations and executed these oppressions, re- 
 ceived from its opponents the name of Puritans. 
 They were neither sectarian nor schismatical — nor, 
 as yet, dissenters ; they were the front of the Prot- 
 estant host in the still pending warfare with the 
 Church of Rome : in their judgment the main battle 
 of Protestantism in England was not completely 
 won, much less its final triumph assured, and they 
 would hold no truce with the ancient superstition. 
 They would tolerate no defence of the surplice and 
 the cap, of the cross in baptism, or the ring in mar- 
 riage, on the plea that their retention would con- 
 ciliate the Papists, and reduce that disaffection. 
 With a large part of the people of England still 
 clinging to the old faith, and much the greater por- 
 tion of the benefices of the Church filled by dissem- 
 bling Protestants, ready to "resume their mass- 
 
15 
 
 books with more alacrity tliaii they had laid them 
 aside," the Puritan clergy and laity refused their ad- 
 hesion to the policy of the Crown, and struggled 
 against conformity. To the strenuousness of their 
 resistance to this specious compromise of the rights 
 of conscience for the peace of the realm, it may well 
 be thought, England owes her safety from relapse 
 into Popery. 
 
 The party of the Puritans too, was neither small 
 in numbers nor made up from any one class of socie- 
 ty. Strongest in London and other large towns, and 
 among the merchants and tradesmen, during the 
 reign of Elizabeth, it also embraced, according to 
 Hallam, a majority of the Protestant gentry of Eng- 
 land, and included not a few eminent nobles. The 
 clergy, below the grade of high ecclesiastics, most 
 famous for talents, learning and eloquence, espoused 
 the cause of progress, and so nearly did they come 
 to a majority of the Convocation of 1562, that a 
 proposition to abolish the offensive usages failed by 
 but a single vote ; the records of Parliament through- 
 out the reign of Elizabeth show that the control of 
 the Commons was in the hands of the Puritans. In- 
 deed, things were not far from the condition which 
 they reached in a succeeding reign, when, as Car- 
 lyle asserts, " either in conscious act, or in clear 
 tendency, the far greater part of the serious thought 
 
1(\ 
 
 and manhood of England had declared itself Pu- 
 ritan." 
 
 The zeal of persecution did not long suffer the 
 controversy to be waged upon mere forms and cere- 
 monies, but transferred the conflict to a battle for 
 the rights of conscience. The inquiries into the just 
 limitations of might and right in spiritual mattei*8, 
 in turn, were directed to civil affairs, and the train of 
 causes was set at work, which at length overthrew 
 the English monarchy and built up this republic in 
 the West. 
 
 I have thus far described the relations of the 
 great body of the Puritans to the Reformation and 
 the English Church, but there was gradually devel- 
 oped among them a sect or division which boldly 
 pushed the questions at issue to their ultimate and 
 legitimate solution ; which threw off all connection 
 with the Established Church, rejected alike the sur- 
 plice and the bishops, the prayer-book and the cere- 
 monies, and, resting upon the Bible, sought no less 
 than to restore the constitution of the Christian 
 Church to the primitive simplicity in which it was 
 first instituted. These Separatists, as they were 
 called, put in practi<je their theoretical opinions by 
 the formation of churches in which the members 
 were the source of all power and controlled its ad- 
 ministration, and, in a word, applied to ecclesiastical 
 
17 
 
 organizations principles wHch, if introduced into 
 civil government, would produce a pure democracy. 
 
 In the ^' mean townlet of Scrooby,'' in Xotting- 
 hamsliire, recent investigations liave accurately as- 
 certained, was collected the Puritan congregation of 
 Separatists, from which proceeded the fii^st settle- 
 ment of New England. They united themselves in 
 the simple and solemn compact of a church covenant 
 about the year 1602, and found a place of worship, 
 strangely enough, in an Episcopal manor-house be- 
 longing to the See of York, but in the tenancy of 
 William Brewster. John Robinson soon became 
 theii- minister, and for several years they there sus- 
 tained, as best they might, the pei-secutions of the 
 civil power, and maintained their worship. This 
 Chi'istian Church, collected from a simple agricul- 
 tural population in a rude part of England, remote 
 from any great centre of influence, was the seed se- 
 lected, in the wisdom of Providence, for the planta- 
 tion of a new community in this Western world. 
 With the formation of this Cono^res^ational Church 
 commences the history of New England, for this 
 compacted, organized body, this social unit, made up 
 and fitly framed together in England, and thus as an 
 aggregate and perfect whole, transported to Ameri- 
 ca, made the first settlement at Plymouth. 
 
 We at once perceivo that we have here before 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 us the ripened germ, ready to be severed from tlie 
 parent stock, whence was to proceed the future 
 growth, under the eternal law of development by 
 which seeds produce, each after its kind. As yet 
 this little, this peculiar community, had formed no 
 conscious plan or project looking to the foundation 
 of a new society, much less of an independent state. 
 Yet, whatever of preparatory disci} )line it was to 
 submit to in the interval, whatever circumstances, as 
 yei uncertain, were to determine where and when it 
 should germinate and be developed, the elements of 
 weakness or of strength, the qualities decisive of the 
 growth which should come from it, if any growth it 
 should have, were fixed and complete. Here, then, 
 is the true point at which to observe what were the 
 important elements and qualities both in the indi- 
 vidual characters of these men, and in the solemn 
 and intimate bond of connection that held them to- 
 gether, — in reference, always, to their fitness or unfit- 
 ness as a vehicle for the transfer of the religion and 
 civilization of the old to the new world, and in refer- 
 ence also to the nature of the institutions of which 
 they were suited to become the founders. 
 
 In the first place, these emigrants were drawn 
 from the bosom of the English people^ in distinction 
 from the court, the nobility, the gentry, the learned 
 professions; — their condition in life was ordinary, 
 
19 
 
 alike removed from the enervation of wealth and 
 the servility of poverty, and having all the inde- 
 pendence which belongs to intelligent and laborious 
 industry ; — they were, in the main, a rural and agri- 
 cultural people, and of the sober, reflective, self- 
 dependent temper which such pursuits cherish ; 
 their condition, as among themselves, was equal; 
 they stood together in their common manhood un- 
 distinguished, save only by those differences which 
 intellect, and character, and culture, make among 
 men. 
 
 In the second place, they had all the instruction 
 and experience in personal rights and their enjoy- 
 ment, which even at that day distinguished the con- 
 dition of Englishmen, and, outside of any special 
 pressure of the Government in particular matters of 
 state or church policy, were a large and valuable 
 possession to the people of England. They might 
 be oppressed by cruel, unjust or impious laws^ but 
 had important and, in general, efficient guaranties 
 against oppression in violation of law. A common 
 law, being nothing else than the adaptation of the 
 immutable principles of general j ustice and common 
 right to the ever- varying circumstances of human 
 affairs, the public administration of justice, a partici- 
 pation as jurors in such administration, security by 
 the habeas corpus agairst illegal restraint, an invio- 
 
20 
 
 lable threshold, and a representation in the Com- 
 mons which controlled the supplies, — tliase were some 
 of the rights of Englishmen in which the Puritan 
 emigrants possessed a share. 
 
 But the traits which most command our atten- 
 tion, both from intrinsic dignity and the absorbing 
 influence on their conduct, are the depth of their 
 religious convictions, the purity of their religious 
 sentiments, and the fervor of their Christian faith. 
 If our Pm-itan forefathers in civil station and worldly 
 estate ranked among the common people of England, 
 the disdain of courtiers and the scorn of prelates, 
 they seemed to themselves children of a nobler 
 lineage, and consecrated of an elder priesthood than 
 those Avho despised them. To them religion and its 
 laws of worth and dignity were not only realities, 
 but the sole realities ; Christianity was not only true, 
 but its spirit and its precepts were the all-sufficient 
 guide and rule of life ; God they not only revered, 
 with a distant awe, as the Creator of the world and 
 the Ruler of events, but in the boldness of a filial 
 adoption confided in him as the Father of their 
 spirits, the watchful Protector of their daily walk ; 
 wealth in earthly possessions, power in temporal 
 sway, they counted as nothing beside the riches and 
 the glories of the spiritual kingdom; the pride of 
 life, the pleasures of sense, all pomp and magnificence 
 
21 
 
 seemed but dust and ashes to the substantial joys 
 and eflPulgent splendors of the spiritual life. Not 
 less was the indifference to the toils and hardships, 
 the suflferings, privations and afflictions of the present 
 time, begotten by the high hopes and sure rewards 
 of their vivid faith. The enemies that they dreaded 
 were the enemies of their souls, the encounters to 
 them most formidable were with the great adversary, 
 the evils they feared were the frailty and the wicked- 
 ness of their own natures, the victories they aimed 
 at were over temptation and sin, the conquest they 
 strove for was over their own spirits. 
 
 In an age when faith has grown colder, when 
 religion is much less a matter of public and general 
 thought, when outward and ostensible enterprises 
 for the moral and spiritual advancement of man at- 
 tract and absorb whatever activity is spared from 
 purely worldly pursuits, these elevations of spirit 
 seem, to many, inconsistent with the calm and sober 
 performance of duty which marked the conduct of 
 these men. Some stigmatize them as the vagaries 
 of a vulgar fanaticism, others pardon them as the 
 extravagancies of a generous enthusiasm, but we ac- 
 knowledge them as an essential element in the agen- 
 cies which were to operate great social and political 
 revolutions at home, and found and build up a great 
 nation abroad. 
 
22 
 
 Passing from this brief and imperfect examina- 
 tion of the character of these emigrants themselves, 
 mark now the peculiar association in which they 
 were united, and in which they were to leave their 
 native land and ultimately to seek these shores. It 
 was an independent, isolated, Christian Church, part 
 of no estaLlishment, subordinate to no hierarchy, 
 and having no relations outside of itself. I propose 
 no observations, mystical or ecclesiastical, concerning 
 it as a church, l>ut simj^ly a consideration of the 
 principles on which its formation as a social unit 
 rested, and in reference to its convertibility, when 
 need should be, into an independent community and 
 complete body politic. 
 
 And first we notice that this community was or- 
 ganized, as its fundamental discrimination from the 
 system of prelacy, upon the notion that the members 
 were the source and depository of all power, that by 
 their election all offices were to be filled, and that 
 the suffi-age was equal and universal. 
 
 We next observe that the tie wdiich bound the 
 members together had no reference to selfish inter- 
 ests or the pursuit of gain, but was that of brother- 
 hood, and for the culture of their higher nature and 
 the promotion of their supreme welfare. Mutual 
 support and aid, counsel, sympathy, a bearing of 
 each other's burdens, a participation in each other s 
 
23 
 
 joys and sorrows, conflicts and triiimplis, were tlie 
 rigiit and the duty of each in respect to all. 
 
 Add to this, that this union was permanent, that 
 it embraced the family as well as the individual ; 
 that it presupposed concert and consent as to the 
 objects and ends of life ; that it ever confirmed and 
 constantly cherished unity of purpose ; that it in- 
 volved a thorough acquaintance with each by all in 
 the most sincere and intimate sense ; and that 
 around all was thrown the solemn sanction of divine 
 authority, and you have a little community with 
 more of the true social spirit to hold it together, 
 and less chance or scope for the operation of selfish 
 discords to weaken or dissolve it, than ever has been, 
 or ever can be, otherwise constituted. 
 
 To this Puritan congregation the cruel alternative 
 was soon presented, between expatriation and aban- 
 donment of their religious worship ; for to this pitch 
 had the civil power pushed its persecutions. They 
 chose to turn their backs upon their homes and 
 their possessions, and, to use their own language, 
 "by joint consent they resolved to go to the low 
 countries, where they heard was freedom of religion 
 to all men.'' For twelve years, in patient, though 
 ungrateful toil, in occupations unfamiliar and uncon- 
 genial, amid a crowded population, speaking a foreign 
 tongue, and with customs strange to their English 
 
24 
 
 notions, they led an honest life and maintained their 
 religious woi-ship. They have left a record of the 
 reasons and the influences which induced them to 
 leave Holland and seek the remote, unpeopled 
 wilderness within the nominal sovereignty of Eng- 
 land. It is quite apparent from a perusal of their 
 own statements, that on leaving England they had 
 no other view than a peaceable life with the enjoy- 
 ment of religious liberty, looking no further ; that 
 as they advanced in yeai-s and their children grew 
 up around them, the probable fortunes of their pos- 
 terity were forced upon their attention. They fore- 
 saw that their individuality and nationality, their 
 language, the very religion which was dearer than 
 life or country to them, would be swallowed up in 
 the general population of Holland. For themselves, 
 they would have cared little whether their short 
 sojourn before they were removed to " heaven, their 
 dearest country," were in one place or another ; but 
 for their children and later posterity they desired 
 the birthright of Englishmen, and for the pure and 
 primitive forms of Christianity which they possessed, 
 and at so costly sacrifice had preserved, they sought 
 a permanent establishment and a wider diffusion. 
 
 Under these impulses, led by these motives, to 
 enjoy liberty of conscience and pure scriptural wor- 
 ship, to enlarge his majesty's dominions and advance 
 
25 
 
 the kingdom of Christ ; or, in other words, to found 
 a new society where the Christian religion and Eng- 
 lish law should prevail, religious liberty flourish and 
 a pure faith be preserved, our Pilgrim fathers pro- 
 jected and accomplished the perilous passage of the 
 wide ocean, braved the unknown dangers of a 
 wilderness, and on this day, two hundred and thirty- 
 four years ago, landed on the Kock of Plymouth. 
 Thus did they, with a true filial devotion, cling to 
 the skirts of the ungracious mother from whose 
 bosom they had been so rudely repelled, and thus 
 did the stone, which the builders of English liberty, 
 and English law, and English power, rejected, 
 become the bead of the corner of our constituted 
 state. 
 
 Well might Milton, the brightest star in the 
 fii-mament of English, no less than of Puritan, liter- 
 ature, mourn the great loss to England from this 
 emigration, led by the Pilgrims, and closely followed 
 by so much of the worth and strength of the nation, 
 and sadly forebode for the fortunes of the parent 
 state thus bereaved. " What numbers of faithful 
 and free-born Englishmen and good Christians have 
 been constrained to forsake their dearest home, their 
 friends and kindred, whom nothing but the wide 
 ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide 
 and shelter from the fury of the bishops. Oh, if we 
 
26 
 
 could but see the shape of our dear mother Eng- 
 land, as poets are wont to give a personal foi*ni to 
 what they please, how would she appear, tliliik ye, 
 but in a mourning weed, witli ashes upon her head, 
 and tears a]>undantly flowing from her eyes, to be- 
 hold so many of her children exposed at once, and 
 thrust from things of dearest necessity, because their 
 conscience could not assent to things which the 
 Ijishops thought indifferent ? Let the astrologers be 
 dismayed at the portentous blaze of comets and im- 
 pressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and 
 changes to states ; I shall believe there cannot be a 
 more ill-boding sign to a nation (God turn the omen 
 from us ! ) than when the inhabitants, to avoid in- 
 sufterable grievances at home, are enforced by heaps 
 to leave their native country." 
 
 It has been the custom of poets, of orators, and 
 of historians, iis they looked upon this little frag- 
 ment of population, — torn from the bosom of a pow- 
 erful state, driven from the shelter of established 
 law, outcast from the civilization of the world, thrust, 
 as it were, unarmed and naked into a fierce struggle 
 with rigorous, inexorable nature, — to pity its weak- 
 ness, dej^lore its trials, and despair of its fate. If 
 the view be confined to the mere outward aspect of 
 the scene and the actors, if you omit their real his- 
 tory and overlook their actual character and connec- 
 
27 
 
 tion, if you would regard them as a casual group 
 thrown on the shore from the jaws of shipwreck, or 
 from some dire social convulsion, the picture of fee- 
 bleness, of misery, of hopelessness, can scarcely be 
 exaggerated. 
 
 But, unless my analysis of their character and 
 deduction of their history has wholly failed of its 
 purpose, we cannot resist the conviction that, as the 
 beginning of a new community, as the foundation 
 of an original and separate civil society, as the germ 
 and nucleus of an independent political state, this 
 band of first settlers included as many elements and 
 guaranties of strength, of safety, and of growth, as 
 lay within the whole resources of human nature, or 
 could be added from the supports of a divine re- 
 ligion. 
 
 All the traits and qualities of personal manhood, 
 and in as large measure as, before or since, their 
 countrymen or ours have attained to, they possessed ; 
 the attendance of their wives and children carried 
 into whatever strange wilderness a present home, 
 and stamped the settlement as permanent, not fugi- 
 tive ; they were equipped with all the weaponry of 
 substantial education, furnished with sufficient stores 
 of ordinary learning, trained in a discipline of prac- 
 tical experience, better than proof armor in the 
 warfare they were to wage. 
 
28 
 
 Nor was the preparation of their spirits for the 
 great undertaking less fit and sufficient. As they 
 did not fear death, no terror could frigliten tliem 
 from their purpose ; as they did not love pleasure, 
 no present privations could appall them, no sensual 
 attractions allure them back ; as they were l)ut as 
 wayfarers upon the earth, with no abiding-place, 
 pursuing only the path of duty, wherever they 
 pitched their moving tent, each setting sun would 
 find them " a day's march nearer home.'' 
 
 As the love of gain, the wild spirit of adventure, 
 the lust of dominion, had no share in bringing them 
 across the seas, so no disappointments or discontents 
 of a selfish nature could enfeeble, distract, dissolve 
 their union ; as the bonds of their confederacy were 
 spiritual and immortal, no natural afflictions or tem- 
 poral disasters could absolve the reciprocal duty, or 
 break the mutual faith, in which they were knit to- 
 gether as the soul of one man. 
 
 Esteeming, as we must, that our Pilgrim ances- 
 tors brought to these shores whatever of essential 
 strength there wjs in the civilization which they 
 left, and whatever of power there is in a living 
 Christian faith, — that their coming was absolutely 
 void of all guileful purpose, and their association 
 vital in every part with true social energy, we may well 
 consider the laments at the feebleness, and distrusts 
 
29 
 
 of the issue, of their enterprise, as more fanciful 
 than philosophical. 
 
 What, then, though their numbers were few and 
 their persons ordinary ; what though the dark frown 
 of winter hung over the scene, and the sad cry of 
 the sorrowing sea-birds, and the perpetual moan of 
 the vexed ocean, breathed around them ; what 
 though the deeper shadoAV of death, the sadder 
 wail of the dying and the bereaved were in their 
 midst ; what though want had possession of their 
 camj), and starvation threatened at their outposts ? 
 Strong in human patience, fortitude, courage to bear 
 or to remedy whatever it was in human nature to 
 endure, or in human power to cure, and for the rest, 
 mightier still in the supports of their sublime faith, 
 with the prophet's fervor, each one of them could 
 exclaim, "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, 
 neither shall fruit be in the vines ; the labor of the 
 olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; 
 the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there 
 shall be no herd in the stalls : yet I will rejoice in 
 the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." 
 
 Equally propitious to the beneficent character of 
 the institutions they were to build up was it, that, 
 while they brought with them such amazing ele- 
 ments of vigor and freedom, they left behind them 
 almost all that had deformed and burdened the 'de- 
 
30 
 
 velopment of the state, and all the incrustations and 
 corruptions that liad overlaid the Church and defiled 
 religion. King, nobles, gentry, all fixed ranks, all 
 prerogatives, all condescensions, all servilities, they 
 were for ever, in a social sense, delivered from ; the 
 whole hierarchy, l>isliops and priests, canons and 
 convocations, courts ecclesiastical and high commis- 
 sions, rites and ceremonies, were at once thrown off 
 and utterly ignored ; all tliiit could assist, confirm, 
 enlarge and liberalize society, they brouglit with 
 them, unembarrassed witli aught that could thwart, 
 trammel or impede its advancement. 
 
 That before the emigrants left Holland, they de- 
 signed to become a body politic, using among them- 
 selves civil government, and choosing their own 
 magistrates ; that in preparation for their landing 
 they made a formal compact or covenant to that end, 
 and that, without break or interval from that mo- 
 ment, they and their descendants, to this hour, have 
 maintained free government (notwithstanding it was 
 so long colonial and dependent) ; that from the 
 same stock their numbers were supplied and in- 
 creased, and that from the same stock and under 
 the same lead and impulses, the Massachusetts colony 
 was founded ; that the Connecticut and 'New Haven 
 colonies sprung from their loins, while that of Rhode 
 Island grew out of their intolerance ; and, in fine, 
 
31 
 
 that all 'New England, as it has been and is, grew 
 up, as naturally as the oak from the acorn, from this 
 seed planted at Plymouth, I need only to suggest. 
 
 The institutions founded by the fathers of New 
 England were new in the affairs of men, and greatly 
 in advance of whatever past experience had shown 
 possible in human condition ; the civil prudence of 
 their age regarded them but as the experiments of 
 the model and the laboratory, successful only by 
 exclusion of the friction and disturbance of great 
 and various interests, and by shelter from the stormy 
 elements nursed in the bosom of every large society ; 
 the cold eye of tyranny yet watches for the hour 
 when the heats of passion shall dissolve, or the 
 frosts of selfishness shall crumble their whole fabric ; 
 still, their foundations stand sure, and their dome 
 ascends and widens in ampler and am23ler circles. 
 
 But the sjjirit of liberty is no new impulse in 
 human conduct, no new agent in the history of states 
 and nations ; yet it is generally regarded as the main 
 impulse in the action of our forefathers, which is 
 without a parallel, — as the effective agent in their 
 constructive achievement, which is without a pre- 
 cedent. 
 
 The truth is, with our Pilgrim fathers liberty 
 never was valued as an end, though as a means to 
 duty it was worthier than all other possessions, and 
 
32 
 
 dearer than life itself. Emancipation fi*om existing 
 authority they souglit only to suljject themselves to 
 a more thorough discipline ; loyalty to a ruler they 
 rejilaced by obedience to law ; they threw off the 
 yoke of their king only to pursue the stricter service 
 of their God. They cherished, they cultivated, they 
 sheltered, they defended, they watered with their 
 tears and with their blood, the fair flower of liberty, 
 but only that they might feed upon its sober, some- 
 times its bitter, fruit, duty. 
 
 The mere passion for liberty has overthrown 
 many dynasties and torn in pieces many communities ; 
 it has an immense energy to upset and destroy ; but 
 here its work ends, unless it be attended by a sound 
 conce]3tion and faithful acceptance of the grand con- 
 structive ideas of law and duty, to hold up the tot- 
 tering, or to rebuild the ruined, state. We pro- 
 nounce, then, that the highest fidelity to law, and 
 the sincerest devotion to duty, were the controlling 
 sentiments of om^ ancestors in their walk and work. 
 
 Nor did our Puritan fathers teach, either by 
 lesson or example, that all men are capable of politi- 
 cal self-government. Their doctrine and their prac- 
 tice alike reject such folly, and give this as the de- 
 monstration and the truth, that men capable of 
 governing themselves as men, are able to maintain a 
 free civil state as citizens. While they knew that a 
 
33 
 
 strong people neither need, nor will endure, a strong 
 government, they no less knew that strength must 
 be somewhere, in people or government, to hold any 
 political society together, and their practical politics 
 were directed by this conviction. 
 
 ISTor was equality of riglit in the citizens relied 
 on as an adequate social principle to preserve the 
 peace, and advance and develope the power of the 
 commonwealth. That, both from their actual tem- 
 poral condition, and from their religious opinions, 
 equality of right would be, in its just sense, recog- 
 nized and acted upon, was inevitable. But equality 
 of right, standing alone, is a principle eminently dis- 
 social, and paralyzing to all high and worthy pro- 
 gress of the general welfare. It may answer for a 
 band of robbers to divide their spoils by, or victo- 
 rious barons to apportion the conquered land. But 
 join with equality of right, as did the first planters 
 of New England, community of interest and reci- 
 procity of duty, as the controlling sentiments, and 
 you infuse a genuine public spirit, and evolve a 
 strenuous social activity, which will never weary and 
 never fail ; you produce, indeed, the efficient causes 
 and influences which have animated and directed the 
 immense expansion of American society, the actual 
 development of American character. 
 
 It is worth our while to observe, from the very 
 3 
 
34 
 
 earliest documents of the emigration and settlement, 
 how well the necessity and the grounds of a true 
 public spirit were understood, and how earnestly they 
 were insisted on. In their letter from Leyden to 
 the Virginia Company, Eoljinson and Brewster thus 
 recite one of the grounds of just expectation for the 
 success of the projected community. " We are knit 
 together as a body in a more strict and sacred bond 
 and covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof 
 we make great conscience ; and by virtue whereof 
 we do hold ourselves straitly tied to all care of each 
 other'' s good^ and of the whole hy every ^ and so niu- 
 tuaV In his parting letter upon the embarcation 
 Robinson enjoins, " a thing there is carefully to be 
 provided for, to wit, that with your common em- 
 ployments you join common affiections, truly bent 
 upon the general good ; avoiding, as a deadly plague 
 of your both common and special comfort, all re- 
 tiredness of mind fo)' proper advantage^ and all 
 singularly affected any manner of way. Let every 
 man repress in himself and the whole body in each 
 person, as so many rebels against the common good, 
 all private respects of men's selves, not sorting with 
 the general conveniency." And thus Cushman ex- 
 horts the whole society, just a year after the land- 
 ing: "Now, brethren, I pray you remember your- 
 selves, and know that you are not in a retired mo- 
 
35 
 
 nastical course, but liave given your names and 
 promises one to anotlier and covenanted here to 
 cleave together in the service of God and the king. 
 What then must you do ? May you live as retired 
 hermits and look after nobody ? IN^ay, you must 
 seek still the wealth of one another, and inquire as 
 David, How liveth such a man ? how is he clad ? 
 how is he fed ? He is my brother, my associate ; 
 we ventured our lives together here and had a hard 
 brunt of it ; and we are in league together. Is his 
 labor harder than mine ? Surely I will ease him. 
 Hath he no bed to he on ? Why, I have two ; I'll lend 
 him one. Hath he no apparel ? Why, I have two. 
 suits ; I will give him one of them. Eats he coarse 
 fare, bread and water, and I have better ? Why, 
 surely we will part stakes. He is as good a man as 
 I, and we are bound to each other ; so that his wants 
 must be my wants, his sorrows my sorrows, his sick- 
 ness my sickness, and his welfare my welfare ; for I 
 am as he is. And such a sweet sympathy were ex- 
 cellent, comfortable, yea, heavenly, and is the only 
 maker and conserver of churches and common- 
 ivealths • and where this is wanting ruin comes on 
 quickly." Such was their temper, such their intelli- 
 gence, such their wisdom. So long as such senti- 
 ments pervade a community, it will feel no lack of 
 public spirit, suffer no decay of public virtue. 
 
36 
 
 Add to these principles, what is uot so much a 
 separate principle as a comprehensive truth, lying at 
 the bottom of the whole enterprise, that the state 
 and the church were made for man, and not man 
 for the government and the priest — that the culture 
 and development of the individual membei^s of so- 
 ciety, and not the grandeur or glory of the body 
 politic, were the superior and controlling objects — 
 and that such culture and development should be 
 religious and for the immortal life, and you have all 
 the constituent elements and forces included in The 
 Puritan Commonwealth. 
 
 And they were ample and adequate, and thus 
 far have been so proved ; for the days of small 
 things and for the most magnificent expansion ; for 
 all the shocks and dangers that have beset the feeble 
 plantations, the growing colonies, the heroic confed- 
 eration, the united people. Nor has as yet appeared 
 any inherent defect, or incongruous working in the 
 system, which demands or threatens change. Radi- 
 calism cannot dig below its foundations, for it rests 
 upon the deepest principles of our nature ; philan- 
 thropy can build out no wider, for it recognizes the 
 brotherhood of all men ; enthusiasm can mount no 
 higher, for it rises to the very threshold of heaven. 
 No further strength or firmer stability can be added 
 to it, for faith among men, " which holds the moral 
 
elements of fhe world together," and faith in God, 
 which binds that world to his throne, give it its co- 
 hesion and its poise. 
 
 Some question has been made, where the Puri- 
 tan emigrants learned, and whence they derived, the 
 great thoughts of equality and freedom, so far in 
 advance of the English liberty of that day, or even 
 the present, so much deeper, and purer, and nobler, 
 than any then existing civilization could have sup- 
 plied. One of your own orators^ has thought to trace 
 the inspiration, through the religious exiles of Queen 
 Mary's reign, who found at Geneva " a state without 
 a king and a church without a bishop," " backwards 
 from Switzerland to its native land of Greece ; " as 
 if unwilling that the bright flame of his country's 
 freedom should be elsewhere lighted, than at those 
 same undying Grecian fires which have kindled the 
 splendors of his own eloquence. I, rather, find the 
 source of these divine impulses in the Christian 
 Scriptures, whence so much else of the Puritan char- 
 acter drew its nourishment, and which they consulted 
 ever, as an oracle, with wrestling and with prayer. 
 I seem to see in the mature designs of Him, to whom 
 a thousand years are but as one day, who moves in 
 his own appointed times, and selects and prepares 
 his own instruments, the re-enactment of the first 
 
 ' * Mr. Ohoate's Oration, 1843. 
 
38 
 
 scenes of the Christian dispensation, in the establish- 
 ment of the Christian faith upon this unpeopled con- 
 tinent — with this new demonstration and this new 
 power of its vital energy, as well for the reconstruc- 
 tion of all human institutions as for the regeneration 
 of the soul — and hail the Pilgrim fathei^s i\s the 
 bearers of a new commission, than which there has 
 been none greater since the time of the Apostles. 
 
 Time, and your patience, fail me to insist upon 
 the penetrating forecast and wide sagacity, the vast 
 civil prudence and exhaust less fidelity with which 
 our forefathei*s sought, upon these foundations, to 
 rear a fabric of liberty and law, civilization and re- 
 ligion, for a ha])itation to their posterity to the latest 
 generation. Yet I must observe that all their care 
 was applied directly to the people at large, to the 
 preservation and perpetuation of intelligence, virtue 
 and piety among them ; assured that, from this sup- 
 port, good government and free government were of 
 as certain growth in the moral constitution of things, 
 as is the natural harvest from seed well sown -in a 
 grateful soil. Accordingly, they founded a system 
 of common education, not expecting to make the 
 whole people learned, but to make them intelligent, 
 and so protect them from that oppression which 
 knowledge can^ practise upon ignorance ; they main- 
 tained the public administration of justice, and con- 
 
39 
 
 fined it to the common law system and procedure, 
 not anticipating that each citizen would become as 
 profound, or as erudite in his special science, as my 
 Lord Coke, but intending that common right and 
 practical justice should be subserved, and not de- 
 frauded, by all the profundity and erudition in the 
 world ; they employed the holy Sabbath, and gave 
 it full measure in the division of the week, in public 
 preaching, exhortation and prayer ; not as a cere- 
 monial expiation or a servile propitiation for the 
 sins of the people, but for instruction to their under- 
 standings and confirmation of their faith ; and above 
 all, the Bible, the Bible in the family, the Bible in 
 the school, the Bible in the church, was kept ever 
 under the eyes and in the ears and in the hearts of 
 the people, in childhood, in manhood, and in age ; 
 for Pope, Prelate and Puritan alike agreed that this 
 book contained the oracles of their religion, and our 
 forefathers knew, by impressive experience, that 
 whichever, Pope, Prelate or People had the keeping 
 of these oracles, held the keys of religious, civil and 
 social liberty. 
 
 How, from these never-failing spring's, for every 
 occasion of the advancing communities, both civic 
 virtue and martial spirit were supplied ; how as early 
 as 1643 the four 'New England colonies framed arti- 
 cles of confederation, vvhich are the type of the 
 
40 
 
 general confederation of tlie llevolution and of the 
 Federal Union; liow in tlic Iiulian wars and the 
 French campaigns, the warlike vigor of the people 
 was developed and disciplined ; how in the heroic 
 toils and sacrifices of the war of Independence, and 
 in the wise counsels and generous conciliations which 
 made us a united })eople, New England bore an un- 
 measured, an unstinted share ; how on the tide of 
 her swelling population these traits of her foundei*s 
 have been diffused and the seeds of their institutions 
 disseminated, why should I relate ? They are the 
 study of yourselves and of your children. 
 
 Behold now in these, — in the great fame of the 
 Puritan exiles, in their sublime pilgrimage, in tlie 
 society they founded, in the States they built up, in 
 the liberty and the law^, in the religion and the civili- 
 zation they established, — behold our Heritage from 
 them. I have made no mention of the immense ter- 
 ritory which our country's bounds include, but I 
 have shown you the price at which it was all pur- 
 chased, the title by which it is all held ; I have not 
 counted the heaped up treasures of your wealth, but 
 I have, pointed you to the mine whence it was all 
 digged, to the fires by which it has all been refined ; 
 I have not followed the frequent sails of your com- 
 merce over the universal sea, but I have shown you, 
 in the little Mayflower, the foreruimer of your in- 
 
41 
 
 numerable fleet ; I have not pictured the great tem- 
 ple, which from generation to generation has been 
 raised, the home of justice, the habitation of free- 
 dom, the shrine towards which the hopes of all 
 nations tend, but I have explored its foundations 
 and laid bare its corner-stone. This vast material 
 aggrandizement, this imperial height of position, we 
 may exult in, but they do not distinguish us from 
 earlier, and now ruined, states ; they form no part 
 of our peculiar inheritance. Green grass has grown 
 beneath the tread of other nations, and for them 
 the vine has dropped its purple vintage, and the 
 fields turned up their golden harvest; nature has 
 crowned them with every gift of plenty, and labor 
 gained for them overflowing ivealth ; uncounted 
 population has filled their borders, victorious arms 
 pushed on their limits, and glorious art, and noble 
 literature, and a splendid worship spread over all, 
 their graces and their dignities ; but justice among 
 men, the main policy of all civil society, and fiiith 
 in God, its only guaranty of permanence, w^ere 
 wanting or died out, and they were turned under 
 by the ploughshare of Time to feed a nobler 
 growth. 
 
 As we value this heritage which we have thus 
 received, as we are penetrated with wonder and 
 gratitude at the costly sacrifices and heroic labors of 
 
42 
 
 our ancestors, by which it lia-^ been acrpiired for us ; 
 as in each preceding generation we observe no un- 
 worthy defection from the oi'iginal stock, no waste 
 of the rich possession, ljut ever its jealous protection, 
 its generous increase, so do we feel an immeasurable 
 obligation to transmit this heritage unimpaired, and 
 yet ampler, to our posterity, to maintain unbroken 
 the worth and honor which hitherto hav^e marked 
 their lineage. This ol)ligation can only ])e fulfilled 
 by imitating the wisdom of our fathers, by observing 
 tlie maxims of their policy, studying the true spirit 
 of their institutions, and acting, in our day, and in 
 our circumstances, with the same devotion to prin- 
 ciple, the same fidelity to duty. If we neglect this, 
 if we run wild in the enjoyment of the great inheri- 
 tance, if we grow arrogant in our prosperity, and 
 cruel in our power, if we come to confound freedom 
 171 religion with freedom from religion, and inde- 
 pendence % law with independence of law, if we 
 substitute for a public spirit a respect to private 
 advantage, if we run from all civil duties, and desert 
 all social obligations, if we make our highest conser- 
 vatism the taking care of ourselves, our shame and 
 our disaster will alike be signal. 
 
 I^or, if we will rightly consider the aspect of our 
 times, and justly estimate the great conflicting social 
 forces at work in the nation, shall we lack for noble 
 
43 
 
 incentives to follow in the bright pathway of duty 
 in which our fathers led, nor for great objects to 
 aim at and accomplish. While we rejoice that from 
 no peculiar institutions of New England does occa- 
 sion of discontent or disquietude arise, to vex the 
 public conscience, or disturb the public serenity ; 
 that the evils and dano^ers of is^norance and sloth 
 are imbedded in no masses of her population, local 
 or derivative ; that not for her children are borne 
 our heavy burdens of pauperism and crime ; let us 
 no less rejoice that, clogged by no impediment and 
 exhausted by no feebleness of her own, all the ener- 
 gies of New England may be devoted to succor and 
 sustain at every point of weakness, all her power to 
 uphold and confirm every element of strength, in 
 whatever region of our common country, in what- 
 ever portion of her various population. 
 
 Guided by the same high motives, imbued with 
 the same deep wisdom, warmed with the same faith- 
 ful spirit as were our ancestors, what social evil is 
 there so great as shall withstand us, what public 
 peril so dark as shall dismay us ? Men born in the 
 lifetime of Mary AUerton, the last survivor of the 
 Mayflower's company, lived through the Revolution ; 
 men born before the Revolution still live. Of the 
 hundred and one persons who landed from the 
 Mayflower, one half ^ ere buried by early spring; 
 
44 
 
 yet now tlie Mood of the New England Puritans 
 ])eats in the hearts of more than seven millions of 
 our countrymen. Tlie slow and narrow influences 
 of pei'sonal example and of pul>lic s})eech, Ly which 
 alone, in the days of tlui early settlement, were all 
 social impressions made and diffused, are now re- 
 placed Ly a thousand rai)i(l agencies by which public 
 opinion is formed and circulated. Population seems 
 no longer local and stationaiy, but ever more and 
 more migratory, intermingl(Ml and transfused ; and, 
 if the virtue and the power, to which to-day Ave pay 
 our homage, survive in the sons of the Pilgrims, 
 doul)t not their influences will soon penetrate and 
 pervade the whole general mass of society through- 
 out the nation ; fear not ])ut that eqiuility of rights 
 community of intere'St^ reciprocity of duty will bind 
 this whole people together in a perfect, a perpetual 
 union.