a like work. In founding a strong and efficient govern. ment, adequate to the raising up of a powerful and pros perous people, their first step was to reject the institutions in which other governments traced their strength and prosperity, or had, at least, regarded as the necessary conditions of stability and order. The world had settled down into the belief that a hereditary monarch was necessary to give strength to the executive power. The framers of our Constitution provided for an elective Chief Magistrate, chosen every four years. Every other country had been betrayed into the admission of a distinction of ranks in society, under the absurd impression that privileged orders are necessary to the permanence of the social system. The framers of our Constitution established everything on the purely natural basis of a uniform equality of the elective franchise, to be exercised by all the citizens at fixed and short intervals. In other countries it had been thought necessary to constitute some one political centre, toward which all political power should tend, and at which, in the last resort, it should be exercised. The framers of the Constitution devised a scheme of confederate and representative sovereign republics, united in a happy distribution of powers, which, reserving to the separate States all the political functions essential to local administrations and private justice, bestowed upon the general government those, and those only, required for the service of the whole.

Thus was completed the great revolutionary movement; thus was perfected that mature organization of a free system, destined, as we trust, to stand forever, as the exemplar of popular government. Thus was discharged the duty of our fathers to themselves, to the country, and to the world.

The power of the example thus set up, in the eyes of the nations, was instantly and widely felt. It was immediately made visible to sagacious observers that a constitutional age had begun. It was in the nature of things, that, where the former evil existed in its most inveterate form, the reaction should also be the most violent. Hence, the dreadful excesses that marked the progress of the French Revolution, and, for a while, almost made the name of liberty odious. But it is not less in the nature of things, that, when the most indisputable and enviable political blessings stand illustrated before the world-not merely in speculation and in theory, but in living practice and bright example the nations of the earth, in proportion as they have eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hands to grasp, should insist on imitating the example. France clung to the hope of constitutional liberty through thirty years of appalling tribulation, and now enjoys the freest Constitution in Europe. Spain, Portugal, the two Italian kingdoms, and several of the German States, have entered on the same path. Their progress has been and must be various, modified by circumstances, by the interests and passions of governments and men, and, in some cases, seemingly arrested. But their march is as sure as fate. If we believe at all in the political revival of Europe, there can be no really retrograde movement in this cause; and that which seems so in the revolutions of government, is, like that of the heavenly bodies, a part of their eternal orbit.

There can be no retreat, for the great exemplar must stand, to convince the hesitating nations, under every reverse, that the reform they strive at is real, is practicable, is within their reach. Efforts at reform, by the power of action and reaction, may fluctuate; but there is an element

of popular strength abroad in the world, stronger than forms and institutions, and daily growing in power. A public opinion of a new kind has arisen among men-the opinion of the civilized world. Springing into existence on the shores of our own continent, it has grown with our growth and strengthened with our strength, till now, this moral giant, like that of the ancient poet, marches along the earth and across the ocean, but his front is among the stars. The course of the day does not weary, nor the darkness of the night arrest him. He grasps the pillars of the temple where Oppression sits enthroned, not groping and benighted, like the strong man of old, to be crushed, himself, beneath the fall, but trampling, in his strength, on the massy ruins.

Under the influence, I might almost say the unaided influence, of public opinion, formed and nourished by our example, three wonderful revolutions have broken out in a generation. That of France, not yet consummated, has left that country (which it found in a condition scarcely better than Turkey) in the possession of the blessings of a representative constitutional government. Another revolu tion has emancipated the American possessions of Spain, by an almost unassisted action of moral causes. Nothing but the strong sense of the age, that a government like that of Ferdinand ought not to subsist over regions like those which stretch to the south of us on the continent, could have sufficed to bring about their emancipation, against all the obstacles which the state of society among them opposes at present to regulated liberty and safe independence. When an eminent British statesman (Mr. Canning) said of the emancipation of these States, that "he had called into existence a new world in the West," he spoke as wisely as the artist who, having tipped the forks of a con

ductor with silver, should boast that he had created the lightning, which it calls down from the clouds. But the greatest triumph of public opinion is the revolution of Greece. The spontaneous sense of the friends of liberty, at home and abroad-without armies, without navies, without concert, and acting only through the simple channels of ordinary communication, principally the press-has rallied the governments of Europe to this ancient and favored soil of freedom. Pledged to remain at peace, they have been driven by the force of public sentiment into the war. Leagued against the cause of revolution, as such, they have been compelled to send their armies and navies to fight the battles of revolt. Dignifying the barbarous oppressor of Christian Greece with the title of "ancient and faithful ally," they have been constrained, by the outraged feelings of the civilized world, to burn up, in time of peace, the navy of their ally, with all his antiquity and all his fidelity; and to cast the broad shield of the Holy Alliance over a young and turbulent republic.

This bright prospect may be clouded in; the powers of Europe, which have reluctantly taken, may speedily abandon the field. Some inglorious composition may yet save the Ottoman Empire from dissolution, at the sacrifice of the liberty of Greece, and the power of Europe. But such are not the indications of things. The prospect is fair that the political regeneration, which commenced in the West, is now going backward to resuscitate the once happy and long-deserted regions of the older world. The hope is not now chimerical, that those lovely islands, the flower of the Levant-the shores of that renowned sea, around which all the associations of antiquity are concentrated-are again to be brought back to the sway of civilization and Chris

tianity. Happily, the interest of the great powers of Europe seems to beckon them onward in the path of humanity. The half-deserted coasts of Syria and Egypt, the fertile but almost desolated archipelago, the empty shores of Africa, the granary of ancient Rome, seem to offer themselves as a ready refuge for the crowded, starving, discontented millions of Western Europe. No natural nor political obstacle opposes itself to their occupation. France has long cast a wishful eye on Egypt. Napoleon derived the idea of his expedition, which was set down to the unchastened ambition of a revolutionary soldier, from a memoir found in the cabinet of Louis XIV. England has already laid her hand—an arbitrary, but a civilized and a Christian hand— on Malta; and the Ionian Isles, and Cyprus, Rhodes, and Claudia must soon follow. It is not beyond the reach of hope that a representative republic may be established in Central Greece and the adjacent islands. In this way, and with the example of what has been done, it is not too much to anticipate that many generations will not pass, before the same benignant influence will revisit the awakened East, and thus fulfil, in the happiest sense, the vision of Columbus, by restoring a civilized population to the primitive seats of our holy faith.

Fellow citizens, the eventful pages in the volume of human fortune are opening upon us with sublime rapidity of succession. It is two hundred years this summer since a few of that party who, in 1628, commenced in Salem the first settlement of Massachusetts, were sent by Governor Endicott to explore the spot where we stand. They found that one pioneer of the name of Walford had gone before them, and had planted himself among the numerous and warlike savages in this quarter. From them, the native