fell on JOHN JAY, it touched nothing not as spotless as itself.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

I should do violence to my own feelings, gentlemen,-I think I should offend yours,-if I omitted respectful mention of distinguished names, yet fresh in your recollections. How can I stand here to speak of the Constitution of the United States, of the wisdom of its provisions, of the difficulties attending its adoption, of the evils from which it rescued the country, and of the prosperity and power to which it has raised it, and yet pay no tribute to those who were highly instrumental in accom. plishing the work? While we are here to rejoice, that it yet stands firm and strong; while we congratulate one another that we live under its benign influence, and cherish hopes of its long duration; we cannot forget who they were, that in the day of our national infancy, in the times of despondency and despair, mainly assisted to work out our deliverance. I should feel that I disregard. ed the strong recollections which the occasion presses upon us, that I was not true to gratitude, nor true to patriotism, nor true to the living or the dead, not true to your feelings or my own, if I should forbear to make mention of ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

GOVERNMENT.

Certain it is, that popular constitutional liberty, as we enjoy it, appears, in the present state of the world, as sure and stable a basis for government to rest upon, as any government of enlightened states can find or does find. Certain it is, that in these times of so much popu

lar knowledge, and so much popular activity, those governments which do not admit the people to partake in their administration, but keep them under and beneath, sit on materials for an explosion, which may take place at any moment, and blow them into a thousand atoms.

THE COUNTRY.

Gentlemen, our country stands, at the present time, on commanding ground. Older nations, with different systems of government, may be somewhat slow to acknow. ledge all that justly belongs to us. But we may feel, without vanity, that America is doing its part in the great work of improving human affairs. There are two principles, gentlemen, strictly and purely American, which are now likely to overrun the civilized world. Indeed, they seem the necessary result of the progress of civilization and knowledge. These are, first, popular governments, restrained by written constitutions; and, secondly, universal education. Popular governments, and general education, acting and re-acting, mutually producing and re-producing each other, are the mighty agencies, which, in our days, appear to be exciting, stimulating, and changing civilized societies. Man, every where, is now found demanding a participation in government; and he will not be refused; and he demands knowledge as necessary to self-government. On the basis of these two principles, liberty, and knowledge, our own American systems, rest. Thus far we have not been disappointed in their results. Our existing institutions, raised on these foundations, have conferred on us almost unmixed happiness. Do we hope to better our condition by change? When we shall have nullified the present con

stitution, what are we to receive in its place? As fathers, do we wish for our children better government or better laws? As members of society, as lovers of our country, is there any thing we can desire for it better than that, as ages and centuries roll over it, it may possess the same invaluable institutions which it now enjoys? For my part, gentlemen, I can only say, that I desire to thank the beneficent Author of all good, for being born where I was born, and when I was born; that the portion of human existence allotted to me, has been meted out to me in this goodly land, and at this interesting period. I rejoice that I have lived to see so much development of truth, so much progress of liberty, so much diffusion of virtue and happiness. And through good report, and through evil report, it will be my consolation, to be the citizen of a republic, unequalled in the annals of the world for the freedom of its institutions, its high prosperity, and the prospects of good which yet lie before it. Our course, gentlemen, is onward, straight onward and forward. Let us not turn to the right hand or to the left. Our path is marked out for us, clear, plain, bright, distinctly defined, like the milky way across the heavens. If we are true to our country, in our day and generation, and those who come after us shall be true to it also, assuredly we shall elevate her to a pitch of prosperity and happiness, of honor and power, never yet reached by any nation beneath the sun.

LOVE OF LIBERTY.

No American can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, or Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them, feels the sen

timent of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions, which have rendered these places distinguished, still hovered round, with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them.

MORAL EXAMPLE.

But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become imbodied in human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature if we did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true lover of the vir tue of patriotism delights to contemplate its purest models; and that love of country may be well suspected, which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment, as to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too elevated, or too refined, to glow with fervor in the commendation or the love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if one should be so enthu. siastic a lover of poetry, as to care nothing for Homer or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence, as to be indifferent to Tully and Chatham; or such a devotee to the arts, in such an ecstacy with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard the masterpieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo with coldness and contempt. We may be assured, gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself, really loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and commemorate them. The voluntary outpouring of the public feeling, made to-day from the north to the

south, and from the east to the west, proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in the villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among all ages and sexes, gladdened voices to-day bespeak grateful hearts, and a freshened recollection of the virtues of the Father of his country. And it will be so in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to themselves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to be what they behold. They will contemplate his character till all its virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted vision; as the earliest astronomers; the shepherds on the plains of Babylon gazed at the stars till they saw them form in clusters and constellations, overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders with the united blaze of a thousand lights.

PROGRESS OF FREEDOM.

Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free government, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an emanation from heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return void. It must change, it is fast changing, the face of the earth. Our great, our high duty, is to show, by our example, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power; that its benignity is as great as its strength; that its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us with a willing, but something of