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+ <title>
+ 'Orations', by John Quincy Adams
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Orations, by John Quincy Adams
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Orations
+
+Author: John Quincy Adams
+
+Release Date: August 2, 2008 [EBook #896]
+Last Updated: January 26, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORATIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anthony J. Adam, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <h1>
+ "Orations"
+ </h1>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <h2>
+ By John Quincy Adams
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ "The Jubilee of the Constitution, delivered at New York, April 30, 1839,
+ before the New York Historical Society."
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br />
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <b>Fellow-Citizens and Brethren, Associates of the New York Historical
+ Society:</b>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;forgetting the lessons written in the
+ blood of her own children, through centuries of departed time&mdash;she
+ undertook to tax the people of the colonies without their consent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Resistance, instantaneous, unconcerted, sympathetic, inflexible
+ resistance, like an electric shock, startled and roused the people of all
+ the English colonies on this continent.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ This was the first signal of the North American Union. The struggle was
+ for chartered rights&mdash;for English liberties&mdash;for the cause of
+ Algernon Sidney and John Hampden&mdash;for trial by jury&mdash;the Habeas
+ Corpus and Magna Charta.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But the English lawyers had decided that Parliament was omnipotent&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;twice&mdash;had
+ petitioned the king; had remonstrated to Parliament; had addressed the
+ people of Britain, for the rights of Englishmen&mdash;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....
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;the dissolution of allegiance, with the
+ severance from the British Empire, and the declaration of the United
+ Colonies, as free and independent States&mdash;were performed by that
+ instrument.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But there still remained the last and crowning act, which the people of
+ the Union alone were competent to perform&mdash;the institution of civil
+ government, for that compound nation, the United States of America.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;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....
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Where, then, did each State get the sovereignty, freedom, and
+ independence, which the Articles of Confederation declare it retains?&mdash;not
+ from the whole people of the whole Union&mdash;not from the Declaration of
+ Independence&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;"the
+ pride and boast of America, that the rights for which she contended were
+ the rights of human nature."
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And thus was consummated the work commenced by the Declaration of
+ Independence&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And on that day, of which you now commemorate the fiftieth anniversary&mdash;on
+ that thirtieth day of April, 1789&mdash;was this mighty revolution, not
+ only in the affairs of our own country, but in the principles of
+ government over civilized man, accomplished.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Revolution itself was a work of thirteen years&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;who
+ deny the natural equality and inalienable rights of man&mdash;who deny
+ that the people are the only legitimate source of power&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ "Oration at Plymouth, December 22, 1802, in Commemoration of the Landing
+ of the Pilgrims."
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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,
+ </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ "Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign."
+</pre>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;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?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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:
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ "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."
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Children of these exalted Pilgrims! Is there one among you who 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ 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&mdash;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.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+ </body>
+</html>