Western Literature(A-Orations By John Quincy Adams)

Orations



By John Quincy Adams

"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