reverence; what was local, or conventional, or traditional had come to be recognized as intrinsic truth; and around all the fabrics that civilization, and religion, and art, even with the sincerest aspirations for human well being, had erected, innumerable excrescences were of necessity entwined. In vain, could enlightened reason hope, amidst such things, to exercise untrammelled sway; if exercised, could less than centuries effectually change, in the scenes where they existed, and where so many interests were alive to protect and even to vindicate them, the habits, and prejudices, and belief, and power, and institutions which centuries had served to create and strengthen? For the New ⚫ World beyond the ocean was this destiny reserved; thither might be borne the treasures that reason, long searching in the mine of social being, had separated from its dross; and there the - spreading philanthropy, which eagerly aims at the widest diffusion of social welfare, might well hope to found, and build up from their foundations, institutions such as she could not elsewhere

rear.

And to whom was this glorious destiny assigned? The liberty of man, in the new world, was not to spring from the rude license of untamed barbarians; nor the restraint of government from the lessons of sweeping conquerors; nor the energy of industry, from the cravings of poverty and want; nor religion, from the fiery impulses of a persecuting spirit. No! liberty, and order, and industry, and religion, were to be planted by other hands and reared by other influences. Who brought them from the British islands? To Virginia-the associates of De la Ware, less distinguished by rank than virtue, of Southampton, the friend of Shakspeare, who, almost before a hut was thrown up to shelter them, hastened to write back to the friends they had left beyond the ocean, that they "doubted not God would raise their state, and build up his church in that excellent clime" to which they were come. To Maryland-the followers of the mild and liberal and enlightened Calvert, whose charge and solicitude to "protect them in their rights and liberties" was so early and constant, as to elicit from them the spontaneous "testimony of

their gratitude," and the voluntary gift, for the public uses of the colony, of the largest subsidy their means could furnish. To Massachusetts-the noble band whose " very genius always led them to oppose," as the arbitrary Strafford angrily exclaimed, the domination of power, whether in church or state. To Rhode Island-the companions of Roger Williams, who established, as the fundamental principle of the social compact, that the will of the majority was supreme in the government of civil things, and the conscience was to be ruled by God alone. To Pennsylvania

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the people whom, as Cromwell declared, neither gifts, honors, offices, nor places could win; the spirits who, far in advance of their times, already held, with the illustrious founder of their new community, that general education should be provided for; that poverty, not dishonest, should never be punished by imprisonment, nor offences against property, by death; and who, in the land where feudal inequality was recognized as an indispensable condition of society, if not an actual benefit and blessing, publicly proclaimed that it was contrary to the appointment of the Great Governor of the world," that "nineteen parts of the land should feed the appetites of the twentieth." To New-Jersey-the little band who had scarcely made their first settlement, when they published a solemn declaration, recognizing absolute freedom of religious opinion; the vote by ballot; universal suffrage; the unqualified duty of the representative to obey the instructions of the electors; the choice of justices by the people, and judges by the Assembly for limited terms; the trial by jury, to whom the judges were only to be assistants; no imprisonment for debt; the protection of the Indian; and the education of the orphan at the public expense.

And who were they, that, from elsewhere than the British isles, sought with eager sails, in the solitudes beyond the ocean, the promises that their hearts yearned for, but could not find in old, and enlightened, and self-satis ed Europe? Who were they, that, with wives and children, came hastening from the cliffs of Switzerland, the vine-clad hills of France, the teeming valleys of the Rhine, the level plains of Holland, and even the bleak

shores of the Baltic and the Northern Sea? Lowly, indeed, they might ofttimes have been in this world's eye, and poor in this world's goods; but they were men who, with few lights to illumine, and few guides to lead or strengthen them-beneath the frowning turrets of lordly castles, and circled by the meshes of feudal customs, and surrounded by the all-pervading influences of a faith cemented by time and power, had yet felt and nursed in their hearts, the greatest of truths and rights, alike civil and religious; coveting to attain, and to enjoy them, and willing to sacrifice for them, if need be, home, and home's associations, and life itself. Children, were they, of those who, "on the Alpine mountains cold, kept pure the truth of God," and amid their fastnesses preserved, from surrounding and universal monarchy, the form and substance of democracy-who, under the banners of Gustavus, broke through the ramparts of feudal despotism-who, in the bold teachings of Luther, Zuinglius, and Calvin, hailed the vindication of the rights of conscience-who, amid marshes and lowlands, successfully protected commercial freedom, and popular sovereignty, and religious liberty, against the banded power and chivalry of Spain, in her most powerful day-and whom the proudest of Bourbon kings could indeed drive from their homesteads and their workshops, but not from their devotion to liberty and their God. These were the men who were to found and form for themselves institutions of society and government, in a world where all the future was open to them, uncontrolled and untrammelled by a vestige of the past.

from oblivion, by grateful research, and are never blazoned on fame's escutcheon, were establishing as the very basis of their fellowship the principles and truths which intelligence, and reason, and wisdom, and Christian benevolence should alike have united to cherish and extend-how many spirits still foremost in the world's regard-"lights of the church and guardians of the laws”— were enlisted to suppress, to pervert, or to destroy them! Bacon, brightest of his age and country in acknowledged genius, was seeking to uphold, against the feelings and efforts of the times, tribunals of justice in form and practice the most odious, or aiming to check the struggling principles of representative government, by influences" secret, systematic and corrupt. Coke, chief minister and interpreter of the laws, was claiming for the monarch the right to dispense with them at his will. Laud, the head of a church founded in revolt against ecclesiastical intolerance, was engaged in ceaseless efforts to restore it in more than pristine vigour. Cromwell, raised to power and to lofty fame by vindicating a people's rights, was degrading his great trust into the stale offices of a military despot. Clarendon, who had started in the race of patriotism side by side with Hambden, was sacrificing the last remnants of his country's freedom and honor to the most worthless and profligate of her kings. In France, the faint but cheering lights of popular control in civil government and wise tolerance, in religion, were crushed as they broke forth, by the proud feet of Richelieu, of Mazarin, and of Louis; and democracy was driven even from the citadel which she appeared to have secured, when Barnvelt perished on the scaffold, and Grotius was a wandering exile, and all the virtues of Dewitt failed to rescue him from his bloody fate. It seemed as if, in the Old World, the dark spirit of bygone ages could not be exorcised-that if the germ of social freedom and human right was planted it could not grow; or, if it grew, old weeds must choke it or storms uproot it there; and that they only "had chosen the good part that could not be taken from them," who, full of devotion and of faith in their glorious mission, sought in the New World the only true spot whereon to build institutions which were to spring

That duty, not more for themselves, than the ages and people that were to follow them, these wandering and despised apostles of a truer social faith performed, with simple and fearless earnestness, in their wilderness beyond the ocean; while the power and genius of the civilized world, from which they came, were thinking as little of their doctrines and their actions, as the tenants of Roman palaces, and the teachers of Grecian schools, had thought, sixteen centuries before, of the divine lessons which Providence had selected the wandering fishermen and artizans of Palestine to proclaim. While men, whose names are still hardly rescued

from and to protect the real welfare and freedom of man.'

And how was that part performed? Did they follow in the footsteps of other times? Was their reason seduced by the precedents, or dazzled by the fame of past republics? Did they seek to found their governments on the crude dictation of some fanciful lawgiver-some Numa or Lycurgus? Did their freedom trace back its source to lawless bands, such as peopled Rome's seven hills, or issued from German forests, or wandered over Scandinavian seas? Did their social rights appeal, for their sanction, to the barbarous laws or usages, which they could search out amid the records of scarcely-lettered Saxon kings? Not 80. First in the history of mankind, they formed a government on actual and solemn compact, canvassed and acceded to by the governed; they established mutual freedom by mutual acknowledgment of individual equality; they recognized and secured the inherent rights of all by according to each the forbearance and protection of the rest. They met together, almost beneath the branches of the aboriginal forest, to discuss, man to man, and to decide in free debate, upon the government they would submit to, the freedom they would exercise, and the rights they would require to be conceded and secured. Divided into communities of sufficient extent for enlarged and vigorous municipal control, the continent of North America presented to the world, when the eighteenth century opened upon it, twelve organized governments, thus founded by compact among a population amounting to half a million of souls, planted there, almost entirely, within the century that had passed. There, an actual political equality was established, such as was before almost or quite unknown in the history of human civilization. There, in the free discussions that all men indulged, few were found so fanciful as to hold the ideas of monarchy, or nobility, or primogeniture, or tithes, or exclusive privilege based upon antiquated custom, to be necessary elements of society or government. There, the greatest happiness-not of the greatest, but of the whole number-was the object whose attainment had been honestly sought, in the anxious deliberations, not of the favored few, but of every one whose

welfare, property or life, was to be involved in the decision. The first great era of social and political improvement was accomplished. From the recesses of time the selected theatre was disclosed; the foundations of the work were successfully laid; its preservation and progress were left to depend on the energy and fidelity of those whom they were to benefit, and to whom they were intrusted.

And what was its progress? In the Old World, the eighteenth century exhibited the onward march of institutions there existing, as intelligence, and civilization, and wealth, and population were augmented. The same influence, through the same period, upon the institutions of the New World, was to test their success and to prove their benefit, by its effect on the people they controled, and in the judgment of enlightened reason and unbiased philanthropy.

Largely increased burdens of intolerable taxation, imposed by avowed despotism, or by oligarchies the most selfish, assuming the guise of popular representatives; increased degradation and impoverishment of the masses for the interest of the few; dogged adherence to antiquated usage, to religious intolerance, even to ferocious legisla tion; blind and infatuated contempt, by the rulers, for the people whom they plundered; regions, distant and at hand, with which no just cause of quarrel existed, acquired by fraud, or seized, divided, or despoiled by force; wars almost perpetual among states bordering on each other; and alliances, secured only by treaties, whose faith was kept no longer than interest or fear prevented its violation. Was not this the onward march ?-were not these the fruits of European institutions throughout the eighteenth century? Do not the annals of every powerful nation of Europe

of Britain, France, Spain, Prussia, Austria and Russia-prove that they were? Against this fatal operation of such institutions, was not all the increase of intelligence, of science, moral and political, of the useful and social arts, powerless to prevent such lamentable results? The eloquence of wise men could not arrest them, nor the efforts of the patriotic; and if checked for a season, it was only by violent and convulsive throes that oppression could not but at last produce.

Who "turns not with pleasure from

this barren waste"-barren of those fruits, that the progress of man's freedom, and the development of man's social welfare, should have so largely quickened into life-to watch the silent and contemned, but glorious march of institutions, of whose existence the mighty monarchs of these kingdoms scarcely knew, and of whose hastening ence and power their statesmen little dreamed? Had they gone backward in beneficent development? Had they gained nothing by time, and the advancing intelligence of the age? Few in numbers, when contrasted with the powers who claimed paramount sovereignty over them; hemmed in by bonds from which that sovereignty would not extricate them, and which their weakness did not yet enable them to break; controlled in their industry and their action, often in their liberty, by the selfishness of colonial subjection; troubled by the perpetual jobbings and schemes of adventurers, in search of office, from abroad, or the intrigues of selfishness or ambition at home; even sometimes themselves naturally doubtful of results, where trial was yet wanting to fortify reason; nay, not resisting nor able to resist, in all emergencies, for they were men, the undue action of prejudices and passions-the people of America were not without obstacles, chiefly extraneous indeed, but not entirely so, to obstruct or retard their great experiment. But they faltered not. Their noble scheme was faithfully carried out. As numbers increased and years rolled on, the impress of the Old World faded more and more away; and when three-fourths of a century had given permanence and strength to each community, and their half a million had swelled with miraculous increase to three millions of people, their social and political condition the honest work of their own unaided efforts, resulting not less from what they had rejected, than what they had adopted-was that of men who were free to exert their native energies, who had thrown off the trammels of blind custom or obedience, who had profited by the lights of reason and improvement, who had won for themselves as much of prosperity and success as could attend the toilsome labors they voluntarily essayed, and who were well

prepared for the great trial they could not but foresee, when their faith in the truth and benefit of all they had done, was to be tested by the perils through which they were to defend it. With them, successive years had contributed to equalize, more and more, the burdens, the rights, and the position of the citizen; to secure his practical control in the institutions that affected his industry and his welfare to cherish religion, to soften punishment, to check extravagance, and to cultivate peace. But something had they accomplished of which the influence on their own and on man's destiny was yet infinitely greater; in which hope, not too ardent, already foresees unnumbered blessings as time shall roll onward-the blessings to spring from a common and wide extended fellowship, such as the world has not known before; parent of common prosperity and of universal peace.

To form "one general government," by which "the circumstances of the whole might be better known, and the good of the whole better provided for, and the colonies learn to consider themselves not so many independent states, but as members of the same body;" and yet so guarded as "not to interfere with the constitution and government of the particular colonies, who were to be left to their own laws," was an object early started in more than one of them. But the people held back from the experiment. "They thought there was too much of prerogative in it." They feared the power of the mothercountry by means of it. They remembered her projects, more than once attempted, to concentrate their resources in aid of her military schemes, perhaps to accomplish some insidious system of general control. Such a union they did indeed feel to be accordant with their interests; that it would wisely develop, and extend to wider purposes and nobler ends, the institutions they were forming. But they knew, too, that the day for its accomplishment was not yet coine. They desired to wait until, in the fulness of time, those institutions, redeemed from all external domination, should protect and be protected by those, and none but those, who cherished the principles on which they rested, as the only true basis of just human government.

With what devoted courage, in an

ticipation of that era, they pledged, and freely offered, life, and fortune, and honour, to maintain in entire integrity, their existing institutions; by what sacrifices, and after what years of peril, chequered with wonderful and providential success, they succeeded, not in this only, but in making sure, alike in substance and in form, the independence of every State, their familiar annals proudly exhibit. They exhibit, too, the cheering circumstance, that it was their first act, as soon as this great end of these achievements was attained, to revise, by their own direct and careful agency, and in each community, the work inherited from their forefathers; and, as freemen, and on the basis of freedom and sovereignty, and inherent and original right, to re-establish, even more broadly than before, their principles of social and political government. This done, they were prepared, with one voice-with hearts swelling with more than love of country, with fraternal love-with a wise forecast, looking to the only mode by which those great purposes they had all, by similar paths, been so long seeking, could be maintained, when population should increase and empire extend-they were prepared, now that the time was come, to bind together the people and the States-not by treaties, which adjust the balance of rival interests, or the dangers of contiguous power, possessing no sanction but selfishness or fear, no arbiter but the sword; not by mere confederacies, the imperfect league of jealous states; but by a compact of social and political brotherhood, giving to the sovereignties and the people a common guaranty of protection, however widely time and social energy might extend them; a common nationality, increasing as they should spread; a common patriotism, augmenting the zeal of every good citizen for the welfare and integrity of the whole, by their beneficent influences on the part to which he might more especially belong.

Thus was accomplished, as the eighteenth century hastened to its close, the second of those great eras, by which, in the New World, the progress and destiny of the human race were to be distinguished. At the beginning, the people, few in numbers, had been scattered along its ocean shore.

They had planted themselves there, in confidence, indeed, of the present, but more so in the promises of the future; in reliance that what an anxious search for truth, and for common welfare, and for security to man's inherent rights seemed to lead them to, however opposed by asserted theories, or old custom, or distrust in all that was untried or new, ought to and must needs prevail. If the rest of the civilized world, then, deigned to think of them, it was as far off enthusiasts, pursuing transitory schemes, that time would soon obliterate; and never dreaming that they could be its rivals. At the end of the same century, their population had increased twelvefold, placing them the sixth among the nations of Christendom; their ploughs had furrowed fertile prairies a thousand miles from the Atlantic coast; nature had proffered to their industrious enterprize plenty more abundant than Amalthea poured from her fabled horn; no principles of genuine liberty, or of contracted obligation, or of regard to the common welfare, had been impaired in the easy days of their prosperity and peace; in war, its necessary burdens had been cheerfully borne by their citizens; when it ceased, their triumphant soldiers had laid aside their arms without an aspiration of selfish ambition; the union of their States had proved to be as successful in operation as providential in design; and they entered upon the third era of their great experiment, not only with institutions uninjured, but more perfect, and with the power to carry onward all the objects of their glorious mission.

Nor have they in this passing era been without their trials. Foreign nations from beyond the seas, the most haughty, powerful and assuming, at last jealous and awakened, have sought at one time by insidious appeals, to divide them, and control or guide their policy; at another to drive them, by that reasoning which despots love, from rights belonging on every just principle of social and international law to their citizens and their commerce; and again, in days scarcely passed, to thwart by secret and splenetic interference, and from motives of interested or gratuitous rivalry, the efforts of communities, free as themselves, to join in that sacred compact of fraternal union