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+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Orations, by John Quincy Adams*
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+Orations
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+by John Quincy Adams*
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+April, 1997  [Etext #896]
+
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+Prepared by:
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+
+
+John Quincy Adams, "Orations"
+
+
+
+"The Jubilee of the Constitution, delivered at New York, 
+April 30, 1839, before the New York Historical Society."
+
+
+
+Fellow-Citizens and Brethren, Associates of the New York
+Historical Society:
+
+Would it be an unlicensed trespass of the imagination to
+conceive that on the night preceding the day of which you now
+commemorate the fiftieth anniversary--on the night preceding
+that thirtieth of April, 1789, when from the balcony of your city
+hall the chancellor of the State of New York administered to
+George Washington the solemn oath faithfully to execute the
+office of President of the United States, and to the best of his
+ability to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the
+United States--that in the visions of the night the guardian
+angel of the Father of our Country had appeared before him, in
+the venerated form of his mother, and, to cheer and encourage
+him in the performance of the momentous and solemn duties
+that he was about to assume, had delivered to him a suit of
+celestial armor--a helmet, consisting of the principles of piety,
+of justice, of honor, of benevolence, with which from his
+earliest infancy he had hitherto walked through life, in the
+presence of all his brethren; a spear, studded with the self-
+evident truths of the Declaration of Independence; a sword, the
+same with which he had led the armies of his country through
+the war of freedom to the summit of the triumphal arch of
+independence; a corselet and cuishes of long experience and
+habitual intercourse in peace and war with the world of
+mankind, his contemporaries of the human race, in all their
+stages of civilization; and, last of all, the Constitution of the
+United States, a shield, embossed by heavenly hands with the
+future history of his country?
+
+Yes, gentlemen, on that shield the Constitution of the United
+States was sculptured (by forms unseen, and in characters then
+invisible to mortal eye), the predestined and prophetic history
+of the one confederated people of the North American Union.
+
+They had been the settlers of thirteen separate and distinct
+English colonies, along the margin of the shore of the North
+American Continent; contiguously situated, but chartered by
+adventurers of characters variously diversified, including
+sectarians, religious and political, of all the classes which for
+the two preceding centuries had agitated and divided the people
+of the British islands--and with them were intermingled the
+descendants of Hollanders, Swedes, Germans, and French
+fugitives from the persecution of the revoker of the Edict of
+Nantes.
+
+In the bosoms of this people, thus heterogeneously composed,
+there was burning, kindled at different furnaces, but all
+furnaces of affliction, one clear, steady flame of liberty.  Bold
+and daring enterprise, stubborn endurance of privation,
+unflinching intrepidity in facing danger, and inflexible
+adherence to conscientious principle, had steeled to energetic
+and unyielding hardihood the characters of the primitive
+settlers of all these colonies.  Since that time two or three
+generations of men had passed away, but they had increased
+and multiplied with unexampled rapidity; and the land itself
+had been the recent theatre of a ferocious and bloody seven
+years' war between the two most powerful and most civilized
+nations of Europe contending for the possession of this
+continent.
+
+Of that strife the victorious combatant had been Britain.  She
+had conquered the provinces of France.  She had expelled her
+rival totally from the continent, over which, bounding herself
+by the Mississippi, she was thenceforth to hold divided empire
+only with Spain.  She had acquired undisputed control over the
+Indian tribes still tenanting the forests unexplored by the
+European man.  She had established an uncontested monopoly
+of the commerce of all her colonies.  But forgetting all the
+warnings of preceding ages--forgetting the lessons written in
+the blood of her own children, through centuries of departed
+time--she undertook to tax the people of the colonies without
+their consent.
+
+Resistance, instantaneous, unconcerted, sympathetic,
+inflexible resistance, like an electric shock, startled and roused
+the people of all the English colonies on this continent.
+
+This was the first signal of the North American Union.  The
+struggle was for chartered rights--for English liberties--for the
+cause of Algernon Sidney and John Hampden--for trial by jury-
+-the Habeas Corpus and Magna Charta.
+
+But the English lawyers had decided that Parliament was
+omnipotent--and Parliament, in its omnipotence, instead of trial
+by jury and the Habeas Corpus, enacted admiralty courts in
+England to try Americans for offences charged against them as
+committed in America; instead of the privileges of Magna
+Charta, nullified the charter itself of Massachusetts Bay; shut
+up the port of Boston; sent armies and navies to keep the peace
+and teach the colonies that John Hampden was a rebel and
+Algernon Sidney a traitor.
+
+English liberties had failed them.  From the omnipotence of
+Parliament the colonists appealed to the rights of man and the
+omnipotence of the God of battles.  Union! Union! was the
+instinctive and simultaneous cry throughout the land.  Their
+Congress, assembled at Philadelphia, once--twice--had
+petitioned the king; had remonstrated to Parliament; had
+addressed the people of Britain, for the rights of Englishmen--
+in vain.  Fleets and armies, the blood of Lexington, and the
+fires of Charlestown and Falmouth, had been the answer to
+petition, remonstrance, and address....
+
+The dissolution of allegiance to the British crown, the
+severance of the colonies from the British Empire, and their
+actual existence as independent States, were definitively
+established in fact, by war and peace.  The independence of
+each separate State had never been declared of right.  It never
+existed in fact.  Upon the principles of the Declaration of
+Independence, the dissolution of the ties of allegiance, the
+assumption of sovereign power, and the institution of civil
+government, are all acts of transcendent authority, which the
+people alone are competent to perform; and, accordingly, it is in
+the name and by the authority of the people, that two of these
+acts--the dissolution of allegiance, with the severance from the
+British Empire, and the declaration of the United Colonies, as
+free and independent States--were performed by that
+instrument.
+
+But there still remained the last and crowning act, which the
+people of the Union alone were competent to perform--the
+institution of civil government, for that compound nation, the
+United States of America.
+
+At this day it cannot but strike us as extraordinary, that it
+does not appear to have occurred to any one member of that
+assembly, which had laid down in terms so clear, so explicit, so
+unequivocal, the foundation of all just government, in the
+imprescriptible rights of man, and the transcendent sovereignty
+of the people, and who in those principles had set forth their
+only personal vindication from the charges of rebellion against
+their king, and of treason to their country, that their last
+crowning act was still to be performed upon the same
+principles.  That is, the institution, by the people of the United
+States, of a civil government, to guard and protect and defend
+them all.  On the contrary, that same assembly which issued
+the Declaration of Independence, instead of continuing to act in
+the name and by the authority of the good people of the United
+States, had, immediately after the appointment of the
+committee to prepare the Declaration, appointed another
+committee, of one member from each colony, to prepare and
+digest the form of confederation to be entered into between the
+colonies.
+
+That committee reported on the twelfth of July, eight days
+after the Declaration of Independence had been issued, a draft
+of articles of confederation between the colonies.  This draft
+was prepared by John Dickinson, then a delegate from
+Pennsylvania, who voted against the Declaration of
+Independence, and never signed it, having been superseded by
+a new election of delegates from that State, eight days after his
+draft was reported.
+
+There was thus no congeniality of principle between the
+Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. 
+The foundation of the former was a superintending Providence-
+-the rights of man, and the constituent revolutionary power of
+the people.  That of the latter was the sovereignty of organized
+power, and the independence of the separate or dis-united
+States.  The fabric of the Declaration and that of the
+Confederation were each consistent with its own foundation,
+but they could not form one consistent, symmetrical edifice. 
+They were the productions of different minds and of adverse
+passions; one, ascending for the foundation of human
+government to the laws of nature and of God, written upon the
+heart of man; the other, resting upon the basis of human
+institutions, and prescriptive law, and colonial charter.  The
+cornerstone of the one was right, that of the other was power....
+
+Where, then, did each State get the sovereignty, freedom, and
+independence, which the Articles of Confederation declare it
+retains?--not from the whole people of the whole Union--not
+from the Declaration of Independence--not from the people of
+the State itself.  It was assumed by agreement between the
+Legislatures of the several States, and their delegates in
+Congress, without authority from or consultation of the people
+at all.
+
+In the Declaration of Independence, the enacting and
+constituent party dispensing and delegating sovereign power is
+the whole people of the United Colonies.  The recipient party,
+invested with power, is the United Colonies, declared United
+States.
+
+In the Articles of Confederation, this order of agency is
+inverted.  Each State is the constituent and enacting party, and
+the United States in Congress assembled the recipient of
+delegated power--and that power delegated with such a
+penurious and carking hand that it had more the aspect of a
+revocation of the Declaration of Independence than an
+instrument to carry it into effect.
+
+None of these indispensably necessary powers were ever
+conferred by the State Legislatures upon the Congress of the
+federation; and well was it that they never were. The system
+itself was radically defective.  Its incurable disease was an
+apostasy from the principles of the Declaration of
+Independence.  A substitution of separate State sovereignties,
+in the place of the constituent sovereignty of the people, was
+the basis of the Confederate Union.
+
+In the Congress of the Confederation, the master minds of
+James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were constantly
+engaged through the closing years of the Revolutionary War
+and those of peace which immediately succeeded.  That of John
+Jay was associated with them shortly after the peace, in the
+capacity of Secretary to the Congress for Foreign Affairs.  The
+incompetency of the Articles of Confederation for the
+management of the affairs of the Union at home and abroad
+was demonstrated to them by the painful and mortifying
+experience of every day.  Washington, though in retirement,
+was brooding over the cruel injustice suffered by his associates
+in arms, the warriors of the Revolution; over the prostration of
+the public credit and the faith of the nation, in the neglect to
+provide for the payments even of the interest upon the public
+debt; over the disappointed hopes of the friends of freedom; in
+the language of the address from Congress to the States of the
+eighteenth of April, 1788--"the pride and boast of America, that
+the rights for which she contended were the rights of human
+nature."
+
+At his residence at Mount Vernon, in March, 1785, the first
+idea was started of a revisal of the Articles of Confederation, by
+the organization, of means differing from that of a compact
+between the State Legislatures and their own delegates in
+Congress.  A convention of delegates from the State
+Legislatures, independent of the Congress itself, was the
+expedient which presented itself for effecting the purpose, and
+an augmentation of the powers of Congress for the regulation
+of commerce, as the object for which this assembly was to be
+convened.  In January, 1785, the proposal was made and
+adopted in the Legislature of Virginia, and communicated to
+the other State Legislatures.
+
+The Convention was held at Annapolis, in September of that
+year. It was attended by delegates from only five of the central
+States, who, on comparing their restricted powers with the
+glaring and universally acknowledged defects of the
+Confederation, reported only a recommendation for the
+assemblage of another convention of delegates to meet at
+Philadelphia, in May, 1787, from all the States, and with
+enlarged powers.
+
+The Constitution of the United States was the work of this
+Convention.  But in its construction the Convention
+immediately perceived that they must retrace their steps, and
+fall back from a league of friendship between sovereign States
+to the constituent sovereignty of the people; from power to
+right--from the irresponsible despotism of State sovereignty to
+the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence.  In
+that instrument, the right to institute and to alter governments
+among men was ascribed exclusively to the people--the ends of
+government were declared to be to secure the natural rights of
+man; and that when the government degenerates from the
+promotion to the destruction of that end, the right and the duty
+accrues to the people to dissolve this degenerate government
+and to institute another.  The signers of the Declaration further
+averred, that the one people of the United Colonies were then
+precisely in that situation--with a government degenerated into
+tyranny, and called upon by the laws of nature and of nature's
+God to dissolve that government and to institute another.  Then,
+in the name and by the authority of the good people of the
+colonies, they pronounced the dissolution of their allegiance to
+the king, and their eternal separation from the nation of Great
+Britain--and declared the United Colonies independent States. 
+And here as the representatives of the one people they had
+stopped. They did not require the confirmation of this act, for
+the power to make the declaration had already been conferred
+upon them by the people, delegating the power, indeed,
+separately in the separate colonies, not by colonial authority,
+but by the spontaneous revolutionary movement of the people
+in them all.
+
+From the day of that Declaration, the constituent power of the
+people had never been called into action.  A confederacy had
+been substituted in the place of a government, and State
+sovereignty had usurped the constituent sovereignty of the
+people.
+
+The Convention assembled at Philadelphia had themselves
+no direct authority from the people.  Their authority was all
+derived from the State Legislatures.  But they had the Articles
+of Confederation before them, and they saw and felt the
+wretched condition into which they had brought the whole
+people, and that the Union itself was in the agonies of death. 
+They soon perceived that the indispensably needed powers
+were such as no State government, no combination of them,
+was by the principles of the Declaration of Independence
+competent to bestow.  They could emanate only from the
+people.  A highly respectable portion of the assembly, still
+clinging to the confederacy of States, proposed, as a substitute
+for the Constitution, a mere revival of the Articles of
+Confederation, with a grant of additional powers to the
+Congress.  Their plan was respectfully and thoroughly
+discussed, but the want of a government and of the sanction of
+the people to the delegation of powers happily prevailed.  A
+constitution for the people, and the distribution of legislative,
+executive, and judicial powers was prepared.  It announced
+itself as the work of the people themselves; and as this was
+unquestionably a power assumed by the Convention, not
+delegated to them by the people, they religiously confined it to
+a simple power to propose, and carefully provided that it should
+be no more than a proposal until sanctioned by the
+Confederation Congress, by the State Legislatures, and by the
+people of the several States, in conventions specially
+assembled, by authority of their Legislatures, for the single
+purpose of examining and passing upon it.
+
+And thus was consummated the work commenced by the
+Declaration of Independence--a work in which the people of the
+North American Union, acting under the deepest sense of
+responsibility to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, had
+achieved the most transcendent act of power that social man in
+his mortal condition can perform--even that of dissolving the
+ties of allegiance by which he is bound to his country; of
+renouncing that country itself; of demolishing its government;
+of instituting another government; and of making for himself
+another country in its stead.
+
+And on that day, of which you now commemorate the fiftieth
+anniversary--on that thirtieth day of April, 1789--was this
+mighty revolution, not only in the affairs of our own country,
+but in the principles of government over civilized man,
+accomplished.
+
+The Revolution itself was a work of thirteen years--and had
+never been completed until that day.  The Declaration of
+Independence and the Constitution of the United States are
+parts of one consistent whole, founded upon one and the same
+theory of government, then new in practice, though not as a
+theory, for it had been working itself into the mind of man for
+many ages, and had been especially expounded in the writings
+of Locke, though it had never before been adopted by a great
+nation in practice.
+
+There are yet, even at this day, many speculative objections to
+this theory.  Even in our own country there are still
+philosophers who deny the principles asserted in the
+Declaration, as self-evident truths--who deny the natural
+equality and inalienable rights of man--who deny that the
+people are the only legitimate source of power--who deny that
+all just powers of government are derived from the consent of
+the governed.  Neither your time, nor perhaps the cheerful
+nature of this occasion, permit me here to enter upon the
+examination of this anti-revolutionary theory, which arrays
+State sovereignty against the constituent sovereignty of the
+people, and distorts the Constitution of the United States into a
+league of friendship between confederate corporations.  I speak
+to matters of fact.  There is the Declaration of Independence,
+and there is the Constitution of the United States--let them
+speak for themselves.  The grossly immoral and dishonest
+doctrine of despotic State sovereignty, the exclusive judge of its
+own obligations, and responsible to no power on earth or in
+heaven, for the violation of them, is not there.  The Declaration
+says, it is not in me.  The Constitution says, it is not in me.
+
+
+
+"Oration at Plymouth, December 22, 1802, in Commemoration
+of the Landing of the Pilgrims."
+
+
+Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the
+human heart, and most highly honorable to the human
+character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of
+love for our posterity.  They form the connecting links between
+the selfish and the social passions.  By the fundamental
+principle of Christianity, the happiness of the individual is
+interwoven, by innumerable and imperceptible ties, with that of
+his contemporaries.  By the power of filial reverence and
+parental affection, individual existence is extended beyond the
+limits of individual life, and the happiness of every age is
+chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other.  
+Respect for his ancestors excites, in the breast of man, interest
+in their history, attachment to their characters, concern for
+their errors, involuntary pride in their virtues.  Love for his
+posterity spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him
+to virtue for their example, and fills him with the tenderest
+solicitude for their welfare.  Man, therefore, was not made for
+himself alone.  No, he was made for his country, by the
+obligations of the social compact; he was made for his species,
+by the Christian duties of universal charity; he was made for all
+ages past, by the sentiment of reverence for his forefathers; and
+he was made for all future times, by the impulse of affection for
+his progeny.  Under the influence of these principles,
+
+  "Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign."
+
+They redeem his nature from the subjection of time and
+space; he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze"; he
+is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all
+extent; bounded, during his residence upon earth, only to the
+boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in
+brighter regions, when the fabric of nature itself shall dissolve
+and perish.
+
+The voice of history has not, in all its compass, a note but
+answers in unison with these sentiments.  The barbarian
+chieftain, who defended his country against the Roman
+invasion, driven to the remotest extremity of Britain, and
+stimulating his followers to battle by all that has power of
+persuasion upon the human heart, concluded his persuasion by
+an appeal to these irresistible feelings: "Think of your
+forefathers and of your posterity."  The Romans themselves, at
+the pinnacle of civilization, were actuated by the same
+impressions, and celebrated, in anniversary festivals, every
+great event which had signalized the annals of their forefathers. 
+To multiply instances where it were impossible to adduce an
+exception would be to waste your time and abuse your
+patience; but in the sacred volume, which contains the
+substances of our firmest faith and of our most precious hopes,
+these passions not only maintain their highest efficacy, but are
+sanctioned by the express injunctions of the Divine Legislator
+to his chosen people.
+
+The revolutions of time furnish no previous example of a
+nation shooting up to maturity and expanding into greatness
+with the rapidity which has characterized the growth of the
+American people.  In the luxuriance of youth, and in the vigor
+of manhood, it is pleasing and instructive to look backward
+upon the helpless days of infancy; but in the continual and
+essential changes of a growing subject, the transactions of that
+early period would be soon obliterated from the memory but
+for some periodical call of attention to aid the silent records of
+the historian.  Such celebrations arouse and gratify the kindliest
+emotions of the bosom.  They are faithful pledges of the
+respect we bear to the memory of our ancestors and of the
+tenderness with which we cherish the rising generation.  They
+introduce the sages and heroes of ages past to the notice and
+emulation of succeeding times; they are at once testimonials of
+our gratitude, and schools of virtue to our children.
+
+These sentiments are wise; they are honorable; they are
+virtuous; their cultivation is not merely innocent pleasure, it is
+incumbent duty.  Obedient to their dictates, you, my fellow-
+citizens, have instituted and paid frequent observance to this
+annual solemnity.  and what event of weightier intrinsic
+importance, or of more extensive consequences, was ever
+selected for this honorary distinction?
+
+In reverting to the period of our origin, other nations have
+generally been compelled to plunge into the chaos of
+impenetrable antiquity, or to trace a lawless ancestry into the
+caverns of ravishers and robbers.  It is your peculiar privilege
+to commemorate, in this birthday of your nation, an event
+ascertained in its minutest details; an event of which the
+principal actors are known to you familiarly, as if belonging to
+your own age; an event of a magnitude before which
+imagination shrinks at the imperfection of her powers.  It is
+your further happiness to behold, in those eminent characters,
+who were most conspicuous in accomplishing the settlement of
+your country, men upon whose virtue you can dwell with
+honest exultation.  The founders of your race are not handed
+down to you, like the fathers of the Roman people, as the
+sucklings of a wolf. You are not descended from a nauseous
+compound of fanaticism and sensuality, whose only argument
+was the sword, and whose only paradise was a brothel.  No
+Gothic scourge of God, no Vandal pest of nations, no fabled
+fugitive from the flames of Troy, no bastard Norman tyrant,
+appears among the list of worthies who first landed on the
+rock, which your veneration has preserved as a lasting
+monument of their achievement.  The great actors of the day
+we now solemnize were illustrious by their intrepid valor no
+less than by their Christian graces, but the clarion of conquest
+has not blazoned forth their names to all the winds of heaven. 
+Their glory has not been wafted over oceans of blood to the
+remotest regions of the earth.  They have not erected to
+themselves colossal statues upon pedestals of human bones, to
+provoke and insult the tardy hand of heavenly retribution.  But
+theirs was "the better fortitude of patience and heroic
+martyrdom."  Theirs was the gentle temper of Christian
+kindness; the rigorous observance of reciprocal justice; the
+unconquerable soul of conscious integrity.  Worldly fame has
+been parsimonious of her favor to the memory of those
+generous companions. Their numbers were small; their stations
+in life obscure; the object of their enterprise unostentatious; the
+theatre of their exploits remote; how could they possibly be
+favorites of worldly Fame--that common crier, whose existence
+is only known by the assemblage of multitudes; that pander of
+wealth and greatness, so eager to haunt the palaces of fortune,
+and so fastidious to the houseless dignity of virtue; that
+parasite of pride, ever scornful to meekness, and ever
+obsequious to insolent power; that heedless trumpeter, whose
+ears are deaf to modest merit, and whose eyes are blind to
+bloodless, distant excellence?
+
+When the persecuted companions of Robinson, exiles from
+their native land, anxiously sued for the privilege of removing a
+thousand leagues more distant to an untried soil, a rigorous
+climate, and a savage wilderness, for the sake of reconciling
+their sense of religious duty with their affections for their
+country, few, perhaps none of them, formed a conception of
+what would be, within two centuries, the result of their
+undertaking.  When the jealous and niggardly policy of their
+British sovereign denied them even that humblest of requests,
+and instead of liberty would barely consent to promise
+connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they were
+laying the foundations of a power, and that he was sowing the
+seeds of a spirit, which, in less than two hundred years, would
+stagger the throne of his descendants, and shake his united
+kingdoms to the centre.  So far is it from the ordinary habits of
+mankind to calculate the importance of events in their
+elementary principles, that had the first colonists of our country
+ever intimated as a part of their designs the project of founding
+a great and mighty nation, the finger of scorn would have
+pointed them to the cells of Bedlam as an abode more suitable
+for hatching vain empires than the solitude of a transatlantic
+desert.
+
+These consequences, then so little foreseen, have unfolded
+themselves, in all their grandeur, to the eyes of the present age. 
+It is a common amusement of speculative minds to contrast the
+magnitude of the most important events with the minuteness of
+their primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full of
+examples for such contemplations.  It is, however, a more
+profitable employment to trace the constituent principles of
+future greatness in their kernel; to detect in the acorn at our
+feet the germ of that majestic oak, whose roots shoot down to
+the centre, and whose branches aspire to the skies. Let it be,
+then, our present occupation to inquire and endeavor to
+ascertain the causes first put in operation at the period of our
+commemoration, and already productive of such magnificent
+effects; to examine with reiterated care and minute attention
+the characters of those men who gave the first impulse to a
+new series of events in the history of the world; to applaud and
+emulate those qualities of their minds which we shall find
+deserving of our admiration; to recognize with candor those
+features which forbid approbation or even require censure, and,
+finally, to lay alike their frailties and their perfections to our
+own hearts, either as warning or as example.
+
+ 
+ Of the various European settlements upon this continent,
+which have finally merged in one independent nation, the first
+establishments were made at various times, by several nations,
+and under the influence of different motives.  In many
+instances, the conviction of religious obligation formed one and
+a powerful inducement of the adventures; but in none,
+excepting the settlement at Plymouth, did they constitute the
+sole and exclusive actuating cause.  Worldly interest and
+commercial speculation entered largely into the views of other
+settlers, but the commands of conscience were the only
+stimulus to the emigrants from Leyden.  Previous to their
+expedition hither, they had endured a long banishment from
+their native country.  Under every species of discouragement,
+they undertook the voyage; they performed it in spite of
+numerous and almost insuperable obstacles; they arrived upon
+a wilderness bound with frost and hoary with snow, without
+the boundaries of their charter, outcasts from all human
+society, and coasted five weeks together, in the dead of winter,
+on this tempestuous shore, exposed at once to the fury of the
+elements, to the arrows of the native savage, and to the
+impending horrors of famine.
+
+Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before
+which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. 
+These qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest
+perfection, as attendants in the retinue of strong passions. 
+From the first discovery of the Western Hemisphere by
+Columbus until the settlement of Virginia which immediately
+preceded that of Plymouth, the various adventurers from the
+ancient world had exhibited upon innumerable occasions that
+ardor of enterprise and that stubbornness of pursuit which set
+all danger at defiance, and chained the violence of nature at
+their feet.  But they were all instigated by personal interests. 
+Avarice and ambition had tuned their souls to that pitch of
+exaltation.  Selfish passions were the parents of their heroism. 
+It was reserved for the first settlers of new England to perform
+achievements equally arduous, to trample down obstructions
+equally formidable, to dispel dangers equally terrific, under the
+single inspiration of conscience. To them even liberty herself
+was but a subordinate and secondary consideration.  They
+claimed exemption from the mandates of human authority, as
+militating with their subjection to a superior power.  Before the
+voice of Heaven they silenced even the calls of their country.
+
+Yet, while so deeply impressed with the sense of religious
+obligation, they felt, in all its energy, the force of that tender tie
+which binds the heart of every virtuous man to his native land. 
+It was to renew that connection with their country which had
+been severed by their compulsory expatriation, that they
+resolved to face all the hazards of a perilous navigation and all
+the labors of a toilsome distant settlement.  Under the mild
+protection of the Batavian Government, they enjoyed already
+that freedom of religious worship, for which they had resigned
+so many comforts and enjoyments at home; but their hearts
+panted for a restoration to the bosom of their country.  Invited
+and urged by the open-hearted and truly benevolent people
+who had given them an asylum from the persecution of their
+own kindred to form their settlement within the territories then
+under their jurisdiction, the love of their country predominated
+over every influence save that of conscience alone, and they
+preferred the precarious chance of relaxation from the bigoted
+rigor of the English Government to the certain liberality and
+alluring offers of the Hollanders.  Observe, my countrymen, the
+generous patriotism, the cordial union of soul, the conscious
+yet unaffected vigor which beam in their application to the
+British monarch:
+
+"They were well weaned from the delicate milk of their
+mother country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land.
+They were knit together in a strict and sacred bond, to take
+care of the good of each other and of the whole. It was not
+with them as with other men, whom small things could
+discourage, or small discontents cause to wish themselves
+again at home."
+
+Children of these exalted Pilgrims!  Is there one among you
+ho can hear the simple and pathetic energy of these expressions
+without tenderness and admiration?  Venerated shades of our
+forefathers!  No, ye were, indeed, not ordinary men!  That
+country which had ejected you so cruelly from her bosom you
+still delighted to contemplate in the character of an affectionate
+and beloved mother.  The sacred bond which knit you together
+was indissoluble while you lived; and oh, may it be to your
+descendants the example and the pledge of harmony to the
+latest period of time!  The difficulties and dangers, which so
+often had defeated attempts of similar establishments, were
+unable to subdue souls tempered like yours.  You heard the
+rigid interdictions; you saw the menacing forms of toil and
+danger, forbidding your access to this land of promise; but you
+heard without dismay; you saw and disdained retreat.  Firm and
+undaunted in the confidence of that sacred bond; conscious of
+the purity, and convinced of the importance of your motives,
+you put your trust in the protecting shield of Providence, and
+smiled defiance at the combining terrors of human malice and
+of elemental strife.  These, in the accomplishment of your
+undertaking, you were summoned to encounter in their most
+hideous forms; these you met with that fortitude, and combated
+with that perseverance, which you had promised in their
+anticipation; these you completely vanquished in establishing
+the foundations of New England, and the day which we now
+commemorate is the perpetual memorial of your triumph.
+
+ It were an occupation peculiarly pleasing to cull from our
+early historians, and exhibit before you every detail of this
+transaction; to carry you in imagination on board their bark at
+the first moment of her arrival in the bay; to accompany
+Carver, Winslow, Bradford, and Standish, in all their
+excursions upon the desolate coast; to follow them into every
+rivulet and creek where they endeavored to find a firm footing,
+and to fix, with a pause of delight and exultation, the instant
+when the first of these heroic adventurers alighted on the spot
+where you, their descendants, now enjoy the glorious and
+happy reward of their labors.  But in this grateful task, your
+former orators, on this anniversary, have anticipated all that the
+most ardent industry could collect, and gratified all that the
+most inquisitive curiosity could desire.  To you, my friends,
+every occurrence of that momentous period is already familiar. 
+A transient allusion to a few characteristic instances, which
+mark the peculiar history of the Plymouth settlers, may
+properly supply the place of a narrative, which, to this
+auditory, must be superfluous.
+
+One of these remarkable incidents is the execution of that
+instrument of government by which they formed themselves
+into a body politic, the day after their arrival upon the coast,
+and previous to their first landing.  That is, perhaps, the only
+instance in human history of that positive, original social
+compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the
+only legitimate source of government.  Here was a unanimous
+and personal assent, by all the individuals of the community, to
+the association by which they became a nation.  It was the
+result of circumstances and discussions which had occurred
+during their passage from Europe, and is a full demonstration
+that the nature of civil government, abstracted from the
+political institutions of their native country, had been an object
+of their serious meditation.  The settlers of all the former
+European colonies had contented themselves with the powers
+conferred upon them by their respective charters, without
+looking beyond the seal of the royal parchment for the measure
+of their rights and the rule of their duties.  The founders of
+Plymouth had been impelled by the peculiarities of their
+situation to examine the subject with deeper and more
+comprehensive research.  After twelve years of banishment
+from the land of their first allegiance, during which they had
+been under an adoptive and temporary subjection to another
+sovereign, they must naturally have been led to reflect upon the
+relative rights and duties of allegiance and subjection.  They
+had resided in a city, the seat of a university, where the
+polemical and political controversies of the time were pursued
+with uncommon fervor.  In this period they had witnessed the
+deadly struggle between the two parties, into which the people
+of the United Provinces, after their separation from the crown
+of Spain, had divided themselves.  The contest embraced
+within its compass not only theological doctrines, but political
+principles, and Maurice and Barnevelt were the temporal
+leaders of the same rival factions, of which Episcopius and
+Polyander were the ecclesiastical champions.
+
+That the investigation of the fundamental principles of
+government was deeply implicated in these dissensions is
+evident from the immortal work of Grotius, upon the rights of
+war and peace, which undoubtedly originated from them. 
+Grotius himself had been a most distinguished actor and
+sufferer in those important scenes of internal convulsion, and
+his work was first published very shortly after the departure of
+our forefathers from Leyden.  It is well known that in the
+course of the contest Mr. Robinson more than once appeared,
+with credit to himself, as a public disputant against Episcopius;
+and from the manner in which the fact is related by Governor
+Bradford, it is apparent that the whole English Church at
+Leyden took a zealous interest in the religious part of the
+controversy.  As strangers in the land, it is presumable that
+they wisely and honorably avoided entangling themselves in the
+political contentions involved with it.  Yet the theoretic
+principles, as they were drawn into discussion, could not fail to
+arrest their attention, and must have assisted them to form
+accurate ideas concerning the origin and extent of authority
+among men, independent of positive institutions.  The
+importance of these circumstances will not be duly weighed
+without taking into consideration the state of opinion then
+prevalent in England.  The general principles of government
+were there little understood and less examined.  The whole
+substance of human authority was centred in the simple
+doctrine of royal prerogative, the origin of which was always
+traced in theory to divine institution.  Twenty years later, the
+subject was more industriously sifted, and for half a century
+became one of the principal topics of controversy between the
+ablest and most enlightened men in the nation.  The instrument
+of voluntary association executed on board the "Mayflower"
+testifies that the parties to it had anticipated the improvement
+of their nation.
+
+Another incident, from which we may derive occasion for
+important reflections, was the attempt of these original settlers
+to establish among them that community of goods and of labor,
+which fanciful politicians, from the days of Plato to those of
+Rousseau, have recommended as the fundamental law of a
+perfect republic.  This theory results, it must be acknowledged,
+from principles of reasoning most flattering to the human
+character.  If industry, frugality, and disinterested integrity
+were alike the virtues of all, there would, apparently, be more
+of the social spirit, in making all property a common stock, and
+giving to each individual a proportional title to the wealth of
+the whole.  Such is the basis upon which Plato forbids, in his
+Republic, the division of property.  Such is the system upon
+which Rousseau pronounces the first man who inclosed a field
+with a fence, and said, "This is mine," a traitor to the human
+species.  A wiser and more useful philosophy, however, directs
+us to consider man according to the nature in which he was
+formed; subject to infirmities, which no wisdom can remedy; to
+weaknesses, which no institution can strengthen; to vices,
+which no legislation can correct.  Hence, it becomes obvious
+that separate property is the natural and indisputable right of
+separate exertion; that community of goods without
+community of toil is oppressive and unjust; that it counteracts
+the laws of nature, which prescribe that he only who sows the
+seed shall reap the harvest; that it discourages all energy, by
+destroying its rewards; and makes the most virtuous and active
+members of society the slaves and drudges of the worst.  Such
+was the issue of this experiment among our forefathers, and the
+same event demonstrated the error of the system in the elder
+settlement of Virginia.  Let us cherish that spirit of harmony
+which prompted our forefathers to make the attempt, under
+circumstances more favorable to its success than, perhaps, ever
+occurred upon earth.  Let us no less admire the candor with
+which they relinquished it, upon discovering its irremediable
+inefficacy.  To found principles of government upon too
+advantageous an estimate of the human character is an error of
+inexperience, the source of which is so amiable that it is
+impossible to censure it with severity.  We have seen the same
+mistake committed in our own age, and upon a larger theatre. 
+Happily for our ancestors, their situation allowed them to
+repair it before its effects had proved destructive.  They had no
+pride of vain philosophy to support, no perfidious rage of
+faction to glut, by persevering in their mistakes until they
+should be extinguished in torrents of blood.
+
+As the attempt to establish among themselves the community
+of goods was a seal of that sacred bond which knit them so
+closely together, so the conduct they observed toward the
+natives of the country displays their steadfast adherence to the
+rules of justice and their faithful attachment to those of
+benevolence and charity.
+
+No European settlement ever formed upon this continent has
+been more distinguished for undeviating kindness and equity
+toward the savages. There are, indeed, moralists who have
+questioned the right of the Europeans to intrude upon the
+possessions of the aboriginals in any case, and under any
+limitations whatsoever.  But have they maturely considered the
+whole subject?  The Indian right of possession itself stands,
+with regard to the greater part of the country, upon a
+questionable foundation.  Their cultivated fields; their
+constructed habitations; a space of ample sufficiency for their
+subsistence, and whatever they had annexed to themselves by
+personal labor, was undoubtedly, by the laws of nature, theirs. 
+But what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand
+miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? 
+Shall the liberal bounties of Providence to the race of man be
+monopolized by one of ten thousand for whom they were
+created?  Shall the exuberant bosom of the common mother,
+amply adequate to the nourishment of millions, be claimed
+exclusively by a few hundreds of her offspring?  Shall the lordly
+savage not only disdain the virtues and enjoyments of
+civilization himself, but shall he control the civilization of a
+world?  Shall he forbid the wilderness  to blossom like a rose? 
+Shall he forbid the oaks of the forest to fall before the axe of
+industry, and to rise again, transformed into the habitations of
+ease and elegance?  shall he doom an immense region of the
+globe to perpetual desolation, and to hear the howlings of the
+tiger and the wolf silence forever the voice of human gladness? 
+Shall the fields and the valleys, which a beneficent God has
+formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be
+condemned to everlasting barrenness?  Shall the mighty rivers,
+poured out by the hand of nature, as channels of
+communication between numerous nations, roll their waters in
+sullen silence and eternal solitude of the deep?  Have hundreds
+of commodious harbors, a thousand leagues of coast, and a
+boundless ocean, been spread in the front of this land, and shall
+every purpose of utility to which they could apply be prohibited
+by the tenant of the woods?  No, generous philanthropists!
+Heaven has not been thus inconsistent in the works of its
+hands.  Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcilable strife its
+moral laws with its physical creation.  The Pilgrims of
+Plymouth obtained their right of possession to the territory on
+which they settled, by titles as fair and unequivocal as any
+human property can be held.  By their voluntary association
+they recognized their allegiance to the government of Britain,
+and in process of time received whatever powers and
+authorities could be conferred upon them by a charter from
+their sovereign.  The spot on which they fixed had belonged to
+an Indian tribe, totally extirpated by that devouring pestilence
+which had swept the country shortly before their arrival.  The
+territory, thus free from all exclusive possession, they might
+have taken by the natural right of occupancy.  Desirous,
+however, of giving amply satisfaction to every pretence of
+prior right, by formal and solemn conventions with the chiefs
+of the neighboring tribes, they acquired the further security of a
+purchase.  At their hands the children of the desert had no
+cause of complaint.  On the great day of retribution, what
+thousands, what millions of the American race will appear at
+the bar of judgment to arraign their European invading
+conquerors!  Let us humbly hope that the fathers of the
+Plymouth Colony will then appear in the whiteness of
+innocence.  Let us indulge in the belief that they will not only
+be free from all accusation of injustice to these unfortunate
+sons of nature, but that the testimonials of their acts of
+kindness and benevolence toward them will plead the cause of
+their virtues, as they are now authenticated by the record of
+history upon earth.
+
+Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons
+of theological warfare are antiquated; the field of politics
+supplies the alchemists of our times with materials of more
+fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to
+another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction.  Our
+age is too enlightened to contend upon topics which concern
+only the interests of eternity; the men who hold in proper
+contempt all controversies about trifles, except such as inflame
+their own passions, have made it a commonplace censure
+against your ancestors, that their zeal was enkindled by
+subjects of trivial importance; and that however aggrieved by
+the intolerance of others, they were alike intolerant themselves. 
+Against these objections, your candid judgment will not require
+an unqualified justification; but your respect and gratitude for
+the founders of the State may boldly claim an ample apology. 
+The original grounds of their separation from the Church of
+England were not objects of a magnitude to dissolve the bonds
+of communion, much less those of charity, between Christian
+brethren of the same essential principles. Some of them,
+however, were not inconsiderable, and numerous inducements
+concurred to give them an extraordinary interest in their eyes. 
+When that portentous system of abuses, the Papal dominion,
+was overturned, a great variety of religious sects arose in its
+stead in the several countries, which for many centuries before
+had been screwed beneath its subjection.  The fabric of the
+Reformation, first undertaken in England upon a contracted
+basis, by a capricious and sanguinary tyrant, had been
+successively overthrown and restored, renewed and altered,
+according to the varying humors and principles of four
+successive monarchs.  To ascertain the precise point of division
+between the genuine institutions of Christianity and the
+corruptions accumulated upon them in the progress of fifteen
+centuries, was found a task of extreme difficulty throughout
+the Christian world.
+
+Men of the profoundest learning, of the sublimest genius, and
+of the purest integrity, after devoting their lives to the research,
+finally differed in their ideas upon many great points, both of
+doctrine and discipline.  The main question, it was admitted on
+all hands, most intimately concerned the highest interests of
+man, both temporal and eternal.  Can we wonder that men who
+felt their happiness here and their hopes of hereafter, their
+worldly welfare and the kingdom of heaven at stake, should
+sometimes attach an importance beyond their intrinsic weight
+to collateral points of controversy, connected with the all-
+involving object of the Reformation?  The changes in the forms
+and principles of religious worship were introduced and
+regulated in England by the hand of public authority.  But that
+hand had not been uniform or steady in its operations.  During
+the persecutions inflicted in the interval of Popish restoration
+under the reign of Mary, upon all who favored the
+Reformation, many of the most zealous reformers had been
+compelled to fly their country.  While residing on the continent
+of Europe, they had adopted the principles of the most
+complete and rigorous reformation, as taught and established
+by Calvin.  On returning afterward to their native country, they
+were dissatisfied with the partial reformation, at which, as they
+conceived, the English establishment had rested; and claiming
+the privilege of private conscience, upon which alone any
+departure from the Church of Rome could be justified, they
+insisted upon the right of adhering to the system of their own
+preference, and, of course, upon that of non-conformity to the
+establishment prescribed by the royal authority.  The only
+means used to convince them of error and reclaim them from
+dissent was force, and force served but to confirm the
+opposition it was meant to suppress.  By driving the founders
+of the Plymouth Colony into exile, it constrained them to
+absolute separation irreconcilable.  Viewing their religious
+liberties here, as held only by sufferance, yet bound to them by
+all the ties of conviction, and by all their sufferings for them,
+could they forbear to look upon every dissenter among
+themselves with a jealous eye?  Within two years after their
+landing, they beheld a rival settlement attempted in their
+immediate neighborhood; and not long after, the laws of self-
+preservation compelled them to break up a nest of revellers,
+who boasted of protection from the mother country, and who
+had recurred to the easy but pernicious resource of feeding
+their wanton idleness, by furnishing the savages with the
+means, the skill, and the instruments of European destruction. 
+Toleration, in that instance, would have been self-murder, and
+many other examples might be alleged, in which their necessary
+measures of self-defence have been exaggerated into cruelty,
+and their most indispensable precautions distorted into
+persecution.  Yet shall we not pretend that they were exempt
+from the common laws of mortality, or entirely free from all
+the errors of their age.  Their zeal might sometimes be too
+ardent, but it was always sincere.  At this day, religious
+indulgence is one of our clearest duties, because it is one of our
+undisputed rights.  While we rejoice that the principles of
+genuine Christianity have so far triumphed over the prejudices
+of a former generation, let us fervently hope for the day when
+it will prove equally victorious over the malignant passions of
+our own.
+
+In thus calling your attention to some of the peculiar features
+in the principles, the character, and the history of our
+forefathers, it is as wide from my design, as I know it would be
+from your approbation, to adorn their memory with a chaplet
+plucked from the domain of others. The occasion and the day
+are more peculiarly devoted to them, and let it never be
+dishonored with a contracted and exclusive spirit.  Our
+affections as citizens embrace the whole extent of the Union,
+and the names of Raleigh, Smith, Winthrop, Calvert, Penn and
+Oglethorpe excite in our minds recollections equally pleasing
+and gratitude equally fervent with those of Carver and
+Bradford.  Two centuries have not yet elapsed since the first
+European foot touched the soil which now constitutes the
+American Union.  Two centuries more and our numbers must
+exceed those of Europe itself.  The destinies of their empire, as
+they appear in prospect before us, disdain the powers of human
+calculation.  Yet, as the original founder of the Roman State is
+said once to have lifted upon his shoulders the fame and
+fortunes of all his posterity, so let us never forget that the glory
+and greatness of all our descendants is in our hands.  Preserve
+in all their purity, refine, if possible, from all their alloy, those
+virtues which we this day commemorate as the ornament of
+our forefathers.  Adhere to them with inflexible resolution, as
+to the horns of the altar; instil them with unwearied
+perseverance into the minds of your children; bind your souls
+and theirs to the national Union as the chords of life are
+centred in the heart, and you shall soar with rapid and steady
+wing to the summit of human glory.  Nearly a century ago, one
+of those rare minds to whom it is given to discern future
+greatness in its seminal principles, upon contemplating the
+situation of this continent, pronounced, in a vein of poetic
+inspiration, "Westward the star of empire takes its way."  Let
+us unite in ardent supplication to the Founder of nations and
+the Builder of worlds, that what then was prophecy may
+continue unfolding into history--that the dearest hopes of the
+human race may not be extinguished in disappointment, and
+that the last may prove the noblest empire of time.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Orations, by John Quincy Adams
+