sions than nine by eleven-furnished with a cot-bed which gives audible complaint when approached too nearly, two or three crippled chairs, and a table that tips without the intervention of a medium; and here, in a few hours snatched from rest and relaxation, the Justices of the Supreme Court of this great State sit down to review, by the lights and shadows of a tallow candle, the decisions of subordinate tribunals—of the circuits and special terms-and to pass upon the gravest rights of life, liberty, and property of the citizen.

Such a system has destroyed the character of our Judiciary at home," and made us the reproach of neighboring States." To restore it, amongst other reforms, we must have a Supreme Court in banco, which can act as a unit, so organized in numbers, ability, compensation, and duration of official term, that it can hear, examine, and decide causes in a manner becoming the Supreme Court of a State, whose judges, in other times, were great lights along the judicial pathway of the civilized world.

Tremble not, my friends, at the wide field of effort which has been opened before you. Domains of more ample range and extended boundaries have been successfully cultivated and fertilized by those who have preceded. The work cannot be accomplished in a few months, nor in a few years, but must be a labor of life. Your legal education has not been completed-it is about to commence. You have reached the first great point in legal science, and one of the most difficult and perplexing, but not the last. You have learned how to learn, and your desire for knowledge will increase with its accumulation. At fifty you will read more than at twenty-five, for the instruction it conveys as well as the pleasure it confers, and will learn that the desire for knowledge, in the inquiring mind, is as deathless as the spirit of man.

In choosing the profession of the law, you go out into the world like the knights of chivalry, to espouse the cause of justice and innocence, and to stand between oppression and its victims. Armed with the panoply of learning and protected by the social virtues, though unknown in the lists, you may fearlessly enter and strike with the pointed end of your spear the shields of the Brian Du Bois Gilberts.

The march of time is onward, like the flow of an unremit

ting stream. One generation succeeds another, like waves which roll over the surface of the deep. Those who now fill the responsible trusts in the various departments of life will soon all be laid in the dust. Soon you must be called to plead at the bar, to declare decisions from the bench, and to stand as representatives in the legislative forum. Fear not, falter not; let your course be upward and onward, and length of days shall be in your right hand, and in your left riches and honor.

Expect not to commence in your professional career where eminent experience leaves off, but strive to emulate the noble example of him whose munificence endowed this fountain of legal light and learning, for the diffusion of a science at whose shrine he had worshipped with an Eastern devotion, and the elevation and refinement of a profession that he loved-the lamented Maynard. Contemplate his progress, from humble beginnings, through a course of toil, of severe application, of self-denial as a student, to the ripe and accomplished scholar, the respected and virtuous citizen, the profound lawyer, and the wise judge and statesman; when in the maturity of his strength and the zenith of his fame, too strong for earthly courts, he passed away to a tribunal,

"Where every right decree is ratified,

And every wrong reversed and set aside."

"Tread lightly upon his ashes, ye men of genius, for he was your kinsman." Cherish his memory with veneration, and cast chaplets upon his tomb.

The history of the bar is a history of illustrious examples, patriotic impulses, and noble deeds. Its members have been conspicuous among those who have at all times shed lustre upon our country's fame; they led our armies in the fearful days of revolutionary peril, and gave to the cause of liberty a declaration of the rights of man which will throw light along the shadowy path of tradition when records shall exist no longer, and every page of history shall have faded away.

The noble intellects of a country are the sheet-anchor of its hope; they protect its moral as the citizen soldiery do its material outposts. In the ebbs and flows of life's mighty ocean; in the chafing of its tides; in the rushing of its gulfstream; amidst the storms which agitate its bosom and heave it in maddening, whirling currents now riding mountain high,

now yawning in fearful chasms, now placid and serene-no impotent Xerxes with his paper constitutions can bind it in fetters, nor Canute with his penal statutes limit the swelling of its waves. The stream cannot be raised higher nor made more pure than the fountain, nor the constitution and laws of a State excel in strength or wisdom the great body of its people. Laws may punish vice, but it is not their office to force the growth of virtue. The security of a State rests in the sound morality and intelligence of those who compose it; and when these safeguards fail, the problem of self-government will be finally solved, for paper laws will prove a delusive mockery. No standing armies, no bristling bayonets, no naval armaments can quicken the pulsations of liberty or measure the heart-throbs of emancipated man. Religion, virtue, intelligence, point the pathway of duty and assure us of the rewards which await their votaries. During the last century, an eminent lawyer of the Old World, by the feeble and flickering light of liberty which forced its way through the cracks and crannies of a stultified system of monarchy, caught up the true inspiration, and by pregnant interrogatory and answer (which, though worn with time and service, are always new), well declared the true principles of a government of laws: "What constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
Not huge and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No! Men-high-minded Men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued,

In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold brakes or brambles rude:

Men, who their duties know,

But know their rights, and knowing dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain

These constitute a State:

And sovereign law, that State's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate,

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill."

REMARKS

AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF THE N. Y. STATE INE

BRIATE ASYLUM, AT BINGHAMTON, N. Y., September 24, 1858,

INTRODUCING TO THE AUDIENCE HON. EDWARD EVERETT.

[After the Masonic Ceremonies and Opening Remarks by the President of the Association, and Addresses by Dr. John W. Francis and Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows of New York, the President, Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, in continuance of the proceedings, said: "There is a resident of this village who has taken a great interest in this enterprise; who has held a high place in the government of this State, and a still higher place in the government of this Union, who, I am sure, will be listened to with great pleasure, not only by his own fellow-citizens of the town of Binghamton, but also by the men who have come from distant places-some from the very end of the State. I introduce to you my friend, the Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson."]

Mr. Dickinson said:

Mr. President, FELLOW-CITIZENS-Upon an introduction so kind and generous, it gives me great pleasure to speak, that I may welcome with my whole heart this vast audience, and the numerous distinguished gentlemen who, having contributed of their influence and substance for the inauguration of this institution, sacred to the cause of philanthropy, have come hither to participate in laying, with becoming ceremonies, its moral and material foundation. Time will not permit me to speak of the benefits and blessings which are destined to flow from the Inebriate Asylum for the frail, erring children of humanitynor to tell of the pure, gushing life-streams this great fountain of good is to send forth, to refresh and fertilize the bleak and barren waste of intemperance-nor to point to the inebriated maniac, who shall, by its Heaven-born influences, be clothed again in his right mind-nor of the prodigal son, who, covered

with vice and rags, shall, through its ministrations, arise and go to his father.

If the great army of intemperance-those who are dying under the influence of this remorseless destroyer-those who are becoming lawless outcasts-those who commit, or associate with crime, by reason of intoxicating draughts-should march together in solid column, the earth itself would heave, and throb, and tremble under their tread, as though moved by the convulsions of a volcano! To arrest the progress of this terrible element, Philanthropy, in her ceaseless effort for fallen man, erects this institution. How many fathers are looking on with a parent's painfully anxious solicitude! How many wives and mothers will reverently kneel and pray to the Father in Heaven that this effort may be blest! Oh! how many children will raise their little hands in prayer for its success, that the monster, intemperance, may never come to torment them before their time, and curse with blood and tears the lustre of their birth-star!

But I must pause, for I am forgetting that, among all the distinguished here, there is one pre-eminent upon this platform -one who came upon another errand, but has kindly consented to honor us by his presence-one who is known wherever the philanthropic heart has throbbed, wherever learning, eloquence, or statesmanship are known, or civilization has travelled; and I shall best serve you by closing my remarks, and introducing to you EDWARD Everett.