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DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 
 
 CITY OP NEW-YORK, 
 
 DECEMBER 22, 1851 
 
 BY GEORGE S. HILLARD 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 
 
 
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 NEW-YORK : 
 
 GEORGK P. NESBITT AND CO.. PRINTERS. 
 
 1852. 
 
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DISCOURSE. 
 
 Man is a being of " large discourse, looking before 
 and after." From this power of living in the past and 
 the future, his essential grandeur and dignity are derived. 
 The life of the individual is but a momentary spark ; but 
 the life of liumanity is a luminous web, flowing from the 
 bosopa of God, into which the hours of every day are 
 woveii. Through memory and hope, we are born to a 
 great inheritance of records and promises ; and poor in- 
 deed is the life which feeds only on the meagre harvest of 
 the present. It is a proud privilege to be able to break 
 away from this " bank and shoal of time," to seek what 
 shall be in what has been, to turn experience into pro- 
 phecy, and, with retrospective glance, discern in the mir- 
 ror of the Past the airy shapes of the unborn Future. 
 
 The origin of our country lies in the open daylight of 
 history. We cannot go back to that morning twilight of 
 tradition, from which poetry draws so many of its themes 
 and so much of its inspiration. Such forms as Arthur 
 and the Cid, in whom the real and the fanciful meet and 
 blend, like the mountain and the cloud upon the distant 
 horizon, have no place upon our soil. The simple dig- 
 nity of men like Carver, and Brewster, and Winthrop, 
 can borrow no attractions from the hues of romance. If 
 
 (-/ ?i' 
 
 )i' 
 
we lose something, so far as imagination is concerned, by 
 the nearness and distinctness of the settlement of the 
 country, we gain much upon the side of truth, in the 
 moral dignity which was stamped upon the enterprise, in 
 the exalted motives which led to it, and in those high 
 qualities of mind and character by which its success was 
 confirmed. If our early history does not furnish those 
 picturesque contrasts, those wild struggles, those lawless 
 manners, and those genial traits of homely nature, which, 
 lying in the idealizing light of distance, become the 
 sources from which poetry draws its ever new materials, 
 it is a sufficient compensation to a manly spirit, to be able 
 to say that the institutions of New England were founded 
 in religious faith ; that their progress was assured by the 
 animating principle of civil liberty ; that they were con- 
 secrated by a deep-seated respect for law, and enforced by 
 lives of spotless purity. Other nations can trace back the 
 beginnings of their social and civil state to earlier periods, 
 through a longer succession of generations ; but who can 
 find them lying in higher sources than religion, liberty, 
 and law 1 
 
 This day is the birthday of a great people. It is 
 dedicated to the Past and the Future. It is rescued from 
 the grasp of common life, and set apart for serener con- 
 templations and finer visions. The importunate and cla- 
 morous present is laid asleep. Our thoughts are disen- 
 gaged from the splendid results of civilization and cul- 
 tivation which lie about us. The irresistible power 
 with which the vast interests and vivid excitements of a 
 great city seize upon and subdue the spirit of man, is, for 
 
the moment, paralyzed. Your croTfded warehouses; your 
 stately mansions ; your streets, through which such tides 
 of life rush and foam ; your noble rivers, shadowed by so 
 many sails, and furrowed by so many keels, are shut out 
 from the eye of the mind. Far other scenes unfold them- 
 selves to its gaze. We see a desolate coast, white with 
 the snows, and swept with the storms of winter. We 
 see a solitary vessel, weather-stained and tempest-shat- 
 tered. We see a band of men, women and children, shi- 
 vering with cold, suffering from the effects of a long and 
 rough voyage, and some already touched with mortal 
 sickness — but all animated with the same expression of 
 fortitude and faith, which gives a nobler dignity to the 
 brow of manhood, a purer light to the eye of woman^ and 
 breathes a thoughtful air over the face of childhood itself. 
 Behind them is the sea, before them is the forest, and 
 above them is the sky. Danger, and solitude, and famine, 
 and winter, are the grim shapes that welcome them to 
 their unknown home. There are neither friendly faces, 
 nor cordial greetings, nor warm embraces, nor food, nor 
 shelter, in the howling wilderness before them. They 
 are alone with their God. 
 
 The experiences by which these men and women have 
 been ripened for the work which lies before them, em- 
 brace a large segment of all that circle of action and suf- 
 fering by which humanity is trained and tempered. Few 
 of the sorrows which try the firmness of man, or the love 
 of woman, have been wanting in their lives. They have 
 felt the wrath of enemies, the coldness of friends, the 
 sharpness of persecution, and the dreary heart-ache of 
 
exile. Poverty and a low estate have hardly been ac- 
 counted among their chief burdens. The necessities of 
 their position have called forth whatever there was in 
 them of fortitude, circumspection, vigilance, and pru- 
 dence. Difficulties have obstructed their path, so numer- 
 ous and so great, that nothing but the constant exercise 
 of sagacity and self-command could have overcome them. 
 Their life has been a long warfare against the oppression 
 of power from without, and the promptings of what 
 seemed weakness from within. And as they have had 
 great sorrows, so they have had great satisfactions. The 
 pressure of persecution has bound their hearts together 
 by a depth and fullness of sympathy such as can never 
 grow in the air of happiness and prosperity. Domestic 
 love — chaste, pure and warm — has soothed and sustained 
 them, and the strong man, Avhen ready to faint, has been 
 upheld by the unconquerable faith and undying truth 
 which animate and ti'ansfigure the feeble frame of woman. 
 And, above all, they have been admitted to a closer walk 
 with God than has been vouchsafed to men of higher 
 place, more endowed with the goods of this world, more 
 rich in carnal gifts and eye-attracting graces. He has 
 bowed His heavens, and, passing by the princes and no- 
 bles of the earth, has spoken with them as friend speaks 
 with friend. With thpm He has made a covenant, and 
 they are the living ark to whose keeping His law is in- 
 trusted. In the watches of the night, in solitary wilder- 
 nesses, upon the lonely ocean, have they heard His awful 
 voice. Rapturous dreams, resplendent visions, celestial 
 revelations have overshone their souls, and so erected 
 
aud exalted their spirits, that the strong ones of the earth 
 have been as dead men beneath their feet. 
 
 The Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth — Englishmen by 
 birth — belonged to that remarkable body of men, the 
 Puritans, who, in the period between the Reformation 
 and the Revolution of Sixteen hundred and eighty-eight, 
 Avrought such mighty works in Church and State, and 
 had so large a hand in opening those channels in which the 
 mind of England was ever after to run. I need hardly 
 say that the name of Puritan leads us into a wide field of 
 controversy, involving vital and enduring principles, both 
 political and religious, in which every reflecting man, 
 who speaks the speech of England, is led to take one side 
 or the other, according to his temperament and turn of 
 mind. But though all the issues in this great contest 
 are not yet, and never will be settled, yet upon many the 
 silent verdict of history has been passed ; and only obsti- 
 nate prejudice or clamorous pertinacity will move for a 
 rehearing. It is enough for us that the Puritans, as a 
 body in English history, long assailed and defended with 
 indiscriminate and partisan zeal, have reached a point of 
 enlightened comprehension and candid judgment. There 
 is a general consent among judicial minds as to their 
 energy in action, and their constancy in suflering, as to 
 the depth and fervor of their religious convictions and the 
 prodigious power of speech, thought, and conduct, inspired 
 by them, and especially as to the inestimable services 
 which they rendered to the cause of civil liberty. Upon 
 this last point the testimony of Hume, considering his 
 total want of sympathy with the Puritans in politics, as 
 
8 
 
 well as religion, may be received as the very best evi- 
 dence that could be put into the case. 
 
 Puritanism as an element of struggle in the history of 
 England, and Puritanism as a constructive element in the 
 formation and development of the institutions of New Eng- 
 land, present points both of resemblance and diversity. In 
 England, the Puritans were always in an attitude of pro- 
 test and resistance. They set their faces against civil and 
 ecclesiastical tyranny, against the power of the Bishops and 
 the encroachments of the Crown, against the Court of 
 High Commission and the Star-Chamber, against Straf- 
 ford, and against Laud. They contended for liberty in 
 things sacred and liberty in things secular, for liberty in 
 prophesying and liberty in debate, for the liberty of the 
 congregation and the liberty of the individual. They 
 formed the party of progress, and embodied the princi- 
 ples of movement and dissent. When a portion of them 
 were transplanted to a new world, it "^vas natural and 
 probable to suppose that the impulse of resistance com- 
 municated at home would have proved a propelling motive 
 abroad, that right would have been sought in a point the 
 most remote from wrong, and that their sense of the 
 abuses of power would have taken the form of impatience 
 under necessary restraints. Reasoning from analogy, 
 we should have supposed that the soil of New England 
 would have been the scene of the wildest experiments in 
 government, and that the land would have been like the 
 land of Israel in those days when there was no king, and 
 every man did that which was right in his own eyes. 
 Such would have been the case, had our Puritans been 
 
the narroAV-minded fanatics which, through ignorance or 
 malice, they have sometimes been called. But the event 
 was far unlike that which might have been anticipated ; 
 and nothing proves more conclusively that their experi- 
 ences had not impaired the balanced wisdom of their 
 minds, than the fact that these sufferers and exiles in the 
 cause of liberty should have shown, from the moment 
 they landed upon the soil of Plymouth, so profound a re- 
 spect for the principle of law, and should have expressed 
 that feeling so decisively in their early legislation. Reve- 
 rence for authority, a stern sense of order, the submis- 
 sion of the one to the many, a horror of insubordination, 
 and faith in elders and magistrates, were leading traits 
 in the character of the Pilgrims. Indeed, they pushed 
 the principle of law too far, and, in many instances, 
 turned against the liberty of the individual that sharp 
 edge of legislation, the smart of which they had so often 
 felt in their own persons. 
 
 It is easy to praise the Puritan Fathers of New Eng- 
 land ; it is not difficult to blame them. We have met here 
 to honor, not to praise them ; for to honor is not always 
 to praise, and to praise is not always to honor. There 
 are two aspects in which every man may be regarded. 
 In the one case, we examine his fitness to accomplish 
 some end foreign to himself; in the other, we inquire 
 into his growth and development with reference to a self- 
 contained end. In the one case, we ask, what can he do i 
 in the other, what is he '? Viewing these men with refer- 
 ence to an ideal standard of humanity, we admit their 
 want of symmetry and proportion Some qualities we 
 
10 
 
 should like to add, and others to take aAvay. Their man- 
 ners were severe, and their temper intolerant. While 
 sternly breaking away from the seductions of the senses, 
 they did not always escape the vices of hypocrisy and 
 spiritual pride. They gave an undue importance to 
 trifles, and exalted indifferent observances to the dignity 
 of symbols. Their legislation was teasing and intrusive 
 in its details, and in its spirit darkened by a mistaken 
 sense of the perpetual obligation of the Mosaic Code. 
 While they shut out from their hearts the refreshment 
 that comes from the sense of beauty, they opened the 
 door to those fierce and consuming excitements which 
 waste the bosoms in which they rage. Their sympathies 
 were neither cordial nor expansive, and they would not 
 have been a comfortable people for any one, not of their 
 own way of thinking, to have dwelt among. But when 
 we view them with reference to their fitness for the task 
 of colonizing New England, we find them wanting in no 
 needful qualities, but, on the contrary, abounding in all. 
 We then look upon them as a people raised up by God to 
 do a great work, and trained to that high destiny by a 
 corresponding discipline. We must admit that, as in- 
 struments for accomplishing the end that was set before 
 them, they were hardly less than perfect. A religious 
 faith less intense, an enthusiasm less exalted, a constancy 
 of purpose less firm, a softer fibre of soul, a more flexible 
 temper of mind, could never have carried them through 
 the dangers and difficulties which lay in the path of their 
 enterprise. For this, the highest and strongest of worldly 
 motives would have been found wanting. Neither the 
 
11 
 
 glow of patriotism, nor the love of power, nor the sense 
 of honor, nor the passion for gain, could have borne the 
 fearful experiences of the first five years of the Plymouth 
 colony. These will enable men to dispense with luxuries, 
 to submit to privations, and to encounter dangers : but 
 when hunger is, day after day, gnawing at their hearts ; 
 when Winter is beating upon them with his icy flail ; 
 when Death is so busy among them, that the able-bodied 
 can do little more than nurse the sick and bury the dead, 
 unaided humanity will sink and fall under the burden. 
 The support that Avill enable men to bear up under so 
 tremendous a pressure, must come from Heaven and not 
 from earth. Man must lay hold of the hand of God, 
 and, aided by that, lift himself above himself, not 
 merely casting aside his trials, but making them pedestals 
 of exaltation. And if the elements were so mingled in 
 the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, that they had every 
 quality requisite for the work appointed unto them, so 
 that none was wanting and none Avas excessive, do we not 
 see that their previous discipline had been such, as to call 
 forth all the powers that were essential, and, at the same 
 time, to forbid the growth of those genial graces and 
 winning accomplishments, which they are sometimes un- 
 thinkingly blamed for not possessing 1 That they were 
 not fine gentlemen and elegant scholars, is true ; but how 
 could men acquire courtly manners or delicate learning, 
 that had never breathed the air of security, had been 
 obliged to steal through life with the cry of pursuit ever 
 following them upon the wind, had never been bidden 
 to good men^s feasts, nor slept on tranquil pillows ? 
 
12 
 
 Poverty, persecution and exile, form those stern and strong 
 virtues which are the protection and defence of commu- 
 nities, as the storms of winter blow vigor into the oak 
 and the pine, whose rafters are hewn into forts, and 
 churches, and houses ; but the softer and gentler graces, 
 which embellish a prosperous condition, bloom by the 
 side of still waters, and in gardens sheltered from the 
 sweeping blast. 
 
 While we acknowledge and lament that spirit of intol- 
 erance which darkens the memory of the Puritan Fathers 
 of New England, we contend that upon this charge they 
 should be tried by the standard of their own age, 
 and not by that of ours. We honor men who are in 
 advance of their times, but we have no right to blame 
 those who are not. Moral truth is progressive as well as 
 material. We do not censure the Puritans for having 
 been ignorant of vaccination, or the expansive power of 
 steam, and, practically, the world knew as little at 
 that time of the great principle of toleration. So 
 late as 1612, the fires of Smithfield were lighted for 
 the burning of a heretic. Even Milton, in that splen- 
 did eifusion of generous zeal, so far beyond his age — 
 the Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed printing — 
 stops short the glowing wheels of his eloquence in mid 
 career, and expressly excludes Popery from the arms of 
 that wide-embracing toleration which should clasp all 
 Protestant sects. That the Puritans, who had fled from 
 persecution, should themselves have persecuted, is a 
 seeming inconsistency which the laws of the human mind 
 easily explain. That the men, who are most prepared 
 
13 
 
 to suffer martyrdom, are the most inclined to inflict it, is 
 no paradox to him who knows the nature of faith and the 
 power of zeal. The Puritans, from the beginning, were 
 of this stern and uncompromising spirit. In their judg- 
 ment, not only were their own views of doctrine and 
 church government true, but all others were false. They 
 could not live in the pleasant land of their birth, because 
 they could not consent to tolerate what they deemed 
 error. They had sacrificed everything that makes life 
 sweet to the natural man, and fled into the wilderness, in 
 order to found a pure church, such as the pure eyes of 
 God might look upon with favor, and they felt that they 
 had an exclusive right to those spiritual privileges which 
 they had bought with so great a price. They had made 
 the waste place a garden of the Lord, and they could not 
 allow any weeds of heresy to take root in it. What 
 equivalent had they to show for all they had renounced, 
 and all they had suffered, if they were to encounter here 
 the false doctrines and idolatrous practices which had 
 made life intolerable to them at home 1 They held their 
 own lives as nothing when weighed in the balance against 
 the truth ; and if, in defence of the truth, they inflicted 
 death, they were equally prepared to meet it, had such 
 been the will of God. Our own age has outgrown the 
 axe and the fagot ; but is the combination of an earnest 
 faith and a tolerant spirit so very common, as to entitle 
 us to sit in judgment upon the intolerance of the pasf? 
 What we call toleration is commonly only another name 
 for indifference. To have deep and fervid convictions in 
 religion or politics, and at the same time to respect the 
 
14 
 
 intellectual rights of those who have come to diflferent 
 conclusions, is still the rarest and finest of unions. 
 
 That the Pilgrim Fathers, whose landing upon the shore 
 of Plymouth we are this day commemorating, were men of 
 an eminently religious spirit, and that the motives which 
 moved them to that enterprise were mainly of a religious 
 origin, can be denied by no candid mind who examines 
 the evidence contained in their own recorded statements, 
 written with perfect simplicity, and at a time and under 
 circumstances which make it impossible that they should 
 have had any purpose of concealment or deception. In 
 their view, the ties which bound them to God were far 
 more important than those which bound them to any 
 earthly object. The fervor of their zeal was in propor- 
 tion to the depth and sincerity of their faith. They were 
 penetrated with the most vivid sense of the real existence 
 of those things that are spiritually discerned. The ter- 
 rors and promises of the unseen world were ever darken- 
 ing and brightening their path. The smiles and frowns 
 of God were to them as visible, as those which a child 
 sees upon the face of an earthly parent. Their daily life 
 revolved upon the poles of spiritual truth. 
 
 A religious spirit is not to be confounded with a re- 
 ligious creed. It is quite possible for a man to assent 
 sincerely to certain articles of religious faith, and yet 
 live a worldly and irreligious life. Belief is an act of the 
 mind ; but a religious spirit is a state of the moral affec- 
 tions. It implies the constant guidance and restraint of 
 motives flowing from religious convictions. It rests upon 
 the ideas of the continued existence of the soul, a future 
 
15 
 
 state, and a pei'sonal God, against whose moral purity 
 sin is an offence. Religious opinions are modified by the 
 progress Avhich the mind makes in secular knowledge and 
 general intelligence. Religious truth is a flowing stream, 
 and not a stagnant pool, and God's revelations are not, 
 like stars, best discerned in the night of ignorance and 
 credulity. The admirable Robinson, in his farewell ser- 
 mon, told his people, in words which are as true this day 
 as when they were spoken, that " he was very confident 
 the Lord had more truth yet to break out of his holy 
 word." But the spirit of religion is ever essentially the 
 same, just as we see the true spirit of scientific inquiry, 
 alike in Roger Bacon, groping in the twilight of knowledge, 
 and in Humboldt, walking in its noon-day blaze. That 
 the Pilgrims were men of a profoundly religious spirit, is 
 a fact quite irrespective of the wisdom or expediency of 
 the particular acts and forms in which that spirit was 
 expressed. History records no body of men, whose lives 
 were more shaped and guided by the relations which exist 
 between God and the human soul. It is no figure of 
 speech, but a literal truth, to say, that the glory of God 
 was the chief end of their existence, and that they found 
 perfect freedom in entire submission to His law. The 
 power which this principle of faith inspired, the constancy 
 of purpose which it gave, the firm temper of soul which 
 it infused, can never be told by vague rhetoric or im- 
 passioned declamation, but can only be felt by those who 
 will read the record of the sufferings and privations of 
 their early years, made at the time, and on the spot, as 
 simply as if it had been the log-book of a coasting voy- 
 
16 
 
 age. It tamed the rage of hunger, it softened the rigor 
 of cold, it broke the sting of death. It was a cordial to 
 the sick, a shield to the timid, a hope to the desponding, 
 a staff to the feeble. 
 
 While "we acknowledge with gratitude the beneficent 
 influences of that religious faith which belonged to the 
 Pilgrims, as Puritans, we should not forget what we owe 
 to those ideas of civil liberty which were their inheritance 
 as Englishmen. Though, to borrow their own quaint lan- 
 guage, they had become well weaned from the delicate 
 milk of their mother country ; yet they had not lost the 
 vigor drawn from that strong meat of Saxon freedom, 
 which she had given them to eat. They landed upon the 
 shore of Plymouth, already instructed in the noble art of 
 building up a state. Their brains were not heated with 
 wild visions of ideal commonwealths, and they were not 
 compelled to read the lines of wisdom upon the reverse 
 side of their ill-woven systems. The liberty which they 
 found upon the soil of America, awakened no giddy and 
 tumultuous raptures, because it differed only in degree 
 from that which they had known at home. They brought 
 with them the habit of civil obedience and the instinct of 
 political constructiveness. Persecution had stamped more 
 deeply upon their hearts the noble principles expressed 
 in the homely Latin of Magna Charta. They had sat 
 upon juries ; they had seen the judicial and executive 
 functions of a state embodied in the justice of the peace 
 and the constable. They knew the meaning of those 
 proud words, the Commons of England. The very op- 
 pressions which they had suffered, had been under the 
 
17 
 
 forms of law. They brought with them whatever was 
 vital and progressive in the institutions of England, and 
 nothing of that which was obsolete and unsuited to their 
 new sphere of action and duty. They left behind them 
 the burdens of feudalism, the prerogatives of the crown, 
 the privileges of the nobility, the laws of entail, the right 
 of primogeniture, and the civil grasp of ecclesiastical tri- 
 bunals. In the race that was set before them, they 
 started without weight. They found here, cast into their 
 laps, and without a struggle, more than their brethren in 
 England could win after two i-evolutions. 
 
 The principles of civil liberty and religious faith which 
 the Pilgrims, as Englishmen and as Puritans, brought 
 with them, were the germs of those institutions which 
 have made the New England States so respectable and 
 so happy a community, and had so large an influence, 
 direct and indirect, upon the whole land. We have no 
 reason to suppose that the Pilgrims themselves were at 
 all conscious of the splendid procession of events that was 
 to start from the Rock of Plymouth. They had no other 
 object than to seek a safe asylum in a remote land, where 
 they might worship God in peace, according to the dic- 
 tates of their own conscience ; and in His hands they sub - 
 missively left the issue of their work. It seems to me 
 that the enterprise itself wears a more natural dignity, 
 and that the character of the Pilgrims becomes more 
 simple and noble, if we accept their own statement of 
 their motives and expectations as the plain truth, and do 
 not seek to garnish it with modern inventions. The phi- 
 losophy of history, so called, is apt to slide into mere 
 
 9 
 
18 
 
 speculation, and a succession of events, lying at a dis- 
 tance of two centuries, is sometimes seen to be linked 
 together by a law of sequence which exists only in the 
 observer's own mind. As the stars are grouped into con- 
 stellations from dim resemblances which they suggest, so 
 the bright points in history are made to assume shape 
 and consistency, in obedience to arbitrary analogies. Not 
 unto the Pilgrims, admirable as they were, is the honor 
 due, but unto God, who turned their weakness into 
 strength, and their sufferings into glory; who, from be- 
 ginnings which, to merely human judgment, seemed to pro- 
 mise nothing but disaster and defeat, reared up a mighty 
 people, whose future progress is beyond conjecture, as its 
 past has been beyond parallel. 
 
 With the growth and increase of the various settle- 
 ments in New England, the development of the principle 
 of democracy becomes more and more marked ; but we 
 have no right to infer that the Pilgrims themselves, or 
 their successors at Salem and Boston, ever imagined that 
 it was their destiny to become the founders of great de- 
 mocratic communities. The idea of the sovereignty of the 
 people never presented itself to their minds ; and if it 
 had, it would have been received with very little favor. 
 But it is none the less true, that from the beginning, the 
 inevitable current of events swept towards democratic 
 institutions, and that, with the elements that were at 
 work, none other were possible. The great doctrine of 
 the Reformation — ^justification by faith alone — ^liad poli- 
 tical as well as religious consequences. It changed the 
 relations, not only between God and the soul, but between 
 
19 
 
 the state and the individual. He who had attained to 
 peace through the pangs of a new spiritual birth— whom 
 God, from the beginning, by virtue of His eternal decrees, 
 had chosen and redeemed — could not but apply a search- 
 ing spirit of inquiry to any system of polity which made 
 him, while on earth, a passive instrument or a powerless 
 slave. The views of the Puritan settlers upon church 
 government and discipline, led them in the same direc- 
 tion. Congregationalism is the principle of democracy 
 applied to the ecclesiastical state. When a body of men, 
 gathered together under the name of a church, found 
 themselves qualified for the duties of self-government, it 
 was natural for them to feel that they were also compe- 
 tent to the ta.sk of secular administration. Thus the 
 town, or primitive political society, was of twin birth 
 with the parish, or religious society. These tendencies, 
 resulting from the religious opinions of the early settlers 
 of Massachusetts, were strengthened by the fact that 
 they were, with hardly an exception, drawn from the mid- 
 dle classes, and met upon the footing of a common social 
 equality. 
 
 All these elements, however, might have been counter- 
 acted, and the foundations of an aristocracy laid, had it 
 not been for the cheapness and abundance of land — and 
 land, too, of such moderate fertility that it could only be 
 made valuable by intelligent labor. An aristocracy can 
 never be formed except upon the basis of something like 
 an exclusive right in the land, by which the community 
 becomes divided into two classes, landlords and tenants. 
 No such division ever took place in New England. The 
 
20 
 
 early emigrations having been undertaken from religious 
 motives, and not from considerations of gain, there was 
 nothing to tempt those large capitalists who might have 
 stipulated for manors and principalities as the condition 
 of their becoming partners in the enterprise. 
 
 Thus the religious opinions of the early settlers, the 
 general level of social equality from which they had start- 
 ed at home> and the abundance of land productive enough 
 to reward labor, but not to invite capital, led to the de- 
 velopment of institutions embodying the principle of self- 
 government more fully than had been before known. An 
 additional impulse was given to these tendencies by the 
 early establishment of the system of free schools, in which 
 provision was made for the education of every child, at 
 the public expense. For the first time in the history of 
 the world, the principle was laid down and carried out 
 into operation, that the education of youth was the duty 
 of the state, the expense of which was to be defrayed by 
 a tax upon property, to which those who had no children 
 were as much required to contribute, as those who had. 
 Education was justly regarded as the right of all, and not 
 the privilege of a few. In knowledge was recognized an 
 element of protection in which all were interested, and 
 for which all were bound to pay. 
 
 The parish or religious society, the town, and the com- 
 mon school, have been and are the characteristic institu- 
 tions of New England. By them and through them, we 
 are what we are, and have what we have. They were 
 not exotics, transplanted from another clime ; but they 
 were the spontaneous growth of the soil, and their roots 
 
21 
 
 were twined round the fibres of tlie popular heart. They 
 all wrought together for a common end. They fed the 
 soul from the tree of life, and the mind from the tree of 
 knowledge. They formed the instinct of social order, and 
 practically trained men how to build themselves into a 
 state. A town-meeting does not usually awaken much 
 of reflection or emotion in those who attend or observe 
 it, but it is a most pregnant and suggestive spectacle. 
 It is the primitive political monad, entire within itself, 
 competent to complete its own appointed work, and at 
 the same time furnishing the deep and broad foundation 
 on which the more comprehensive functions of the state 
 repose. The readiness with which men at these meet- 
 ings form themselves into an organized body, the facil- 
 ity with which they dispatch business, the tact with 
 which they discern the limits of their powers, and the 
 respect which they show to the letter of the warrant 
 which summons them, are supposed by us to be matters 
 of course, belonging to man as man. But they are the 
 precious legacy bequeathed to us by the toils and suffer- 
 ings of our fathers. They are the transmitted instincts 
 of regulated liberty. By them is the citizen distinguished 
 from the subject. In these faculties and facilities the 
 security of our institutions resides. They keep us in that 
 state of stable equilibrium which renders a revolution 
 impossible. The essential principle of the civil polity of 
 New England is, that there shall be the maximum of ad- 
 ministration and the minimum of government. Nothing 
 shall be done by the town which can be done by the 
 school district ; nothing by the county which can be done 
 
22 
 
 by the town ; nothing by the state which can be done by 
 the county. Power is to be kept as much as possible in 
 the hands of those most exposed to suffer from its abuses. 
 The conservative element is sought, not in the limitation 
 of political rights, but in the multiplication of political 
 trusts. 
 
 In the history of our country, the two principles of re- 
 ligious faith and civil liberty, have been in harmonious 
 co-operation, and not in mutual contrariety. Religion 
 and its ministers have not been the enemies of progress ; 
 nor has there been that fatal alliance between liberty and 
 irreligion, so often seen upon the Continent of Europe ; 
 nor have the frantic steps of revolution been marshaled 
 by torches lighted at the fire-brands of hell. The pro- 
 gress and prosperity of the country are the result of the 
 mutual action and reaction of these two principles. The 
 religious faith which was so powerful as a sustaining and 
 hope-inspiring presence to our fathers, in their days of 
 sorrow and of small things, is not less important as an 
 elevating and restraining element in the maddening whirl 
 of success. As has been truly remarked by Coleridge, 
 " the two antagonist powers, or opposite interests of the 
 state, under which all other state interests are comprised, 
 are those of permanence and of progression." The highest 
 problem of political wisdom is to blend these two powers 
 in harmonious and concurring equilibrium. In the torch- 
 races of antiquity, not only those lost the prize who failed 
 to reach the goal before their competitors, but those also 
 who ran so heedlessly that the light which they carried 
 was extinguished. So it is with nations to whom the fire 
 
of liberty is intrusted ; they must guard the flame while 
 they run the race. There is an analogy between the per- 
 fect man and the perfect state. The perfect man is not a 
 man without passions, for that would be an impossible 
 monster, but a man in Avhom reason and conscience are 
 guiding principles, but the passions simply propelling im- 
 pulses, never supplying their own end and object. So, a 
 perfect state is that in which the reason and conscience 
 of the community, speaking by the voice of law, control 
 the passions working in their appointed sphere of ma- 
 terial development. In England, the only country in 
 Europe which affords anything like a parallel to our own, 
 the element of permanence is sought in the landed inter- 
 est, the House of Lords being, in theory, and to a con- 
 siderable extent in fact, an assemblage of the great landed 
 estates of the realm. Our institutions give to us the 
 largest measure of the element of progression, because 
 each individual feels himself to be a part of the state, and 
 pours out the rapid currents of his own heart, to swell 
 the tide on which the nation is born. The spirit of the 
 living creature is in the wheels of time. But where is 
 the power of permanence to come from ? It is supplied in 
 some measure by the upper branch of our legislatures, 
 which is supposed to reflect the deliberative wisdom of 
 the country more distinctly than the popular body ; but 
 as they both rest upon the basis of universal suffrage, 
 the protection thus afforded is rather formal than sub- 
 stantial. The antagonistic power which wo need, cannot 
 be found in political combinations and mechanical con- 
 trivances, since all are set in motion by the same popular 
 
24 
 
 will, but it must reside in the popular conscience. The 
 people must be their own law as well as their own im- 
 pulse. A perception of right and wrong, founded upon 
 distinctions running deep into the spiritual nature of man, 
 must be a controlling element in politics. The elective 
 franchise must be held to be a trust as well as a right. 
 A godless democracy, in which the passions of men move 
 to their wild work through the forms of law, happily for 
 mankind, contains within itself the pledge of self-de- 
 struction. Who can stand before a vindictive, rapacious, 
 unprincipled majority'? Those principles and motives 
 Avhicli shed so pure a light around the narrow cabin of the 
 Mayflower, which gave such worth and dignity to the me- 
 morable compact there drawn up and signed, must wait upon 
 our steps, as we move along the giddy and perilous edges 
 of power and wealth. That Rock of Ages, which was a 
 shelter to our fathers in the piercing storm of trial, must 
 spread for us its healing shadow, in the feverish blaze of 
 prosperity. Robinson, in his letter of advice to his peo- 
 ple, tells them to honor their rulers, " not beholding in 
 them the ordinariness of their persons, but God's ordi- 
 nance for your good." Noble, significant, enduring 
 words ! The state is God's ordinance for man's good, 
 and there is no higher law than that which bids men dis- 
 pose themselves into " the unity and married calm of 
 states." If the allegiance of the citizen be made to rest 
 upon any lower basis, the state is degraded to the level 
 of a copartnership or a corporation. What light is to the 
 eye, what sound is to the ear, law is to the unperverted 
 reason. It is the voice of God in the soul of man. 
 
25 
 
 The unexampled growth of our country in population 
 and wealth, and the power which, for good or for evil, is 
 put into our hands, make it all-important that our men- 
 tal and moral cultivation should keep pace with our* 
 material civilization. Many lights of hope and promise 
 are shining upon the path that lies before us, and we 
 ma,y look forward to the future with cheerful trust. 
 But I cannot but think that there has manifested itself, 
 of late years, in various parts of the country, a growing 
 impatience of law, which certainly bodes no good. Law 
 is too often written and spoken of, as if it were the 
 arbitrary decree of some superior and irresponsible power, 
 and not the national reason and conscience, prescribing 
 rules of conduct to the national will. The same feeling 
 shows itself in a morbid sympathy with crime, summon- 
 ing the generous impulses of humanity on behalf of him 
 who has broken the law, and setting its face against 
 justice, as a tyrant and an oppressor. It inflames and 
 alarms the popular mind, by denunciations of imaginary 
 plots and impossible conspiracies against their liberties ; 
 it encourages the wolves and polecats of the press, in 
 their foul assaults upon the peace and good name of men 
 and women ; it directs the currents of popular prejudice 
 and popular passion against the judiciary, and would fain 
 paralyze the arm of justice, so that it may neither smite 
 the guilty nor protect the innocent. Restraints imposed 
 by religion ; restraints imposed by law, international or 
 municipal ; restraints imposed by reason of youth, and 
 restraints imposed by reason of sex, are all felt to be 
 evils. The largest amount of liberty is deemed to be, 
 
26 
 
 under all conditions, the greatest good, forgetting that 
 "everything that tends to emancipate us from external re- 
 straint, without adding to our own power of self-govern- 
 ment, is mischievous,"* and that if liberty with law be 
 the fire on the hearth, liberty without laAV is the fire on 
 the floor. Far be it from me to say that this is a gene- 
 ral tendency, or that the good sense of the country is 
 not a greatly preponderating element ; but I must appeal 
 to the observation of such of my audience as have reached 
 or passed the middle period of life, if the evil be not 
 one which has increased, is increasing, and ought to be 
 diminished ? The heat of party spirit warps the mirror 
 of the mind, so that it returns no true image, and the dis- 
 turbing force of a near irritation unsettles the habitual 
 movements of the reason; but it is hard to believe that a 
 reflecting man, in his sober senses, can entertain the 
 notion that any danger is to be apprehended, in our coun- 
 try, from the excess or oppression of law. Our perils lie 
 not that way. It is more likely that the explosive force 
 of the principle of liberty will shatter the vessels which 
 contain it, than that the vessels by their solidity and 
 compression will prevent the due expansion of the princi- 
 ple itself. If there be any descendant of the Pilgrims 
 who gives his hand in aid of popular violence, directed 
 against the law, whether it be to destroy an abolition 
 press, to rescue a fugitive slave from the hands of jus- 
 tice, or to commit an assault upon the person and pro 
 perty of the representative of a foreign power, he dishonors 
 the blood which flows in his veins. He has read their 
 ♦ Goethe. 
 
27 
 
 lives and their writings in a spirit as perverse as that in 
 ■which they read the word of God, when they found in 
 it a warrant for selling the wife and son of Philip into 
 slavery. 
 
 The study of history rebukes the pride of human rea- 
 son, by revealing marked disproportions between particu- 
 lar events and the consequences to which they lead. 
 The first forty years of the seventeenth century were fruit- 
 ful in striking occurrences and remarkable men. Charles 
 II. was born in 1630. When he had reached an age to un- 
 derstand the rudiments of historical knowledge, we may 
 imagine his royal father to have commissioned some grave 
 and experienced counselor of his court to instruct the fu- 
 ture monarch of England in the great events which had 
 taken place in Europe, since the opening of the century. 
 Upon what themes would the tutor of the young prince 
 have been likely to discourse '? He would have dwelt upon 
 the struggle between Spain and the Netherlands j and 
 upon the Thirty Years' War in Germany, in which the 
 fortunes of a daughter of the House of Stuart were so in- 
 volved. He would have quoted the spirited speech of 
 the English princess, that she would rather eat dry bread 
 as the wife of a king, than live in luxury as the wife of 
 an elector — and would have recalled the sorrow that fell 
 upon the heart of England when the news came of the 
 disastrous battle of Prague. He would have painted the 
 horror and dismay which ran through France at the as- 
 sassination of Henry the Fourth. He would have traced 
 the glorious career of Gustavus Adolphus, step by step, 
 and lingered long upon the incidents of liis last fight — 
 
28 
 
 hoAV the king went into battle singing a hymn of Luther's ; 
 how the deep-voiced chorus rolled along the files of his 
 army, and with what rage and grief the Swedes fell upon 
 the foe when they saw the riderless horse of their beloved 
 leader rush madly through their ranks. He would have 
 attempted to convey to his young pupil some notion of 
 the military genius of Maurice of Nassau, of the vast po- 
 litical capacity of Cardinal Richelieu, and of the splendor 
 and mystery that wrapped the romantic life of Wallen- 
 stein. But so seemingly insignificant an occurrence as 
 the sailing of a few Puritans from Delpli Haven, in 
 the summer of 1620, would doubtless have been en- 
 tirely overlooked ; or, if mentioned at all, the young 
 prince might have been told^ that in that year a con- 
 gregation of fanatical Brownists, who had previously 
 left England for Holland, sailed for North Virginia ; and 
 that;, since that time, many others of the same factious and 
 troublesome sect had followed in their path, and that 
 their project of emigration had so far succeeded, as to en- 
 able them to send home many cargoes of fish and peltry. 
 But with our eyes, we can see that the humble event was 
 the seed of far more memorable consequences than all 
 the sieges, battles, and treaties of that momentous period. 
 The efiects of those fields of slaughter hardly lasted 
 longer than the smoke and dust of the contending armies ; 
 but the seminal principles which were carried to America 
 in the Mayflower, which grew in the wholesome air of 
 obscurity and neglect, are at this moment vital forces in 
 the movements of the world, the extent and influence of 
 which no political foresight can measure. Ideas which. 
 
29 
 
 for the first time in the history of mankind, took shape 
 upon our soil, are the springs of that contest now going 
 on in Europe between the Past and the Future, the end of 
 which no man can see. May God inspire us and our rul- 
 ers with the wisdom to preserve and transmit, unimpaired, 
 those advantages secured to us by our remote position, 
 and by the fact that we started without the weary bur- 
 dens and perplexing entanglements of the Past. May 
 no insane spirit of propagandism lead us to take part in 
 alien contests. May we throw into the scale of strug- 
 gling freedom, iiot the sword of physical force, but the 
 weight of a noble example — the moral argument of a 
 great people, invigorated but not intoxicated by their lib- 
 erty — a poAver which, though unsubstantial, will yet, like 
 the uplifted hands of Moses upon Horeb, avail more 
 than hosts of armed men. 
 
 We have met here to-day, drawn together by the sen- 
 timent of antiquity ; but what a span is the life of New 
 England, compared with the life of the world ? There 
 are persons now living, who have conversed with a vener- 
 able man, who remembered to have seen Peregrine White, 
 who was born on board the Mayflower. By a fact like 
 this we seem to be brought near to the event which we 
 are commemorating. But if antiquity be measured, not 
 by the lapse of dead years, but by the beatings of the 
 heart of national life, we have a right to feel and to ex- 
 press the sentiment. The relation of time exists only in 
 the mind. Thirty generations of the hybernating sleep 
 of China, are not longer than two crowded centuries of 
 
30 
 
 energetic Nevr England. * We take pride in the material 
 prosperity of our country, and we have a right to do so ; 
 but on this occasion let that feeling be tempered with a 
 softer and gentler sentiment. Let the remembrance of 
 the past solemnize the joy of the present. Let the 
 thoughts awakened by the sufferings and sacrifices of our 
 fathers, take the shape of gratitude for our blessings and 
 submission in our trials. As you return to your com. 
 fortable homes, and greet the smiling faces of your chil- 
 dren around your well-spread boards, let your hearts be 
 stirred with a fresh sense of thankfulness, when you think 
 of the piercing winds that chilled the Pilgrims, and of 
 the huiiger that wasted their strength. You have read 
 of the sufferings of their first winter — how, under the 
 exposures and privations of their new mode of life, one 
 after another sickened and died, so that when the spring 
 came, one-half of their whole number had been gathered 
 to their last sleep. If separation from those we love be 
 bard to us, living in ease and comfort, walled about with 
 security, with such fullness of life around us, what must 
 it have been to them, that handful of men and women, 
 set upon the edge of a wilderness dark with unnumbered 
 apprehensions, when the removal of each face was a sen- 
 sible diminution of their common stock of cheerfulness 
 and hope ! Would that the last moments of those thus 
 early called could have been soothed with a foreknowledge 
 of the great works that were to follow them ! Would 
 that the dim eyes of the dying Carver had been permitted 
 
 * " Better fifty yearg of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." — Ten- 
 nyson. 
 
31 
 
 to see the things which we now see ! Would not so mag- 
 nificent an apocalypse have awakened a glow of rapture 
 and exultation, not fading away even before the glories 
 of the Beatific Vision ! And if it be permitted to those 
 who have passed into the skies, to recall the life of earth, — 
 if there be sensitive links of memory vibrating between 
 time and eternity — may we not feel an assurance that 
 our fathers are with us, in spirit, at this hour, and that 
 throbs of mortal joy are mingling with the deep peace of 
 those serene abodes ? 
 
 Men of New England ! Sons of the Pilgrims ! Let 
 not the fleet angel of this hour leave us without a bless- 
 ing. If the memories of this day have softened and melt- 
 ed your hearts, stamp upon them, before they grow cold, 
 some image of ancestral worth. Rich are the benedic- 
 tions which have fallen upon our heads from these cover- 
 ing heavens. With us, the God of our fathers has no 
 controversy. He does not try our faith by making noble 
 efforts fruitless, and heroic sacrifices imavailing. He has 
 set no perplexing chasms in our path, between the pur- 
 pose and the work. With us, well-doing is happiness, 
 and duty is another name for prosperity. Great is the 
 debt we owe to the Past ; great is the trust committed to 
 us for the Future. We can pay that debt — we can dis- 
 charge that trust — only by working faithfully in the Pre- 
 sent. The stately march of our laws and speech, which 
 began at the rock of Plymouth, will ever move in the 
 paths of honor and of peace, so long as it follows that 
 great guiding light which led the Pilgrims into their land 
 of promise. 
 
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