A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, ON THE 22D OF DECEMBER, 1820.

[The first public anniversary celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims

at Plymouth took place under the auspices of the "Old Colony Club," of

whose formation an account may be found in the interesting little work

of William S. Russell, Esq., entitled "Guide to Plymouth and

Recollections of the Pilgrims."

This club was formed for general purposes of social intercourse, in

1769; but its members determined, by a vote passed on Monday, the 18th

of December, of that year, "to keep" Friday, the 22d, in commemoration

of the landing of the fathers. A particular account of the simple

festivities of this first public celebration of the landing of the

Pilgrims will be found at page 220 of Mr. Russell's work.

The following year, the anniversary was celebrated much in the same

manner as in 1769, with the addition of a short address, pronounced

"with modest and decent firmness, by a member of the club, Edward

Winslow, Jr., Esq.," being the first address ever delivered on this

occasion.

In 1771, it was suggested by Rev. Chandler Robbins, pastor of the First

Church at Plymouth, in a letter addressed to the club, "whether it would

not be agreeable, for the entertainment and instruction of the rising

generation on these anniversaries, to have a sermon in public, some part

of the day, peculiarly adapted to the occasion." This recommendation

prevailed, and an appropriate discourse was delivered the following year

by the Rev. Dr. Robbins.

In 1773 the Old Colony Club was dissolved, in consequence of the

conflicting opinions of its members on the great political questions

then agitated. Notwithstanding this event, the anniversary celebrations

of the 22d of December continued without interruption till 1780, when

they were suspended. After an interval of fourteen years, a public

discourse was again delivered by the Rev. Dr. Robbins. Private

celebrations took place the four following years, and from that time

till the year 1819, with one or two exceptions, the day was annually

commemorated, and public addresses were delivered by distinguished

clergymen and laymen of Massachusetts.

In 1820 the "Pilgrim Society" was formed by the citizens of Plymouth and

the descendants of the Pilgrims in other places, desirous of uniting "to

commemorate the landing, and to honor the memory of the intrepid men who

first set foot on Plymouth rock." The foundation of this society gave a

new impulse to the anniversary celebrations of this great event. The

Hon. Daniel Webster was requested to deliver the public address on the

22d of December of that year, and the following discourse was pronounced

by him on the ever-memorable occasion. Great public expectation was

awakened by the fame of the orator; an immense concourse assembled at

Plymouth to unite in the celebration; and it may be safely anticipated,

that some portion of the powerful effect of the following address on the

minds of those who were so fortunate as to hear it, will be perpetuated

by the press to the latest posterity.

From 1820 to the present day, with occasional interruptions, the 22d of

December has been celebrated by the Pilgrim Society. A list of all those

by whom anniversary discourses have been delivered since the first

organization of the Old Colony Club, in 1769, may be found in Mr.

Russell's work.

Nor has the notice of the day been confined to New England. Public

celebrations of the landing of the Pilgrims have been frequent in other

parts of the country, particularly in New York. The New England Society

of that city has rarely permitted the day to pass without appropriate

honors. Similar societies have been formed at Philadelphia, Charleston,

S.C., and Cincinnati, and the day has been publicly commemorated in

several other parts of the country.]

Let us rejoice that we behold this day. Let us be thankful that we have

lived to see the bright and happy breaking of the auspicious morn, which

commences the third century of the history of New England. Auspicious,

indeed,--bringing a happiness beyond the common allotment of Providence

to men,--full of present joy, and gilding with bright beams the prospect

of futurity, is the dawn that awakens us to the commemoration of the

landing of the Pilgrims.

Living at an epoch which naturally marks the progress of the history of

our native land, we have come hither to celebrate the great event with

which that history commenced. For ever honored be this, the place of our

fathers' refuge! For ever remembered the day which saw them, weary and

distressed, broken in every thing but spirit, poor in all but faith and

courage, at last secure from the dangers of wintry seas, and impressing

this shore with the first footsteps of civilized man!

It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect our

thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with what is distant in

place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once

with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are,

we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the

past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in

which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual

enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in

the future, by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an association

with our ancestors; by contemplating their example and studying their

character; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by

accompanying them in their toils, by sympathizing in their sufferings,

and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs; we seem to belong

to their age, and to mingle our own existence with theirs. We become

their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they

endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like

manner, by running along the line of future time, by contemplating the

probable fortunes of those who are coming after us, by attempting

something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not

dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their regard, when we shall sleep

with the fathers, we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd

whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow compass

of our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted

and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the

orb, which, amidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to

inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature

prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal

Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings with which

his goodness has peopled the infinite of space; so neither is it false

or vain to consider ourselves as interested and connected with our whole

race, through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our

posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being

but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of

our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding

together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last,

with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God.

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry, which

nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity,

which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low

and grovelling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical

respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the

heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly

know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and

enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which

is departed; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and

even in its sentiments and thoughts, it may be actively operating on the

happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to have few

stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind,

than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the

departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry, only

because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but

the handmaid of true philosophy and morality; it deals with us as human

beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this

state of existence is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what

sympathy with ourselves; and when it carries us forward, also, and shows

us the long continued result of all the good we do, in the prosperity of

those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in

an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us,

it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with

sentiments which belong to us as human beings.

Standing in this relation to our ancestors and our posterity, we are

assembled on this memorable spot, to perform the duties which that

relation and the present occasion impose upon us. We have come to this

Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in

their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of

their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to

those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered

the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages,

disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish. And we would

leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to

fill our places, some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the

great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles

and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our

devotion to civil and religious liberty, in our regard for whatever

advances human knowledge or improves human happiness, we are not

altogether unworthy of our origin.

There is a local feeling connected with this occasion, too strong to be

resisted; a sort of _genius of the place_, which inspires and awes us.

We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our history was

laid; where the hearths and altars of New England were first placed;

where Christianity, and civilization, and letters made their first

lodgement, in a vast extent of country, covered with a wilderness, and

peopled by roving barbarians. We are here, at the season of the year at

which the event took place. The imagination irresistibly and rapidly

draws around us the principal features and the leading characters in the

original scene. We cast our eyes abroad on the ocean, and we see where

the little bark, with the interesting group upon its deck, made its slow

progress to the shore. We look around us, and behold the hills and

promontories where the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw the places

of habitation and of rest. We feel the cold which benumbed, and listen

to the winds which pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock,[1] on which New

England received the feet of the Pilgrims. We seem even to behold them,

as they struggle with the elements, and, with toilsome efforts, gain the

shore. We listen to the chiefs in council; we see the unexampled

exhibition of female fortitude and resignation; we hear the whisperings

of youthful impatience, and we see, what a painter of our own has also

represented by his pencil,[2] chilled and shivering childhood,

houseless, but for a mother's arms, couchless, but for a mother's

breast, till our own blood almost freezes. The mild dignity of Carver

and of Bradford; the decisive and soldier-like air and manner of

Standish; the devout Brewster; the enterprising Allerton;[3] the general

firmness and thoughtfulness of the whole band; their conscious joy for

dangers escaped; their deep solicitude about dangers to come; their

trust in Heaven; their high religious faith, full of confidence and

anticipation; all of these seem to belong to this place, and to be

present upon this occasion, to fill us with reverence and admiration.

The settlement of New England by the colony which landed here[4] on the

twenty-second[5] of December, sixteen hundred and twenty, although not

the first European establishment in what now constitutes the United

States, was yet so peculiar in its causes and character, and has been

followed and must still be followed by such consequences, as to give it

a high claim to lasting commemoration. On these causes and consequences,

more than on its immediately attendant circumstances, its importance, as

an historical event, depends. Great actions and striking occurrences,

having excited a temporary admiration, often pass away and are

forgotten, because they leave no lasting results, affecting the

prosperity and happiness of communities. Such is frequently the fortune

of the most brilliant military achievements. Of the ten thousand battles

which have been fought, of all the fields fertilized with carnage, of

the banners which have been bathed in blood, of the warriors who have

hoped that they had risen from the field of conquest to a glory as

bright and as durable as the stars, how few that continue long to

interest mankind! The victory of yesterday is reversed by the defeat of

to-day; the star of military glory, rising like a meteor, like a meteor

has fallen; disgrace and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and

renown; victor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, and the

world goes on in its course, with the loss only of so many lives and so

much treasure.

But if this be frequently, or generally, the fortune of military

achievements, it is not always so. There are enterprises, military as

well as civil, which sometimes check the current of events, give a new

turn to human affairs, and transmit their consequences through ages. We

see their importance in their results, and call them great, because

great things follow. There have been battles which have fixed the fate

of nations. These come down to us in history with a solid and permanent

interest, not created by a display of glittering armor, the rush of

adverse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the

pursuit, and the victory; but by their effect in advancing or retarding

human knowledge, in overthrowing or establishing despotism, in extending

or destroying human happiness. When the traveller pauses on the plain of

Marathon, what are the emotions which most strongly agitate his breast?

What is that glorious recollection, which thrills through his frame, and

suffuses his eyes? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valor

were here most signally displayed; but that Greece herself was saved. It

is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it

immortal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is

because, if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished. It is

because he perceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and

painters, her sculptors and architects, her governments and free

institutions, point backward to Marathon, and that their future

existence seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the

Persian or the Grecian banner should wave victorious in the beams of

that day's setting sun. And, as his imagination kindles at the

retrospect, he is transported back to the interesting moment; he counts

the fearful odds of the contending hosts; his interest for the result

overwhelms him; he trembles, as if it were still uncertain, and seems to

doubt whether he may consider Socrates and Plato, Demosthenes,

Sophocles, and Phidias, as secure, yet, to himself and to the world.

"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander on the approach of that

decisive day, "if we conquer, we shall make Athens the greatest city of

Greece."[6] A prophecy how well fulfilled! "If God prosper us," might

have been the more appropriate language of our fathers, when they landed

upon this Rock, "if God prosper us, we shall here begin a work which

shall last for ages; we shall plant here a new society, in the

principles of the fullest liberty and the purest religion; we shall

subdue this wilderness which is before us; we shall fill this region of

the great continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with

civilization and Christianity; the temples of the true God shall rise,

where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice; fields and gardens,

the flowers of summer, and the waving and golden harvest of autumn,

shall spread over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand

valleys, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to the use of

civilized man. We shall whiten this coast with the canvas of a

prosperous commerce; we shall stud the long and winding shore with a

hundred cities. That which we sow in weakness shall be raised in

strength. From our sincere, but houseless worship, there shall spring

splendid temples to record God's goodness; from the simplicity of our

social union, there shall arise wise and politic constitutions of

government, full of the liberty which we ourselves bring and breathe;

from our zeal for learning, institutions shall spring which shall

scatter the light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in time, paying

back where they have borrowed, shall contribute their part to the great

aggregate of human knowledge; and our descendants, through all

generations, shall look back to this spot, and to this hour, with

unabated affection and regard."

A brief remembrance of the causes which led to the settlement of this

place; some account of the peculiarities and characteristic qualities of

that settlement, as distinguished from other instances of colonization;

a short notice of the progress of New England in the great interests of

society, during the century which is now elapsed; with a few

observations on the principles upon which society and government are

established in this country; comprise all that can be attempted, and

much more than can be satisfactorily performed, on the present occasion.

Of the motives which influenced the first settlers to a voluntary exile,

induced them to relinquish their native country, and to seek an asylum

in this then unexplored wilderness, the first and principal, no doubt,

were connected with religion. They sought to enjoy a higher degree of

religious freedom, and what they esteemed a purer form of religious

worship, than was allowed to their choice, or presented to their

imitation, in the Old World. The love of religious liberty is a stronger

sentiment, when fully excited, than an attachment to civil or political

freedom. That freedom which the conscience demands, and which men feel

bound by their hope of salvation to contend for, can hardly fail to be

attained. Conscience, in the cause of religion and the worship of the

Deity, prepares the mind to act and to suffer beyond almost all other

causes. It sometimes gives an impulse so irresistible, that no fetters

of power or of opinion can withstand it. History instructs us that this

love of religious liberty, a compound sentiment in the breast of man,

made up of the clearest sense of right and the highest conviction of

duty, is able to look the sternest despotism in the face, and, with

means apparently most inadequate, to shake principalities and powers.

There is a boldness, a spirit of daring, in religious reformers, not to

be measured by the general rules which control men's purposes and

actions. If the hand of power be laid upon it, this only seems to

augment its force and its elasticity, and to cause its action to be more

formidable and violent. Human invention has devised nothing, human

power has compassed nothing, that can forcibly restrain it, when it

breaks forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give way to it; nothing can

check it, but indulgence. It loses its power only when it has gained its

object. The principle of toleration, to which the world has come so

slowly, is at once the most just and the most wise of all principles.

Even when religious feeling takes a character of extravagance and

enthusiasm, and seems to threaten the order of society and shake the

columns of the social edifice, its principal danger is in its restraint.

If it be allowed indulgence and expansion, like the elemental fires, it

only agitates, and perhaps purifies, the atmosphere; while its efforts

to throw off restraint would burst the world asunder.

It is certain, that, although many of them were republicans in

principle, we have no evidence that our New England ancestors would have

emigrated, as they did, from their own native country, would have become

wanderers in Europe, and finally would have undertaken the establishment

of a colony here, merely from their dislike of the political systems of

Europe. They fled not so much from the civil government, as from the

hierarchy, and the laws which enforced conformity to the church

establishment. Mr. Robinson had left England as early as 1608, on

account of the persecutions for non-conformity, and had retired to

Holland. He left England from no disappointed ambition in affairs of

state, from no regrets at the want of preferment in the church, nor from

any motive of distinction or of gain. Uniformity in matters of religion

was pressed with such extreme rigor, that a voluntary exile seemed the

most eligible mode of escaping from the penalties of non-compliance. The

accession of Elizabeth had, it is true, quenched the fires of

Smithfield, and put an end to the easy acquisition of the crown of

martyrdom. Her long reign had established the Reformation, but

toleration was a virtue beyond her conception, and beyond the age. She

left no example of it to her successor; and he was not of a character

which rendered a sentiment either so wise or so liberal would originate

with him. At the present period it seems incredible that the learned,

accomplished, unassuming, and inoffensive Robinson should neither be

tolerated in his peaceable mode of worship in his own country, nor

suffered quietly to depart from it. Yet such was the fact. He left his

country by stealth, that he might elsewhere enjoy those rights which

ought to belong to men in all countries. The departure of the Pilgrims

for Holland is deeply interesting, from its circumstances, and also as

it marks the character of the times, independently of its connection

with names now incorporated with the history of empire. The embarkation

was intended to be made in such a manner that it might escape the notice

of the officers of government. Great pains had been taken to secure

boats, which should come undiscovered to the shore, and receive the

fugitives; and frequent disappointments had been experienced in this

respect.

At length the appointed time came, bringing with it unusual severity of

cold and rain. An unfrequented and barren heath, on the shores of

Lincolnshire, was the selected spot, where the feet of the Pilgrims were

to tread, for the last time, the land of their fathers. The vessel which

was to receive them did not come until the next day, and in the mean

time the little band was collected, and men and women and children and

baggage were crowded together, in melancholy and distressed confusion.

The sea was rough, and the women and children were already sick, from

their passage down the river to the place of embarkation on the sea. At

length the wished-for boat silently and fearfully approaches the shore,

and men and women and children, shaking with fear and with cold, as many

as the small vessel could bear, venture off on a dangerous sea.

Immediately the advance of horses is heard from behind, armed men

appear, and those not yet embarked are seized and taken into custody. In

the hurry of the moment, the first parties had been sent on board

without any attempt to keep members of the same family together, and on

account of the appearance of the horsemen, the boat never returned for

the residue. Those who had got away, and those who had not, were in

equal distress. A storm, of great violence and long duration, arose at

sea, which not only protracted the voyage, rendered distressing by the

want of all those accommodations which the interruption of the

embarkation had occasioned, but also forced the vessel out of her

course, and menaced immediate shipwreck; while those on shore, when they

were dismissed from the custody of the officers of justice, having no

longer homes or houses to retire to, and their friends and protectors

being already gone, became objects of necessary charity, as well as of

deep commiseration.

As this scene passes before us, we can hardly forbear asking whether

this be a band of malefactors and felons flying from justice. What are

their crimes, that they hide themselves in darkness? To what punishment

are they exposed, that, to avoid it, men, and women, and children, thus

encounter the surf of the North Sea and the terrors of a night storm?

What induces this armed pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives, of all

ages and both sexes? Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries

in a manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times.

This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. It was an humble and

peaceable religion, flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience,

attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was

Robinson and Brewster, leading off their little band from their native

soil, at first to find shelter on the shore of the neighboring

continent, but ultimately to come hither; and having surmounted all

difficulties and braved a thousand dangers, to find here a place of

refuge and of rest. Thanks be to God, that this spot was honored as the

asylum of religious liberty! May its standard, reared here, remain for

ever! May it rise up as high as heaven, till its banner shall fan the

air of both continents, and wave as a glorious ensign of peace and

security to the nations!

The peculiar character, condition, and circumstances of the colonies

which introduced civilization and an English race into New England,

afford a most interesting and extensive topic of discussion. On these,

much of our subsequent character and fortune has depended. Their

influence has essentially affected our whole history, through the two

centuries which have elapsed; and as they have become intimately

connected with government, laws, and property, as well as with our

opinions on the subjects of religion and civil liberty, that influence

is likely to continue to be felt through the centuries which shall

succeed. Emigration from one region to another, and the emission of

colonies to people countries more or less distant from the residence of

the parent stock, are common incidents in the history of mankind; but it

has not often, perhaps never, happened, that the establishment of

colonies should be attempted under circumstances, however beset with

present difficulties and dangers, yet so favorable to ultimate success,

and so conducive to magnificent results, as those which attended the

first settlements on this part of the American continent. In other

instances, emigration has proceeded from a less exalted purpose, in

periods of less general intelligence, or more without plan and by

accident; or under circumstances, physical and moral, less favorable to

the expectation of laying a foundation for great public prosperity and

future empire.

A great resemblance exists, obviously, between all the English colonies

established within the present limits of the United States; but the

occasion attracts our attention more immediately to those which took

possession of New England, and the peculiarities of these furnish a

strong contrast with most other instances of colonization.

Among the ancient nations, the Greeks, no doubt, sent forth from their

territories the greatest number of colonies. So numerous, indeed, were

they, and so great the extent of space over which they were spread, that

the parent country fondly and naturally persuaded herself, that by

means of them she had laid a sure foundation for the universal

civilization of the world. These establishments, from obvious causes,

were most numerous in places most contiguous; yet they were found on the

coasts of France, on the shores of the Euxine Sea, in Africa, and even,

as is alleged, on the borders of India. These emigrations appear to have

been sometimes voluntary and sometimes compulsory; arising from the

spontaneous enterprise of individuals, or the order and regulation of

government. It was a common opinion with ancient writers, that they were

undertaken in religious obedience to the commands of oracles, and it is

probable that impressions of this sort might have had more or less

influence; but it is probable, also, that on these occasions the oracles

did not speak a language dissonant from the views and purposes of the

state.

Political science among the Greeks seems never to have extended to the

comprehension of a system, which should be adequate to the government of

a great nation upon principles of liberty. They were accustomed only to

the contemplation of small republics, and were led to consider an

augmented population as incompatible with free institutions. The desire

of a remedy for this supposed evil, and the wish to establish marts for

trade, led the governments often to undertake the establishment of

colonies as an affair of state expediency. Colonization and commerce,

indeed, would naturally become objects of interest to an ingenious and

enterprising people, inhabiting a territory closely circumscribed in its

limits, and in no small part mountainous and sterile; while the islands

of the adjacent seas, and the promontories and coasts of the neighboring

continents, by their mere proximity, strongly solicited the excited

spirit of emigration. Such was this proximity, in many instances, that

the new settlements appeared rather to be the mere extension of

population over contiguous territory, than the establishment of distant

colonies. In proportion as they were near to the parent state, they

would be under its authority, and partake of its fortunes. The colony at

Marseilles might perceive lightly, or not at all, the sway of Phocis;

while the islands in the Aegean Sea could hardly attain to independence

of their Athenian origin. Many of these establishments took place at an

early age; and if there were defects in the governments of the parent

states, the colonists did not possess philosophy or experience

sufficient to correct such evils in their own institutions, even if they

had not been, by other causes, deprived of the power. An immediate

necessity, connected with the support of life, was the main and direct

inducement to these undertakings, and there could hardly exist more than

the hope of a successful imitation of institutions with which they were

already acquainted, and of holding an equality with their neighbors in

the course of improvement. The laws and customs, both political and

municipal, as well as the religious worship of the parent city, were

transferred to the colony; and the parent city herself, with all such of

her colonies as were not too far remote for frequent intercourse and

common sentiments, would appear like a family of cities, more or less

dependent, and more or less connected. We know how imperfect this system

was, as a system of general politics, and what scope it gave to those

mutual dissensions and conflicts which proved so fatal to Greece.

But it is more pertinent to our present purpose to observe, that nothing

existed in the character of Grecian emigrations, or in the spirit and

intelligence of the emigrants, likely to give a new and important

direction to human affairs, or a new impulse to the human mind. Their

motives were not high enough, their views were not sufficiently large

and prospective. They went not forth, like our ancestors, to erect

systems of more perfect civil liberty, or to enjoy a higher degree of

religious freedom. Above all, there was nothing in the religion and

learning of the age, that could either inspire high purposes, or give

the ability to execute them. Whatever restraints on civil liberty, or

whatever abuses in religious worship, existed at the time of our

fathers' emigration, yet even then all was light in the moral and mental

world, in comparison with its condition in most periods of the ancient

states. The settlement of a new continent, in an age of progressive

knowledge and improvement, could not but do more than merely enlarge the

natural boundaries of the habitable world. It could not but do much more

even than extend commerce and increase wealth among the human race. We

see how this event has acted, how it must have acted, and wonder only

why it did not act sooner, in the production of moral effects, on the

state of human knowledge, the general tone of human sentiments, and the

prospects of human happiness. It gave to civilized man not only a new

continent to be inhabited and cultivated, and new seas to be explored;

but it gave him also a new range for his thoughts, new objects for

curiosity, and new excitements to knowledge and improvement.

Roman colonization resembled, far less than that of the Greeks, the

original settlements of this country. Power and dominion were the

objects of Rome, even in her colonial establishments. Her whole exterior

aspect was for centuries hostile and terrific. She grasped at dominion,

from India to Britain, and her measures of colonization partook of the

character of her general system. Her policy was military, because her

objects were power, ascendency, and subjugation. Detachments of

emigrants from Rome incorporated themselves with, and governed, the

original inhabitants of conquered countries. She sent citizens where she

had first sent soldiers; her law followed her sword. Her colonies were a

sort of military establishment; so many advanced posts in the career of

her dominion. A governor from Rome ruled the new colony with absolute

sway, and often with unbounded rapacity. In Sicily, in Gaul, in Spain,

and in Asia, the power of Rome prevailed, not nominally only, but really

and effectually. Those who immediately exercised it were Roman; the tone

and tendency of its administration, Roman. Rome herself continued to be

the heart and centre of the great system which she had established.

Extortion and rapacity, finding a wide and often rich field of action in

the provinces, looked nevertheless to the banks of the Tiber, as the

scene in which their ill-gotten treasures should be displayed; or, if a

spirit of more honest acquisition prevailed, the object, nevertheless,

was ultimate enjoyment in Rome itself. If our own history and our own

times did not sufficiently expose the inherent and incurable evils of

provincial government, we might see them portrayed, to our amazement, in

the desolated and ruined provinces of the Roman empire. We might hear

them, in a voice that terrifies us, in those strains of complaint and

accusation, which the advocates of the provinces poured forth in the

Roman Forum:--"Quas res luxuries in flagitiis, crudelitas in suppliciis,

avaritia in rapinis, superbia in contumeliis, efficere potuisset, eas

omnes sese pertulisse."

As was to be expected, the Roman Provinces partook of the fortunes, as

well as of the sentiments and general character, of the seat of empire.

They lived together with her, they flourished with her, and fell with

her. The branches were lopped away even before the vast and venerable

trunk itself fell prostrate to the earth. Nothing had proceeded from her

which could support itself, and bear up the name of its origin, when her

own sustaining arm should be enfeebled or withdrawn. It was not given to

Rome to see, either at her zenith or in her decline, a child of her own,

distant, indeed, and independent of her control, yet speaking her

language and inheriting her blood, springing forward to a competition

with her own power, and a comparison with her own great renown. She saw

not a vast region of the earth peopled from her stock, full of states

and political communities, improving upon the models of her

institutions, and breathing in fuller measure the spirit which she had

breathed in the best periods of her existence; enjoying and extending

her arts and her literature; rising rapidly from political childhood to

manly strength and independence; her offspring, yet now her equal;

unconnected with the causes which might affect the duration of her own

power and greatness; of common origin, but not linked to a common fate;

giving ample pledge, that her name should not be forgotten, that her

language should not cease to be used among men; that whatsoever she had

done for human knowledge and human happiness should be treasured up and

preserved; that the record of her existence and her achievements should

not be obscured, although, in the inscrutable purposes of Providence, it

might be her destiny to fall from opulence and splendor; although the

time might come, when darkness should settle on all her hills; when

foreign or domestic violence should overturn her altars and her temples;

when ignorance and despotism should fill the places where Laws, and

Arts, and Liberty had flourished; when the feet of barbarism should

trample on the tombs of her consuls, and the walls of her senate-house

and forum echo only to the voice of savage triumph. She saw not this

glorious vision, to inspire and fortify her against the possible decay

or downfall of her power. Happy are they who in our day may behold it,

if they shall contemplate it with the sentiments which it ought to

inspire!

The New England Colonies differ quite as widely from the Asiatic

establishments of the modern European nations, as from the models of the

ancient states. The sole object of those establishments was originally

trade; although we have seen, in one of them, the anomaly of a mere

trading company attaining a political character, disbursing revenues,

and maintaining armies and fortresses, until it has extended its control

over seventy millions of people. Differing from these, and still more

from the New England and North American Colonies, are the European

settlements in the West India Islands. It is not strange, that, when

men's minds were turned to the settlement of America, different objects

should be proposed by those who emigrated to the different regions of so

vast a country. Climate, soil, and condition were not all equally

favorable to all pursuits. In the West Indies, the purpose of those who

went thither was to engage in that species of agriculture, suited to the

soil and climate, which seems to bear more resemblance to commerce than

to the hard and plain tillage of New England. The great staples of these

countries, being partly an agricultural and partly a manufactured

product, and not being of the necessaries of life, become the object of

calculation, with respect to a profitable investment of capital, like

any other enterprise of trade or manufacture. The more especially, as,

requiring, by necessity or habit, slave labor for their production, the

capital necessary to carry on the work of this production is very

considerable. The West Indies are resorted to, therefore, rather for the

investment of capital than for the purpose of sustaining life by

personal labor. Such as possess a considerable amount of capital, or

such as choose to adventure in commercial speculations without capital,

can alone be fitted to be emigrants to the islands. The agriculture of

these regions, as before observed, is a sort of commerce; and it is a

species of employment in which labor seems to form an inconsiderable

ingredient in the productive causes, since the portion of white labor is

exceedingly small, and slave labor is rather more like profit on stock

or capital than _labor_ properly so called. The individual who

undertakes an establishment of this kind takes into the account the cost

of the necessary number of slaves, in the same manner as he calculates

the cost of the land. The uncertainty, too, of this species of

employment, affords another ground of resemblance to commerce. Although

gainful on the whole, and in a series of years, it is often very

disastrous for a single year, and, as the capital is not readily

invested in other pursuits, bad crops or bad markets not only affect the

profits, but the capital itself. Hence the sudden depressions which take

place in the value of such estates.

But the great and leading observation, relative to these establishments,

remains to be made. It is, that the owners of the soil and of the

capital seldom consider themselves _at home_ in the colony. A very

great portion of the soil itself is usually owned in the mother country;

a still greater is mortgaged for capital obtained there; and, in

general, those who are to derive an interest from the products look to

the parent country as the place for enjoyment of their wealth. The

population is therefore constantly fluctuating. Nobody comes but to

return. A constant succession of owners, agents, and factors takes

place. Whatsoever the soil, forced by the unmitigated toil of slavery,

can yield, is sent home to defray rents, and interest, and agencies, or

to give the means of living in a better society. In such a state, it is

evident that no spirit of permanent improvement is likely to spring up.

Profits will not be invested with a distant view of benefiting

posterity. Roads and canals will hardly be built; schools will not be

founded; colleges will not be endowed. There will be few fixtures in

society; no principles of utility or of elegance, planted now, with the

hope of being developed and expanded hereafter. Profit, immediate

profit, must be the principal active spring in the social system. There

may be many particular exceptions to these general remarks, but the

outline of the whole is such as is here drawn.

Another most important consequence of such a state of things is, that no

idea of independence of the parent country is likely to arise; unless,

indeed, it should spring up in a form that would threaten universal

desolation. The inhabitants have no strong attachment to the place which

they inhabit. The hope of a great portion of them is to leave it; and

their great desire, to leave it soon. However useful they may be to the

parent state, how much soever they may add to the conveniences and

luxuries of life, these colonies are not favored spots for the expansion

of the human mind, for the progress of permanent improvement, or for

sowing the seeds of future independent empire.

Different, indeed, most widely different, from all these instances of

emigration and plantation, were the condition, the purposes, and the

prospects of our fathers, when they established their infant colony upon

this spot. They came hither to a land from which they were never to

return. Hither they had brought, and here they were to fix, their hopes,

their attachments, and their objects in life. Some natural tears they

shed, as they left the pleasant abodes of their fathers, and some

emotions they suppressed, when the white cliffs of their native country,

now seen for the last time, grew dim to their sight. They were acting,

however, upon a resolution not to be daunted. With whatever stifled

regrets, with whatever occasional hesitation, with whatever appalling

apprehensions, which might sometimes arise with force to shake the

firmest purpose, they had yet committed themselves to Heaven and the

elements; and a thousand leagues of water soon interposed to separate

them for ever from the region which gave them birth. A new existence

awaited them here; and when they saw these shores, rough, cold,

barbarous, and barren, as then they were, they beheld their country.

That mixed and strong feeling, which we call love of country, and which

is, in general, never extinguished in the heart of man, grasped and

embraced its proper object here. Whatever constitutes _country_, except

the earth and the sun, all the moral causes of affection and attachment

which operate upon the heart, they had brought with them to their new

abode. Here were now their families and friends, their homes, and their

property. Before they reached the shore, they had established the

elements of a social system,[7] and at a much earlier period had settled

their forms of religious worship. At the moment of their landing,

therefore, they possessed institutions of government, and institutions

of religion: and friends and families, and social and religious

institutions, framed by consent, founded on choice and preference, how

nearly do these fill up our whole idea of country! The morning that

beamed on the first night of their repose saw the Pilgrims already _at

home_ in their country. There were political institutions, and civil

liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing, in the

wanderings of heroes, so distinct and characteristic. Here was man,

indeed, unprotected, and unprovided for, on the shore of a rude and

fearful wilderness; but it was politic, intelligent, and educated man.

Every thing was civilized but the physical world. Institutions,

containing in substance all that ages had done for human government,

were organized in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated

nature; and, more than all, a government and a country were to commence,

with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the

Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who would wish

that his country's existence had otherwise begun? Who would desire the

power of going back to the ages of fable? Who would wish for an origin

obscured in the darkness of antiquity? Who would wish for other

emblazoning of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her

genealogy, than to be able to say, that her first existence was with

intelligence, her first breath the inspiration of liberty, her first

principle the truth of divine religion?

Local attachments and sympathies would ere long spring up in the breasts

of our ancestors, endearing to them the place of their refuge. Whatever

natural objects are associated with interesting scenes and high efforts

obtain a hold on human feeling, and demand from the heart a sort of

recognition and regard. This Rock soon became hallowed in the esteem of

the Pilgrims,[8] and these hills grateful to their sight. Neither they

nor their children were again to till the soil of England, nor again to

traverse the seas which surround her.[9] But here was a new sea, now

open to their enterprise, and a new soil, which had not failed to

respond gratefully to their laborious industry, and which was already

assuming a robe of verdure. Hardly had they provided shelter for the

living, ere they were summoned to erect sepulchres for the dead. The

ground had become sacred, by enclosing the remains of some of their

companions and connections. A parent, a child, a husband, or a wife, had

gone the way of all flesh, and mingled with the dust of New England. We

naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, though it be a

wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose. Where the

heart has laid down what it loved most, there it is desirous of laying

itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable

inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of

the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and hallow to

our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness

that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our affections.

In a short time other causes sprung up to bind the Pilgrims with new

cords to their chosen land. Children were born, and the hopes of future

generations arose, in the spot of their new habitation. The second

generation found this the land of their nativity, and saw that they were

bound to its fortunes. They beheld their fathers' graves around them,

and while they read the memorials of their toils and labors, they

rejoiced in the inheritance which they found bequeathed to them.

Under the influence of these causes, it was to be expected that an

interest and a feeling should arise here, entirely different from the

interest and feeling of mere Englishmen; and all the subsequent history

of the Colonies proves this to have actually and gradually taken place.

With a general acknowledgment of the supremacy of the British crown,

there was, from the first, a repugnance to an entire submission to the

control of British legislation. The Colonies stood upon their charters,

which, as they contended, exempted them from the ordinary power of the

British Parliament, and authorized them to conduct their own concerns by

their own counsels. They utterly resisted the notion that they were to

be ruled by the mere authority of the government at home, and would not

endure even that their own charter governments should be established on

the other side of the Atlantic. It was not a controlling or protecting

board in England, but a government of their own, and existing

immediately within their limits, which could satisfy their wishes. It

was easy to foresee, what we know also to have happened, that the first

great cause of collision and jealousy would be, under the notion of

political economy then and still prevalent in Europe, an attempt on the

part of the mother country to monopolize the trade of the Colonies.

Whoever has looked deeply into the causes which produced our Revolution

has found, if I mistake not, the original principle far back in this

claim, on the part of England, to monopolize our trade, and a continued

effort on the part of the Colonies to resist or evade that monopoly; if,

indeed, it be not still more just and philosophical to go farther back,

and to consider it decided, that an independent government must arise

here, the moment it was ascertained that an English colony, such as

landed in this place, could sustain itself against the dangers which

surrounded it, and, with other similar establishments, overspread the

land with an English population. Accidental causes retarded at times,

and at times accelerated, the progress of the controversy. The Colonies

wanted strength, and time gave it to them. They required measures of

strong and palpable injustice, on the part of the mother country, to

justify resistance; the early part of the late king's reign furnished

them. They needed spirits of high order, of great daring, of long

foresight, and of commanding power, to seize the favoring occasion to

strike a blow, which should sever, for all time, the tie of colonial

dependence; and these spirits were found, in all the extent which that

or any crisis could demand, in Otis, Adams, Hancock, and the other

immediate authors of our independence.

Still, it is true that, for a century, causes had been in operation

tending to prepare things for this great result. In the year 1660 the

English Act of Navigation was passed; the first and grand object of

which seems to have been, to secure to England the whole trade with her

plantations.[10] It was provided by that act, that none but English

ships should transport American produce over the ocean, and that the

principal articles of that produce should be allowed to be sold only in

the markets of the mother country. Three years afterwards another law

was passed, which enacted, that such commodities as the Colonies might

wish to purchase should be bought only in the markets of the mother

country. Severe rules were prescribed to enforce the provisions of these

laws, and heavy penalties imposed on all who should violate them. In the

subsequent years of the same reign, other statutes were enacted to

re-enforce these statutes, and other rules prescribed to secure a

compliance with these rules. In this manner was the trade to and from

the Colonies restricted, almost to the exclusive advantage of the parent

country. But laws, which rendered the interest of a whole people

subordinate to that of another people, were not likely to execute

themselves, nor was it easy to find many on the spot, who could be

depended upon for carrying them into execution. In fact, these laws were

more or less evaded or resisted, in all the Colonies. To enforce them

was the constant endeavor of the government at home; to prevent or elude

their operation, the perpetual object here. "The laws of navigation,"

says a living British writer, "were nowhere so openly disobeyed and

contemned as in New England." "The people of Massachusetts Bay," he

adds, "were from the first disposed to act as if independent of the

mother country, and having a governor and magistrates of their own

choice, it was difficult to enforce any regulation which came from the

English Parliament, adverse to their interests." To provide more

effectually for the execution of these laws, we know that courts of

admiralty were afterwards established by the crown, with power to try

revenue causes, as questions of admiralty, upon the construction given

by the crown lawyers to an act of Parliament; a great departure from the

ordinary principles of English jurisprudence, but which has been

maintained, nevertheless, by the force of habit and precedent, and is

adopted in our own existing systems of government.

"There lie," says another English writer, whose connection with the

Board of Trade has enabled him to ascertain many facts connected with

Colonial history, "There lie among the documents in the board of trade

and state-paper office, the most satisfactory proofs, from the epoch of

the English Revolution in 1688, throughout every reign, and during every

administration, of the settled purpose of the Colonies to acquire direct

independence and positive sovereignty." Perhaps this may be stated

somewhat too strongly; but it cannot be denied, that, from the very

nature of the establishments here, and from the general character of the

measures respecting their concerns early adopted and steadily pursued by

the English government, a division of the empire was the natural and

necessary result to which every thing tended.[11]

I have dwelt on this topic, because it seems to me, that the peculiar

original character of the New England Colonies, and certain causes

coeval with their existence, have had a strong and decided influence on

all their subsequent history, and especially on the great event of the

Revolution. Whoever would write our history, and would understand and

explain early transactions, should comprehend the nature and force of

the feeling which I have endeavored to describe. As a son, leaving the

house of his father for his own, finds, by the order of nature, and the

very law of his being, nearer and dearer objects around which his

affections circle, while his attachment to the parental roof becomes

moderated, by degrees, to a composed regard and an affectionate

remembrance; so our ancestors, leaving their native land, not without

some violence to the feelings of nature and affection, yet, in time,

found here a new circle of engagements, interests, and affections; a

feeling, which more and more encroached upon the old, till an undivided

sentiment, _that this was their country_, occupied the heart; and

patriotism, shutting out from its embraces the parent realm, became

_local_ to America.

Some retrospect of the century which has now elapsed is among the duties

of the occasion. It must, however, necessarily be imperfect, to be

compressed within the limits of a single discourse. I shall content

myself, therefore, with taking notice of a few of the leading and most

important occurrences which have distinguished the period.

When the first century closed, the progress of the country appeared to

have been considerable; notwithstanding that, in comparison with its

subsequent advancement, it now seems otherwise. A broad and lasting

foundation had been laid; excellent institutions had been established;

many of the prejudices of former times had been removed; a more liberal

and catholic spirit on subjects of religious concern had begun to extend

itself, and many things conspired to give promise of increasing future

prosperity. Great men had arisen in public life, and the liberal

professions. The Mathers, father and son, were then sinking low in the

western horizon; Leverett, the learned, the accomplished, the excellent

Leverett, was about to withdraw his brilliant and useful light. In

Pemberton great hopes had been suddenly extinguished, but Prince and

Colman were in our sky; and along the east had begun to flash the

crepuscular light of a great luminary which was about to appear, and

which was to stamp the age with his own name, as the age of Franklin.

The bloody Indian wars, which harassed the people for a part of the

first century; the restrictions on the trade of the Colonies, added to

the discouragements inherently belonging to all forms of colonial

government; the distance from Europe, and the small hope of immediate

profit to adventurers, are among the causes which had contributed to

retard the progress of population. Perhaps it may be added, also, that

during the period of the civil wars in England, and the reign of

Cromwell, many persons, whose religious opinions and religious temper

might, under other circumstances, have induced them to join the New

England colonists, found reasons to remain in England; either on account

of active occupation in the scenes which were passing, or of an

anticipation of the enjoyment, in their own country, of a form of

government, civil and religious, accommodated to their views and

principles. The violent measures, too, pursued against the Colonies in

the reign of Charles the Second, the mockery of a trial, and the

forfeiture of the charters, were serious evils. And during the open

violences of the short reign of James the Second, and the tyranny of

Andros, as the venerable historian of Connecticut observes, "All the

motives to great actions, to industry, economy, enterprise, wealth, and

population, were in a manner annihilated. A general inactivity and

languishment pervaded the public body. Liberty, property, and every

thing which ought to be dear to men, every day grew more and more

insecure."

With the Revolution in England, a better prospect had opened on this

country, as well as on that. The joy had been as great at that event,

and far more universal, in New than in Old England. A new charter had

been granted to Massachusetts, which, although it did not confirm to her

inhabitants all their former privileges, yet relieved them from great

evils and embarrassments, and promised future security. More than all,

perhaps, the Revolution in England had done good to the general cause of

liberty and justice. A blow had been struck in favor of the rights and

liberties, not of England alone, but of descendants and kinsmen of

England all over the world. Great political truths had been established.

The champions of liberty had been successful in a fearful and perilous

conflict. Somers, and Cavendish, and Jekyl, and Howard, had triumphed in

one of the most noble causes ever undertaken by men. A revolution had

been made upon principle. A monarch had been dethroned for violating the

original compact between king and people. The rights of the people to

partake in the government, and to limit the monarch by fundamental rules

of government, had been maintained; and however unjust the government of

England might afterwards be towards other governments or towards her

colonies, she had ceased to be governed herself by the arbitrary maxims

of the Stuarts.

New England had submitted to the violence of James the Second not longer

than Old England. Not only was it reserved to Massachusetts, that on her

soil should be acted the first scene of that great revolutionary drama,

which was to take place near a century afterwards, but the English

Revolution itself, as far as the Colonies were concerned, commenced in

Boston. The seizure and imprisonment of Andros, in April, 1689, were

acts of direct and forcible resistance to the authority of James the

Second. The pulse of liberty beat as high in the extremities as at the

heart. The vigorous feeling of the Colony burst out before it was known

how the parent country would finally conduct herself. The king's

representative, Sir Edmund Andros, was a prisoner in the castle at

Boston, before it was or could be known that the king himself had ceased

to exercise his full dominion on the English throne.

Before it was known here whether the invasion of the Prince of Orange

would or could prove successful, as soon as it was known that it had

been undertaken, the people of Massachusetts, at the imminent hazard of

their lives and fortunes, had accomplished the Revolution as far as

respected themselves. It is probable that, reasoning on general

principles and the known attachment of the English people to their

constitution and liberties, and their deep and fixed dislike of the

king's religion and politics, the people of New England expected a

catastrophe fatal to the power of the reigning prince. Yet it was

neither certain enough, nor near enough, to come to their aid against

the authority of the crown, in that crisis which had arrived, and in

which they trusted to put themselves, relying on God and their own

courage. There were spirits in Massachusetts congenial with the spirits

of the distinguished friends of the Revolution in England. There were

those who were fit to associate with the boldest asserters of civil

liberty; and Mather himself, then in England, was not unworthy to be

ranked with those sons of the Church, whose firmness and spirit in

resisting kingly encroachments in matters of religion, entitled them to

the gratitude of their own and succeeding ages.

The second century opened upon New England under circumstances which

evinced that much had already been accomplished, and that still better

prospects and brighter hopes were before her. She had laid, deep and

strong, the foundations of her society. Her religious principles were

firm, and her moral habits exemplary. Her public schools had begun to

diffuse widely the elements of knowledge; and the College, under the

excellent and acceptable administration of Leverett, had been raised to

a high degree of credit and usefulness.

The commercial character of the country, notwithstanding all

discouragements, had begun to display itself, and _five hundred

vessels_, then belonging to Massachusetts, placed her, in relation to

commerce, thus early at the head of the Colonies. An author who wrote

very near the close of the first century says:--"New England is almost

deserving that _noble name_, so mightily hath it increased; and from a

small settlement at first, is now become a _very populous_ and

_flourishing_ government. The _capital city_, Boston, is a place of

_great wealth and trade_; and by much the largest of any in the English

empire of America; and not exceeded but by few cities, perhaps two or

three, in all the American world."

But if our ancestors at the close of the first century could look back

with joy and even admiration, at the progress of the country, what

emotions must we not feel, when, from the point on which we stand, we

also look back and run along the events of the century which has now

closed! The country which then, as we have seen, was thought deserving

of a "noble name,"--which then had "mightily increased," and become

"very populous,"--what was it, in comparison with what our eyes behold

it? At that period, a very great proportion of its inhabitants lived in

the eastern section of Massachusetts proper, and in Plymouth Colony. In

Connecticut, there were towns along the coast, some of them respectable,

but in the interior all was a wilderness beyond Hartford. On Connecticut

River, settlements had proceeded as far up as Deerfield, and Fort Dummer

had been built near where is now the south line of New Hampshire. In New

Hampshire no settlement was then begun thirty miles from the mouth of

Piscataqua River, and in what is now Maine the inhabitants were confined

to the coast. The aggregate of the whole population of New England did

not exceed one hundred and sixty thousand. Its present amount (1820) is

probably one million seven hundred thousand. Instead of being confined

to its former limits, her population has rolled backward, and filled up

the spaces included within her actual local boundaries. Not this only,

but it has overflowed those boundaries, and the waves of emigration have

pressed farther and farther toward the West. The Alleghany has not

checked it; the banks of the Ohio have been covered with it. New England

farms, houses, villages, and churches spread over and adorn the immense

extent from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and stretch along from the Alleghany

onwards, beyond the Miamis, and toward the Falls of St. Anthony. Two

thousand miles westward from the rock where their fathers landed, may

now be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields,

rearing towns and villages, and cherishing, we trust, the patrimonial

blessings of wise institutions, of liberty, and religion. The world has

seen nothing like this. Regions large enough to be empires, and which,

half a century ago, were known only as remote and unexplored

wildernesses, are now teeming with population, and prosperous in all the

great concerns of life; in good governments, the means of subsistence,

and social happiness. It may be safely asserted, that there are now more

than a million of people, descendants of New England ancestry, living,

free and happy, in regions which scarce sixty years ago were tracts of

unpenetrated forest. Nor do rivers, or mountains, or seas resist the

progress of industry and enterprise. Erelong, the sons of the Pilgrims

will be on the shores of the Pacific.[12] The imagination hardly keeps

pace with the progress of population, improvement, and civilization.

It is now five-and-forty years since the growth and rising glory of

America were portrayed in the English Parliament, with inimitable

beauty, by the most consummate orator of modern times. Going back

somewhat more than half a century, and describing our progress as

foreseen from that point by his amiable friend Lord Bathurst, then

living, he spoke of the wonderful progress which America had made during

the period of a single human life. There is no American heart, I

imagine, that does not glow, both with conscious, patriotic pride, and

admiration for one of the happiest efforts of eloquence, so often as the

vision of "that little speck, scarce visible in the mass of national

interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body," and the

progress of its astonishing development and growth, are recalled to the

recollection. But a stronger feeling might be produced, if we were able

to take up this prophetic description where he left it, and, placing

ourselves at the point of time in which he was speaking, to set forth

with equal felicity the subsequent progress of the country. There is yet

among the living a most distinguished and venerable name, a descendant

of the Pilgrims; one who has been attended through life by a great and

fortunate genius; a man illustrious by his own great merits, and favored

of Heaven in the long continuation of his years.[13] The time when the

English orator was thus speaking of America preceded but by a few days

the actual opening of the revolutionary drama at Lexington. He to whom I

have alluded, then at the age of forty, was among the most zealous and

able defenders of the violated rights of his country. He seemed already

to have filled a full measure of public service, and attained an

honorable fame. The moment was full of difficulty and danger, and big

with events of immeasurable importance. The country was on the very

brink of a civil war, of which no man could foretell the duration or the

result. Something more than a courageous hope, or characteristic ardor,

would have been necessary to impress the glorious prospect on his

belief, if, at that moment, before the sound of the first shock of

actual war had reached his ears, some attendant spirit had opened to him

the vision of the future;--if it had said to him, "The blow is struck,

and America is severed from England for ever!"--if it had informed him,

that he himself, during the next annual revolution of the sun, should

put his own hand to the great instrument of independence, and write his

name where all nations should behold it and all time should not efface

it; that erelong he himself should maintain the interests and represent

the sovereignty of his newborn country in the proudest courts of Europe;

that he should one day exercise her supreme magistracy; that he should

yet live to behold ten millions of fellow-citizens paying him the homage

of their deepest gratitude and kindest affections; that he should see

distinguished talent and high public trust resting where his name

rested; that he should even see with his own unclouded eyes the close of

the second century of New England, who had begun life almost with its

commencement, and lived through nearly half the whole history of his

country; and that on the morning of this auspicious day he should be

found in the political councils of his native State, revising, by the

light of experience, that system of government which forty years before

he had assisted to frame and establish; and, great and happy as he

should then behold his country, there should be nothing in prospect to

cloud the scene, nothing to check the ardor of that confident and

patriotic hope which should glow in his bosom to the end of his long

protracted and happy life.

It would far exceed the limits of this discourse even to mention the

principal events in the civil and political history of New England

during the century; the more so, as for the last half of the period that

history has, most happily, been closely interwoven with the general

history of the United States. New England bore an honorable part in the

wars which took place between England and France. The capture of

Louisburg gave her a character for military achievement; and in the war

which terminated with the peace of 1763, her exertions on the frontiers

wore of most essential service, as well to the mother country as to all

the Colonies.

In New England the war of the Revolution commenced. I address those who

remember the memorable 19th of April, 1775; who shortly after saw the

burning spires of Charlestown; who beheld the deeds of Prescott, and

heard the voice of Putnam amidst the storm of war, and saw the generous

Warren fall, the first distinguished victim in the cause of liberty. It

would be superfluous to say, that no portion of the country did more

than the States of New England to bring the Revolutionary struggle to a

successful issue. It is scarcely less to her credit, that she saw early

the necessity of a closer union of the States, and gave an efficient and

indispensable aid to the establishment and organization of the Federal

government.

Perhaps we might safely say, that a new spirit and a new excitement

began to exist here about the middle of the last century. To whatever

causes it may be imputed, there seems then to have commenced a more

rapid improvement. The Colonies had attracted more of the attention of

the mother country, and some renown in arms had been acquired. Lord

Chatham was the first English minister who attached high importance to

these possessions of the crown, and who foresaw any thing of their

future growth and extension. His opinion was, that the great rival of

England was chiefly to be feared as a maritime and commercial power, and

to drive her out of North America and deprive her of her West Indian

possessions was a leading object in his policy. He dwelt often on the

fisheries, as nurseries for British seamen, and the colonial trade, as

furnishing them employment. The war, conducted by him with so much

vigor, terminated in a peace, by which Canada was ceded to England. The

effect of this was immediately visible in the New England Colonies; for,

the fear of Indian hostilities on the frontiers being now happily

removed, settlements went on with an activity before that time

altogether unprecedented, and public affairs wore a new and encouraging

aspect. Shortly after this fortunate termination of the French war, the

interesting topics connected with the taxation of America by the British

Parliament began to be discussed, and the attention and all the

faculties of the people drawn towards them. There is perhaps no portion

of our history more full of interest than the period from 1760 to the

actual commencement of the war. The progress of opinion in this period,

though less known, is not less important than the progress of arms

afterwards. Nothing deserves more consideration than those events and

discussions which affected the public sentiment and settled the

Revolution in men's minds, before hostilities openly broke out.

Internal improvement followed the establishment and prosperous

commencement of the present government. More has been done for roads,

canals, and other public works, within the last thirty years, than in

all our former history. In the first of these particulars, few countries

excel the New England States. The astonishing increase of their

navigation and trade is known to every one, and now belongs to the

history of our national wealth.

We may flatter ourselves, too, that literature and taste have not been

stationary, and that some advancement has been made in the elegant, as

well as in the useful arts.

The nature and constitution of society and government in this country

are interesting topics, to which I would devote what remains of the time

allowed to this occasion. Of our system of government the first thing to

be said is, that it is really and practically a free system. It

originates entirely with the people, and rests on no other foundation

than their assent. To judge of its actual operation, it is not enough to

look merely at the form of its construction. The practical character of

government depends often on a variety of considerations, besides the

abstract frame of its constitutional organization. Among these are the

condition and tenure of property; the laws regulating its alienation and

descent; the presence or absence of a military power; an armed or

unarmed yeomanry; the spirit of the age, and the degree of general

intelligence. In these respects it cannot be denied that the

circumstances of this country are most favorable to the hope of

maintaining the government of a great nation on principles entirely

popular. In the absence of military power, the nature of government must

essentially depend on the manner in which property is holden and

distributed. There is a natural influence belonging to property, whether

it exists in many hands or few; and it is on the rights of property that

both despotism and unrestrained popular violence ordinarily commence

their attacks. Our ancestors began their system of government here under

a condition of comparative equality in regard to wealth, and their early

laws were of a nature to favor and continue this equality.

A republican form of government rests not more on political

constitutions, than on those laws which regulate the descent and

transmission of property. Governments like ours could not have been

maintained, where property was holden according to the principles of the

feudal system; nor, on the other hand, could the feudal constitution

possibly exist with us. Our New England ancestors brought hither no

great capitals from Europe; and if they had, there was nothing

productive in which they could have been invested. They left behind them

the whole feudal policy of the other continent. They broke away at once

from the system of military service established in the Dark Ages, and

which continues, down even to the present time, more or less to affect

the condition of property all over Europe. They came to a new country.

There were, as yet, no lands yielding rent, and no tenants rendering

service. The whole soil was unreclaimed from barbarism. They were

themselves, either from their original condition, or from the necessity

of their common interest, nearly on a general level in respect to

property. Their situation demanded a parcelling out and division of the

lands, and it may be fairly said, that this necessary act _fixed the

future frame and form of their government_. The character of their

political institutions was determined by the fundamental laws respecting

property. The laws rendered estates divisible among sons and daughters.

The right of primogeniture, at first limited and curtailed, was

afterwards abolished. The property was all freehold. The entailment of

estates, long trusts, and the other processes for fettering and tying up

inheritances, were not applicable to the condition of society, and

seldom made use of. On the contrary, alienation of the land was every

way facilitated, even to the subjecting of it to every species of debt.

The establishment of public registries, and the simplicity of our forms

of conveyance, have greatly facilitated the change of real estate from

one proprietor to another. The consequence of all these causes has been

a great subdivision of the soil, and a great equality of condition; the

true basis, most certainly, of a popular government. "If the people,"

says Harrington, "hold three parts in four of the territory, it is plain

there can neither be any single person nor nobility able to dispute the

government with them; in this case, therefore, _except force be

interposed_, they govern themselves."

The history of other nations may teach us how favorable to public

liberty are the division of the soil into small freeholds, and a system

of laws, of which the tendency is, without violence or injustice, to

produce and to preserve a degree of equality of property. It has been

estimated, if I mistake not, that about the time of Henry the Seventh

four fifths of the land in England was holden by the great barons and

ecclesiastics. The effects of a growing commerce soon afterwards began

to break in on this state of things, and before the Revolution, in 1688,

a vast change had been wrought. It may be thought probable, that, for

the last half-century, the process of subdivision in England has been

retarded, if not reversed; that the great weight of taxation has

compelled many of the lesser freeholders to dispose of their estates,

and to seek employment in the army and navy, in the professions of civil

life, in commerce, or in the colonies. The effect of this on the British

constitution cannot but be most unfavorable. A few large estates grow

larger; but the number of those who have no estates also increases; and

there may be danger, lest the inequality of property become so great,

that those who possess it may be dispossessed by force; in other words,

that the government may be overturned.

A most interesting experiment of the effect of a subdivision of property

on government is now making in France. It is understood, that the law

regulating the transmission of property in that country, now divides it,

real and personal, among all the children equally, both sons and

daughters; and that there is, also, a very great restraint on the power

of making dispositions of property by will. It has been supposed, that

the effects of this might probably be, in time, to break up the soil

into such small subdivisions, that the proprietors would be too poor to

resist the encroachments of executive power. I think far otherwise. What

is lost in individual wealth will be more than gained in numbers, in

intelligence, and in a sympathy of sentiment. If, indeed, only one or a

few landholders were to resist the crown, like the barons of England,

they must, of course, be great and powerful landholders, with multitudes

of retainers, to promise success. But if the proprietors of a given

extent of territory are summoned to resistance, there is no reason to

believe that such resistance would be less forcible, or less successful,

because the number of such proprietors happened to be great. Each would

perceive his own importance, and his own interest, and would feel that

natural elevation of character which the consciousness of property

inspires. A common sentiment would unite all, and numbers would not only

add strength, but excite enthusiasm. It is true, that France possesses

a vast military force, under the direction of an hereditary executive

government; and military power, it is possible, may overthrow any

government. It is in vain, however, in this period of the world, to look

for security against military power to the arm of the great landholders.

That notion is derived from a state of things long since past; a state

in which a feudal baron, with his retainers, might stand against the

sovereign and his retainers, himself but the greatest baron. But at

present, what could the richest landholder do, against one regiment of

disciplined troops? Other securities, therefore, against the prevalence

of military power must be provided. Happily for us, we are not so

situated as that any purpose of national defence requires, ordinarily

and constantly, such a military force as might seriously endanger our

liberties.

In respect, however, to the recent law of succession in France, to which

I have alluded, I would, presumptuously perhaps, hazard a conjecture,

that, if the government do not change the law, the law in half a century

will change the government; and that this change will be, not in favor

of the power of the crown, as some European writers have supposed, but

against it. Those writers only reason upon what they think correct

general principles, in relation to this subject. They acknowledge a want

of experience. Here we have had that experience; and we know that a

multitude of small proprietors, acting with intelligence, and that

enthusiasm which a common cause inspires, constitute not only a

formidable, but an invincible power.[14]

The true principle of a free and popular government would seem to be, so

to construct it as to give to all, or at least to a very great majority,

an interest in its preservation; to found it, as other things are

founded, on men's interest. The stability of government demands that

those who desire its continuance should be more powerful than those who

desire its dissolution. This power, of course, is not always to be

measured by mere numbers. Education, wealth, talents, are all parts and

elements of the general aggregate of power; but numbers, nevertheless,

constitute ordinarily the most important consideration, unless, indeed,

there be _a military force_ in the hands of the few, by which they can

control the many. In this country we have actually existing systems of

government, in the maintenance of which, it should seem, a great

majority, both in numbers and in other means of power and influence,

must see their interest. But this state of things is not brought about

solely by written political constitutions, or the mere manner of

organizing the government; but also by the laws which regulate the

descent and transmission of property. The freest government, if it could

exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to

create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the

great mass of the population dependent and penniless. In such a case,

the popular power would be likely to break in upon the rights of

property, or else the influence of property to limit and control the

exercise of popular power. Universal suffrage, for example, could not

long exist in a community where there was great inequality of property.

The holders of estates would be obliged, in such case, in some way to

restrain the right of suffrage, or else such right of suffrage would,

before long, divide the property. In the nature of things, those who

have not property, and see their neighbors possess much more than they

think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection

of property. When this class becomes numerous, it grows clamorous. It

looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at

all times, for violence and revolution.

It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found

government on property; and to establish such distribution of property,

by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to

interest the great majority of society in the support of the government.

This is, I imagine, the true theory and the actual practice of our

republican institutions. With property divided as we have it, no other

government than that of a republic could be maintained, even were we

foolish enough to desire it. There is reason, therefore, to expect a

long continuance of our system. Party and passion, doubtless, may

prevail at times, and much temporary mischief be done. Even modes and

forms may be changed, and perhaps for the worse. But a great revolution

in regard to property must take place, before our governments can be

moved from their republican basis, unless they be violently struck off

by military power. The people possess the property, more emphatically

than it could ever be said of the people of any other country, and they

can have no interest to overturn a government which protects that

property by equal laws.

Let it not be supposed, that this state of things possesses too strong

tendencies towards the production of a dead and uninteresting level in

society. Such tendencies are sufficiently counteracted by the infinite

diversities in the characters and fortunes of individuals. Talent,

activity, industry, and enterprise tend at all times to produce

inequality and distinction; and there is room still for the accumulation

of wealth, with its great advantages, to all reasonable and useful

extent. It has been often urged against the state of society in America,

that it furnishes no class of men of fortune and leisure. This may be

partly true, but it is not entirely so, and the evil, if it be one,

would affect rather the progress of taste and literature, than the

general prosperity of the people. But the promotion of taste and

literature cannot be primary objects of political institutions; and if

they could, it might be doubted whether, in the long course of things,

as much is not gained by a wide diffusion of general knowledge, as is

lost by diminishing the number of those who are enabled by fortune and

leisure to devote themselves exclusively to scientific and literary

pursuits. However this may be, it is to be considered that it is the

spirit of our system to be equal and general, and if there be particular

disadvantages incident to this, they are far more than counterbalanced

by the benefits which weigh against them. The important concerns of

society are generally conducted, in all countries, by the men of

business and practical ability; and even in matters of taste and

literature, the advantages of mere leisure are liable to be overrated.

If there exist adequate means of education and a love of letters be

excited, that love will find its way to the object of its desire,

through the crowd and pressure of the most busy society.

Connected with this division of property, and the consequent

participation of the great mass of people in its possession and

enjoyments, is the system of representation, which is admirably

accommodated to our condition, better understood among us, and more

familiarly and extensively practised, in the higher and in the lower

departments of government, than it has been by any other people. Great

facility has been given to this in New England by the early division of

the country into townships or small districts, in which all concerns of

local police are regulated, and in which representatives to the

legislature are elected. Nothing can exceed the utility of these little

bodies. They are so many councils or parliaments, in which common

interests are discussed, and useful knowledge acquired and communicated.

The division of governments into departments, and the division, again,

of the legislative department into two chambers, are essential

provisions in our system. This last, although not new in itself, yet

seems to be new in its application to governments wholly popular. The

Grecian republics, it is plain, knew nothing of it; and in Rome, the

check and balance of legislative power, such as it was, lay between the

people and the senate. Indeed, few things are more difficult than to

ascertain accurately the true nature and construction of the Roman

commonwealth. The relative power of the senate and the people, of the

consuls and the tribunes, appears not to have been at all times the

same, nor at any time accurately defined or strictly observed. Cicero,

indeed, describes to us an admirable arrangement of political power, and

a balance of the constitution, in that beautiful passage, in which he

compares the democracies of Greece with the Roman commonwealth. "O morem

preclarum, disciplinamque, quam a majoribus accepimus, si quidem

teneremus! sed nescio quo pacto jam de manibus elabitur. Nullam enim

illi nostri sapientissimi et sanctissimi viri vim concionis esse

voluerunt, quae scisseret plebs, aut quae populus juberet; summota

concione, distributis partibus, tributim et centuriatim descriptis

ordinibus, classibus, aetatibus, auditis auctoribus, re multos dies

promulgata et cognita, juberi vetarique voluerunt. Graecorum autem totae

respublicae sedentis concionis temeritate administrantur."[15]

But at what time this wise system existed in this perfection at Rome, no

proofs remain to show. Her constitution, originally framed for a

monarchy, never seemed to be adjusted in its several parts after the

expulsion of the kings. Liberty there was, but it was a disputatious, an

uncertain, an ill-secured liberty. The patrician and plebeian orders,

instead of being matched and joined, each in its just place and

proportion, to sustain the fabric of the state, were rather like hostile

powers, in perpetual conflict. With us, an attempt has been made, and so

far not without success, to divide representation into chambers, and, by

difference of age, character, qualification, or mode of election, to

establish salutary checks, in governments altogether elective.

Having detained you so long with these observations, I must yet advert

to another most interesting topic,--the Free Schools. In this

particular, New England may be allowed to claim, I think, a merit of a

peculiar character. She early adopted, and has constantly maintained the

principle, that it is the undoubted right and the bounden duty of

government to provide for the instruction of all youth. That which is

elsewhere left to chance or to charity, we secure by law.[16] For the

purpose of public instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation in

proportion to his property, and we look not to the question, whether he

himself have, or have not, children to be benefited by the education for

which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by

which property, and life, and the peace of society are secured. We seek

to prevent in some measure the extension of the penal code, by inspiring

a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an

early age. We strive to excite a feeling of respectability, and a sense

of character, by enlarging the capacity and increasing the sphere of

intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as

possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments

uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as

well as the censures of the law and the denunciations of religion,

against immorality and crime. We hope for a security beyond the law, and

above the law, in the prevalence of an enlightened and well-principled

moral sentiment. We hope to continue and prolong the time, when, in the

villages and farm-houses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep

within unbarred doors. And knowing that our government rests directly on

the public will, in order that we may preserve it we endeavor to give a

safe and proper direction to that public will. We do not, indeed,

expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we confidently

trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government

rests on that trust, that, by the diffusion of general knowledge and

good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, as

well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow, but sure,

undermining of licentiousness.

We know that, at the present time, an attempt is making in the English

Parliament to provide by law for the education of the poor, and that a

gentleman of distinguished character (Mr. Brougham) has taken the lead

in presenting a plan to government for carrying that purpose into

effect. And yet, although the representatives of the three kingdoms

listened to him with astonishment as well as delight, we hear no

principles with which we ourselves have not been familiar from youth; we

see nothing in the plan but an approach towards that system which has

been established in New England for more than a century and a half. It

is said that in England not more than _one child in fifteen_ possesses

the means of being taught to read and write; in Wales, _one in twenty_;

in France, until lately, when some improvement was made, not more than

_one in thirty-five_. Now, it is hardly too strong to say, that in New

England _every child possesses_ such means. It would be difficult to

find an instance to the contrary, unless where it should be owing to the

negligence of the parent; and, in truth, the means are actually used and

enjoyed by nearly every one. A youth of fifteen, of either sex, who

cannot both read and write, is very seldom to be found. Who can make

this comparison, or contemplate this spectacle, without delight and a

feeling of just pride? Does any history show property more beneficently

applied? Did any government ever subject the property of those who have

estates to a burden, for a purpose more favorable to the poor, or more

useful to the whole community?

A conviction of the importance of public instruction was one of the

earliest sentiments of our ancestors. No lawgiver of ancient or modern

times has expressed more just opinions, or adopted wiser measures, than

the early records of the Colony of Plymouth show to have prevailed here.

Assembled on this very spot, a hundred and fifty-three years ago, the

legislature of this Colony declared, "Forasmuch as the maintenance of

good literature doth much tend to the advancement of the weal and

flourishing state of societies and republics, this Court doth therefore

order, that in whatever township in this government, consisting of fifty

families or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a grammar

school, such township shall allow at least twelve pounds, to be raised

by rate on all the inhabitants."

Having provided that all youth should be instructed in the elements of

learning by the institution of free schools, our ancestors had yet

another duty to perform. Men were to be educated for the professions and

the public. For this purpose they founded the University, and with

incredible zeal and perseverance they cherished and supported it,

through all trials and discouragements.[17] On the subject of the

University, it is not possible for a son of New England to think without

pleasure, or to speak without emotion. Nothing confers more honor on the

State where it is established, or more utility on the country at large.

A respectable university is an establishment which must be the work of

time. If pecuniary means were not wanting, no new institution could

possess character and respectability at once. We owe deep obligation to

our ancestors, who began, almost on the moment of their arrival, the

work of building up this institution.

Although established in a different government, the Colony of Plymouth

manifested warm friendship for Harvard College. At an early period, its

government took measures to promote a general subscription throughout

all the towns in this Colony, in aid of its small funds. Other colleges

were subsequently founded and endowed, in other places, as the ability

of the people allowed; and we may flatter ourselves, that the means of

education at present enjoyed in New England are not only adequate to the

diffusion of the elements of knowledge among all classes, but sufficient

also for respectable attainments in literature and the sciences.

Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality

and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be

trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any

government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. Living

under the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to find all the

social dispositions, all the duties which men owe to each other and to

society, enforced and performed. Whatever makes men good Christians,

makes them good citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion

free and unmolested; and, at the end of two centuries, there is nothing

upon which we can pronounce more confidently, nothing of which we can

express a more deep and earnest conviction, than of the inestimable

importance of that religion to man, both in regard to this life and that

which is to come.

If the blessings of our political and social condition have not been too

highly estimated, we cannot well overrate the responsibility and duty

which they impose upon us. We hold these institutions of government,

religion, and learning, to be transmitted, as well as enjoyed. We are in

the line of conveyance, through which whatever has been obtained by the

spirit and efforts of our ancestors is to be communicated to our

children.

We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own

systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and

morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the

rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most

perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail

in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument,

stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which

maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and

coercion. As far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we

are bound to correct them; and if any practices exist contrary to the

principles of justice and humanity within the reach of our laws or our

influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to restrain

and abolish them.

I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, that the land is not yet

wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at which every feeling

of humanity must for ever revolt,--I mean the African slave-trade.[18]

Neither public sentiment, nor the law, has hitherto been able entirely

to put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when

God in his mercy has blessed the Christian world with a universal peace,

there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and

character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade by

subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts there dwell

no sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over whom neither the fear

of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law,

the African slave-trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of

Heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There

is no brighter page of our history, than that which records the measures

which have been adopted by the government at an early day, and at

different times since, for the suppression of this traffic; and I would

call on all the true sons of New England to co-operate with the laws of

man, and the justice of Heaven. If there be, within the extent of our

knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffic, let us

pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and

destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the

shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the

furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I

see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this

work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such

instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it

cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside

from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human

sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no

communion with it.

I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister

at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of

the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its

denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the

authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent whenever or wherever

there may be a sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its

voice, the pulpit is false to its trust. I call on the fair merchant,

who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging

from those seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean,

which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence to waft the burden of an

honest commerce, and to roll along its treasures with a conscious

pride,--that ocean, which hardy industry regards, even when the winds

have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil,--what is it to

the victim of this oppression, when he is brought to its shores, and

looks forth upon it, for the first time, loaded with chains, and

bleeding with stripes? What is it to him but a wide-spread prospect of

suffering, anguish, and death? Nor do the skies smile longer, nor is the

air longer fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An inhuman

and accursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth,

from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which

his Creator intended for him.

The Christian communities send forth their emissaries of religion and

letters, who stop, here and there, along the coast of the vast continent

of Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts make some almost

imperceptible progress in the communication of knowledge, and in the

general improvement of the natives who are immediately about them. Not

thus slow and imperceptible is the transmission of the vices and bad

passions which the subjects of Christian states carry to the land. The

slave-trade having touched the coast, its influence and its evils

spread, like a pestilence, over the whole continent, making savage wars

more savage and more frequent, and adding new and fierce passions to the

contests of barbarians.

I pursue this topic no further, except again to say, that all

Christendom, being now blessed with peace, is bound by every thing which

belongs to its character, and to the character of the present age, to

put a stop to this inhuman and disgraceful traffic.

We are bound, not only to maintain the general principles of public

liberty, but to support also those existing forms of government which

have so well secured its enjoyment, and so highly promoted the public

prosperity. It is now more than thirty years that these States have been

united under the Federal Constitution, and whatever fortune may await

them hereafter, it is impossible that this period of their history

should not be regarded as distinguished by signal prosperity and

success. They must be sanguine indeed, who can hope for benefit from

change. Whatever division of the public judgment may have existed in

relation to particular measures of the government, all must agree, one

should think, in the opinion, that in its general course it has been

eminently productive of public happiness. Its most ardent friends could

not well have hoped from it more than it has accomplished; and those who

disbelieved or doubted ought to feel less concern about predictions

which the event has not verified, than pleasure in the good which has

been obtained. Whoever shall hereafter write this part of our history,

although he may see occasional errors or defects, will be able to record

no great failure in the ends and objects of government. Still less will

he be able to record any series of lawless and despotic acts, or any

successful usurpation. His page will contain no exhibition of provinces

depopulated, of civil authority habitually trampled down by military

power, or of a community crushed by the burden of taxation. He will

speak, rather, of public liberty protected, and public happiness

advanced; of increased revenue, and population augmented beyond all

example; of the growth of commerce, manufactures, and the arts; and of

that happy condition, in which the restraint and coercion of government

are almost invisible and imperceptible, and its influence felt only in

the benefits which it confers. We can entertain no better wish for our

country, than that this government may be preserved; nor have a clearer

duty than to maintain and support it in the full exercise of all its

just constitutional powers.

The cause of science and literature also imposes upon us an important

and delicate trust. The wealth and population of the country are now so

far advanced, as to authorize the expectation of a correct literature

and a well formed taste, as well as respectable progress in the abstruse

sciences. The country has risen from a state of colonial subjection; it

has established an independent government, and is now in the undisturbed

enjoyment of peace and political security. The elements of knowledge are

universally diffused, and the reading portion of the community is large.

Let us hope that the present may be an auspicious era of literature. If,

almost on the day of their landing, our ancestors founded schools and

endowed colleges, what obligations do not rest upon us, living under

circumstances so much more favorable both for providing and for using

the means of education? Literature becomes free institutions. It is the

graceful ornament of civil liberty, and a happy restraint on the

asperities which political controversies sometimes occasion. Just taste

is not only an embellishment of society, but it rises almost to the rank

of the virtues, and diffuses positive good throughout the whole extent

of its influence. There is a connection between right feeling and right

principles, and truth in taste is allied with truth in morality. With

nothing in our past history to discourage us, and with something in our

present condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, that, as it

is our fortune to live in an age when we may behold a wonderful

advancement of the country in all its other great interests, we may see

also equal progress and success attend the cause of letters.

Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our

fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian

religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They

sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society,

and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil,

political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this

influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the

happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and

peaceful spirit of Christianity.

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be

passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its return.

They are in the distant regions of futurity, they exist only in the

all-creating power of God, who shall stand here a hundred years hence,

to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as

we have now surveyed, the progress of their country, during the lapse of

a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our

sentiments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate

and partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of

New England's advancement. On the morning of that day, although it will

not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude,

commencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through

millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs

of the Pacific seas.

We would leave for the consideration of those who shall then occupy our

places, some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our

fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause of

good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a

sincere and ardent desire to promote every thing which may enlarge the

understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when, from the long

distance of a hundred years, they shall look back upon us, they shall

know, at least, that we possessed affections, which, running backward

and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our

happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial

salutation, ere yet they have arrived on the shore of being.

Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise in

your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste

the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall have

passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land

of the fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the

verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great

inheritance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of

good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures

of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the

transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and

parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of

rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of

everlasting truth!

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