good offices to the young, it will cheer and gladden the bleak and wintry existence of extreme age, and beguile its solitary hour as it sees the sunlight reflected at its evening. It will nerve the heart of manhood to virtuous resolves, and stamp its moral impress upon the tone and feeling of society. It will rescue generous, confiding, impulsive youth from the snares hidden beneath indulgence, and stimulate his glowing heart to emulate the great and good in the pursuit of knowledge and the performance of honorable deeds. It will beckon, as with a mother's gentle hand, little children within its portals, that their ductile affections may twine around the pure morality which will there be inculcated. Its philosophy, natural and moral, will teach the nature of the laws which govern mind and matter, make plain the value of reason and revelation, and serve to unmask and expel from respectable society the charlatan with his base impositions and impious mummeries, who is quite too successfully plying his nefarious trade upon credulity and ignorance, and thus lop off from our social system a cancerous excrescence which threatens to corrode the vitals.

This institution will stand an enduring monument of the liberal and enlightened spirit by which it was founded. It will bear witness to a just sense of intellectual cultivation and improvement, amidst the engrossing cares of business. Those who contribute to its erection and endowment will be hailed as benefactors of their kind, for they will have opened the temple-gates of knowledge to the young. In what pleasing contrast stand institutions of learning with the palaces and bastiles, the towers and castles, the prisons and mausoleums, of other climes !-with the Pyramids of Egypt, one of the wonders of the world! They stand as stupendous monuments of human folly and ambition;-they tell of the oppression, tyranny, and fraud of the few, over the ignorance and slavish superstition of the many. In their sublime and gloomy grandeur they testify to heaven of the robbery and wrong and outrage in which they were established. But where is the record of the labor which toiled and groaned in their erection; of the blood and tears in which the heartless stones were cemented by order of the no less heartless tyrants who rode over the unlettered masses; of the abject wretchedness, the shivering want and hunger, and starving destitution of women and

children, that the mad ambition of some gilded beggar called a king might be gratified and his infamous memory perpet

uated!

But they all sleep together-the oppressor and the oppressed. The rude but gentle hearts that bled under a silent sense of wrong shall bleed no more; but in the day of final retribution, thousands of mothers shall cry out together against their oppressors as those by whom they were bereaved of their offspring; and thousands of children will raise their little hands in testimony against them, for having blotted from their bright heavens the radiance of their birth-star. Though the monuments of ambition and injustice yet stand, they are suggestive only of the sorrow with which their founders afflicted their kind, and tell us that no lips ever whispered a blessing on their names-that no prayer was ever offered to the throne of an infinite God in their behalf, but they went down to judgment cursed by the widow's tears and the orphan's wail. But the monument here founded shall tell in after times of refinement, equality, and religion; of a just, a generous, and enlightened people. No blood shall stain the purity of its design; no involuntary labor shall groan in its erection; no tears of oppression shall fall down upon its foundation stones; no supperless children shall lie down upon their beds of dirty straw; but every influence which flows from it shall be genial and refreshing, diffusing widely around it happiness and joy-bringing gladness to many hearts, and lighting up many domestic hearths.

Education is the Archimedean lever which moves the moral world. There is yet a wide field of labor for the friends of truth and learning, and they are admonished by every consid eration which can influence human action never to abate their energies until ignorance, "pregnant womb of ills," the parent of every vice and every crime, shall be driven beyond the pale. of society; until every homeless outcast shall be reclaimed; until every erring soul shall have shining around it the light of moral truth. There is no human form so debased but through suitable influence it may be rescued from its degrada tion, and taught to look upward for enjoyment. We should "deal gently with the erring," remembering that he is a man and a brother. The gentle hand leads the elephant by the

hair. Kindness may yet change the current of his earthly destiny, for he is not yet lost forever.

"There is no grove on earth's broad chart

But has some bird to cheer it;
And hope sings on in every heart,
Although we may not hear it."

SPEECH

DELIVERED AT DELHI, DELAWARE COUNTY, N. Y., AT A MEETING

66

دو

OF THE HARDSHELL OR NATIONAL DEMOCRACY OF THE

COUNTY, September 29, 1854.

FELLOW-CITIZENS-My errand among you is entirely professional business before the Circuit Court now in session here, and I had no expectation that I should have the pleasure of meeting so large an assemblage of Democratic friends, and the honor of addressing them upon their invitation. But, although I came upon business which demands my attention, and although the political campaign has not yet fairly opened, I am happy, as upon all suitable occasions, to hold counsel with my fellow-citizens upon public affairs. The most active part of my life has been devoted to the public service; when I entered it, my brow was ruddy with the glow of youth; when I left it, my head was becoming whitened with the advance of years. When I returned permanently to my home, at the expiration of nearly fifteen years of official labors, I had been bereaved of half the little household with which it had pleased Heaven to bless me; my domestic altar-lights had become dim, and my private interests crippled by long neglect. My profession, to which I returned, and my private affairs, have demanded my best energies, and my mind has sought that seclusion from exciting topics which my tastes approve. It has been only during some stirring campaign that I have engaged in public discussions; and some questions of exciting interest have arisen and been canvassed, upon which I have not spoken. I have learned to look upon political struggles with more of calm philosophy than partisan asperity. The only end and aim in political affairs, worthy of the pursuit of an honorable mind, is the establishment of sound principles, and organizations for the mere purpose of obtaining office and place are to the last degree mean

'HARDSHELL

and demoralizing. The masses of all parties are honest and sincere; the leaders of all are, in a greater or less degree, selfish and ambitious, and laboring for the attainment of personal ends. Professions of patriotism are cheap and plenty on every side, and the only safe rule for the people is, to judge each party by the fruits of its policy.

As a first step in the political campaign now opening, the national democrats of New York have placed in nomination for Governor, Greene C. Bronson, a gentleman who some time since had the honor of holding correspondence with the distinguished Secretary of the Treasury; a correspondence which my hearers probably remember, and which it is presumed the Honorable Secretary has not yet forgotten. If Judge Bronson shall be defeated, it will be a source of gratification to remember that the National Democracy had a candidate eminently and entirely worthy of their support; and if elected, the first State in the Union will be honored by a Governor who for learning, integrity, and statesmanship, has no superior in the Union; who has been presented for no personal purpose, but as the representative of great principles upon which the National Democratic organization reposes; principles declared and established by Jefferson, and practised and illustrated by Jackson. These principles constitute the platform of the Democratic organization; all can read and understand it, and will respect its manly frankness, if they do not approve its sentiments. Its cornerstone is the Constitution, and its superstructure justice, equality, and truth. These principles may be entombed for a season, but they are sacred in the estimation of the people, and will again come forth, like Lazarus from the grave, and be clothed with health and beauty. The great natural and hereditary antagonism of the Democratic principle is what is now known as the Whig organization. It has had numerous party designations; from the foundation of the government it has opposed every leading Democratic measure, and in the end been compelled to acknowledge the justice and wisdom of the Democratic policy; and among such measures have been the purchase of Louisiana, the war of 1812, the overthrow of the United States Bank and of a protective tariff, the independent treasury system, the annexation of Texas, and the acquisition of California; every one of which has been vehemently resisted by the party acting