OCCASIONAL

SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES.

THE UNION.

AUBURN, JULY 4, 1825.

To one who has not been a witness of the progress of the improvements in the condition of our country since the Revolution, they must seem like the work of enchantment. We are established here at a vast distance beyond where the most visionary enthusiast of that time had placed the confines of civilization for a century to come. Cities and villages have grown up and are flourishing in vigorous maturity where the Indian hunter forty years ago roamed in idle security in the native forest. Steamboats and ships are seen now bearing the commerce of a great inland country upon lakes which thirty years ago had never borne any vessel but the bark canoe. Canals are seen winding through the vales, and roads crossing the mountains in every direction, where civilized man at that time had never wandered.

The operations of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, are going successively forward, and, in the words of the venerable guest of the nation* at the table which your hospitality lately spread for him at this place (for each of his words is a legacy to this people), "more and more giving a splendid lie to the enemies of freedom and self-government."

* La Fayette.

VOL. III.-13

And while, on this occasion, we dwell upon the glorious events of our past history, and our present happy situation, we can not leave the theme without one glance into futurity, to inquire into the probable duration of these institutions.

Party-spirit, it was once said, would, before a half-century should have elapsed, have severed this Union. It has, indeed, raged with its utmost possible violence. At the reorganization of the government, two parties arose, differing widely upon cardinal principles, nearly equal in numbers, and each ranking among its members men of stupendous and energetic minds, and of tried bravery and patriotism. And, as if the confusion of the moral world were added to endanger the untried bark just committed to the waves, the French Revolution and a war with Great Britain mingled their excitements with the already exasperated feelings of the partisans. Through all this excitement and through all these dangers our country nevertheless kept on her career of glory. The virulence of the parties has ceased; the one has forgotten its triumph, and the other its fall; and good men of both parties are burning their animosities on the altar of the common good.

Men who are determined to see a separation of the Union have argued it from analogy to the ancient republics; but let it be remembered that the analogy is in name only-that the government in no other way resembles the stormy democracies of Greece, or that ill-balanced government, the republic of Rome.

It was early predicted that the government we have established was not calculated for so extensive a territory. Yet our limits have been extended till they now reach from the lakes to the gulf of Mexico, and from ocean to ocean; and there has in no case been a want of legislative care or executive protection in any part of the territory.

How often have these prophets of evil predicted-when some important question has been agitated in Congress, bearing unequally upon the northern and southern states-that a separation would take place between them! Yet the Missouri question is settled, and almost forgotten; the tariff bill has become a law; the sceptre has passed from the Ancient Dominion, and the union of these states is still unshaken. Believe me, fellow-citizens, those men's wishes for confusion far outrun their wisdom who believe or profess to believe that parties upon cardinal principles

will again arise. The time and the occasion for these parties have alike gone by, and the attempt to rouse the vindictive feelings of those which once existed, is as idle as the hope to "call a spirit from the vasty deep." New parties are yearly formed, and as often dissolved, because they arise upon questions of limited extent, or out of regard to men of differently-estimated merit. And such parties will succeed each other, "as in rolling seas wave succeeds wave;" but there will at times be a calm, and such light and transitory excitements will only serve to keep the political waters in healthful motion.

Those, too, misapprehend either the true interests of the people of these states, or their intelligence, who believe or profess to believe that a separation will ever take place between the north and south. The people of the north have been seldom suspected of a want of attachment to the Union, and those of the south have been much misrepresented by a few politicians of a stormy character, who have ever been unsupported by the people there. The north will not willingly give up the power they now have in the national councils, of gradually completing a work in which, whether united or separate, from proximity of territory, we shall ever be interested the emancipation of slaves. And the south will never, in a moment of resentment, expose themselves to a war with the north, while they have such a great domestic population of slaves, ready to embrace any opportunity to assert their freedom and inflict their revenge. And very much does that misguided man, the governor of Georgia, misapprehend the wishes of his constituents and southern neighbors, when he invites them to raise the standard of civil war for no other reason than because the general government is suspected of wishing to contribute to the melioration of slavery, and of being unwilling to give up the lives and lands of a few Indians to some brutal speculators, in violation of solemn treaties and of the laws of humanity.

If, indeed, these states were to be divided by a geographical line, that line would be drawn along the Allegany mountains, or the Mississippi river. For the north and the south will soon forget all animosities in the necessity of holding the balance of power against the young and growing west; and successive political controversies have proved that the sympathies of the west are not exclusively with the north or the south. A separation between the eastern and western states is the most distant of all

evils. The eastern states will not soon be willing to lose the advantage of western commerce, and expose their frontiers to so hardy and numerous an enemy as the militia of the west were proved in the late war with Great Britain; and still less will the western states be willing to give up the great revenue of eastern commerce, and, without a seaport, expose themselves in a contest with a nation whose naval power would ever be augmentable at pleasure.

But there is one ground of security which I have not mentioned. It is that the ashes of WASHINGTON rest in this land, and from the silence of his tomb there comes a voice which commands his children to be united and invincible.

In truth, fellow-citizens, time has but added firmness and stability to our institutions. It is the decay of our republican virtue alone which can shake them. Let us, then, remember that to us it is given to preserve the Union of these states-the ark of safety in which are deposited the hopes of the world. If we preserve it, it will bring down blessings upon us and our posterity. We shall inherit glory more imperishable than Grecian or Roman fame, and shall leave to the world a legacy more valuable than aught but the treasures of inspiration. Abandon it, and the desolation of tyranny will cover these lovely plains; the curses of posterity will fall upon us, and the last experiment thus ended: for man there will be no political redemption till the last trumpet shall sound, to call the nations to their dread account!