_Address delivered before the Baltimore Lyceum, Athenæum Society,
William Wirt Society, Washington Lyceum, Philo-nomian Society and
Franklin Association, Literary and Scientific Societies of Baltimore,
on the 4th of July, 1836. By Z. Collins Lee, Esq._
Having reason to be well aware of Mr. Lee’s oratorical powers, we were
not altogether at liberty to imagine his Address, merely from the deep
attention with which, we are told, its _delivery_ was received, the
impassioned and scholar-like performance we now find it upon perusal.
Few similar things indeed have afforded us any similar pleasure. We
have no intention, however, of speaking more fully, at this late day,
of an Address whose effect must have depended so largely upon
anniversary recollections. We allude to it _now_ with the sole purpose
of recording, in brief, our opinion of its merits, and of quoting one
of its passages without comment.
Is it now, as it was formerly, the necessary tendency of all alarming
and apparently fatal convulsions of society and governments, to
realize often permanent good out of temporary evil? The political
revolutions which distinguished the close of the 18th century were
accompanied with various secondary movements more benign and pacific
in their character, and more lasting in their results, though not
contemplated by the then apostles of anarchy. The changes to which I
refer were perhaps among their legitimate results, and when they have
been studied through a period longer than the perturbations which
produced them, they will doubtless be ranked among the compensatory
adjustments, in which Providence strikes a balance between present and
overwhelming evils and future and permanent good; for in the political
as well as in the natural world the desolating torrent, which sweeps
away its bulwarks, often loses its power in the depths of its own
excavations, whilst it forms a new barrier out of the very elements it
displaced. Thus, in every country which has passed like ours through a
great and sudden revolution, or been the scene of public excitement
and party spirit, there will be a principle of adjustment and order
springing out of the most dangerous and disorganizing commotions. That
our land has been lately the witness of most daring outrages upon
public peace and private rights—that the torch of the incendiary, and
the more fearful and disgraceful out-breakings of lawless violence and
ferocious passion, have trampled law and order before our eyes in the
dust, and that life and property have been swept away by the sirocco
breath of popular tumult, are melancholy facts attested in many parts
of our country—and to one unacquainted with the genius of our
institutions and the habits of our people, these were indeed most
startling evidences of the inefficiency of the one and the unfitness
of the other for self-government. But, my fellow-citizens, at the
bottom of the American character and closely interwoven with its
general sentiment, is a recuperative and renovating principle of right
and order, which, sooner or later compensates for the devastation and
ruin of one day, by years of order and submission to the laws, and
binds as victims upon their own _Moloch_ altars the mad passions and
daring spirits which perpetrated it. Let not, therefore, our
confidence and hopes be diminished or torn from the true, essential
and _conservative_ principles of our institutions, but rather let
these evils stimulate us to greater zeal and more devoted labor, in
spreading far and wide, by means of knowledge and religion, the true
and only remedies—and though the storm may howl and the clouds gather
over portions of the country, oh! let us still cling with unfaltering
confidence to our _union_, to our _religion_, to our _liberties_. In
this age kindred minds will unite their sympathies either for good or
evil; wealth seeks its preservation by uniting itself to wealth—power
strives to extend itself by an alliance with power—in such cases
wealth and rank have frequently exercised a predominant influence, and
brute force has still oftener enjoyed its short lived triumph; but
intellectual power guided by high religious and moral motives, has
never failed to establish its just rights and proper sway. The
education therefore of the people, the diffusion of knowledge, and the
encouragement of literature and science are the only safeguard for a
government and social system like ours, exposed as they are to the
double hostility of popular menace and the arrogant inroads of
exclusive and aristocratic orders; but the most efficacious of all
these elements of stability is that of intellectual power, whether it
is exhibited in the statesman’s forethought and sagacity—in the
philosopher’s powers of combination and judgment—or in the lighter and
more elegant accomplishments of the scholar and the poet—the shaft of
the stately column is not weakened by the acanthus that curls at its
summit, nor is reason less enlightened when embellished by the
imagination.
The foundation, therefore, of a literature peculiarly free and
national, and the encouragement of all the arts of life, should be our
first aim; and here, gentlemen of the societies, which have so
honorably been dedicated to these noble objects, permit {787} me to
animate, if I can, your laudable zeal, and invoke to you the praise
and support of proud city—of the whole country. In your hands are
deposited sacred and beneficial trusts—on your efforts as citizens and
scholars depend much of the future prosperity and glory of Maryland.
It is not enough therefore that you are the nominal and passive
members of these scientific and literary associations, or the admirers
of all that is beautiful in the culture of letters and the promotion
of science. You may walk indeed through the gorgeous temple of
knowledge and explore its holiest recesses or arcana, or bow before
its altars with homage and adoration, but you must _unfold_ its
portals and _lift high_ its gates that the people may enter, and
become as enlightened as they are free. Above all, in aiding by your
exertions in this great work, you should endeavor to found a
literature whoso seat is the bosom of God—whose end the elevation of
man. Let then the Bible be its chief pillar or corner stone, from
whose pure pages and sublime truths, the waters of life may gush
forth, and mingling with the full stream of rational and social
prosperity, form
“——as deep and as brilliant a tide
As ever bore freedom aloft on its wave.”