f OUli FA:\riLV OF STATKS. ORATION l)KMVKHi:i) IJKFoitj: TUK /4^u- PHI BKTA KAPPA SOCIETY AMHERST COLLEGE, NEIIEMIAII ADAAfS D. 1). BOSTON AND (".MBRIlXJi; : JAMES MUNllO': AND COMl'ANV. ' Gass L^71 OUK FAMILY OF STATES. , ^37«> on_A.Tio:N ^■•^ a DKLIVEUEI) liEFOUK THK PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY ^J-f ■" AMHERST COLLEGE, BY NEIIEMIAH ADAMS, D. D. BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE: JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY • ^ 18G1. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by James Munroe and Company, in the Cleric's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY 11. O. HOUGHTON. Boston, Dec. 7, 18G0. Rev. N. Adams, D. D. Dear Sir, — Having seen extracts from your P. B. K. Oration at Amherst, and believing that its circulation just now will be timely and useful, we respectfully ask permission to issue it in pamphlet form. Very truly yours, James Munuoe & Co. Boston, Dec. 11, 1860. Messi-s. James Munroe & Co. Gentlemen, — The Oration was delivered in August 1858, by request of the Society, at the failure of one who had been appointed to the service the previous year. There was but little time either to select the subject, or to write upon it ; and the sub- ject itself, I felt at the time, was not sufficiently of that literary cast which the occasion ordinarily required. But as I complied with the sudden call without apology, I will, in the same way, comply with your request, with only the above explanation, and without any additions to the manuscript, — glad that the theme has so much interest for one of our most eminent publishing houses in Boston at the present time. Yours for the Union, N. Adams. ORATION THERE is a theme of deep, rich interest to American scholars, indeed to every one who feels the spell and charm of social life, — and this occasion affords an opportunity to dwell upon it, as it should more frequently be contemplated, apart froui politics; — it is — our family of States. It is good to have men and things sometimes present themselves to us as this world appears to observers from other worlds — its smoke, dust, rough surfaces, transmuted into one pure orb, its sorrows and contentions hushed to that music of which it is said — " There's not the smallest orl) -wiruh thou hehoM'st, But in his motion like an anirel sings, Still ({uiring to the young-eyed eherubins." My theme, in the hands of one who couhl do it justice, would be — to quote from the same play, like those •' enchanted herbs" which Medea gath- ered, under the softest moonliglit, to ** renew (►Id yEson." 6 OUR FAMILY OP STATES. The God of our fathers has divided us, ac- cordino- to his own primeval idea of beauty and g"lory, as manifested in his own Israel, into States. The multiplicity in unity which, as sep- arate States under one confederacy, we enjoy, is a perpetual source of useful excitement, by the sense of individuality, and by the consciousness of relationship, which are both intensified through their mutual reaction. There is such a curious arterial, nervous system in our civil polity, that few Britons, who have not been in this country, and not all who have been here, can be made to understand our Federal and State Governments ; and foreigners are frequently making mistakes in judo;^ing of us on this account. It is difficult for a stranger to understand how it is that in the different States there can be so much that is pecuhar, created by peculiarities in the origin of each, its history, laws, customs, productions, and pursuits. It is a beautiful feature in our relationship as States, that in one branch of the National Government, the Senate, we see the smallest commonwealths admitted to an equal privilege with the largest. Delaware sends her two Senators : New York, Pennsylvania, sends no more. " There is little Benjamin with their ruler ; the princes of Judah and their council." All these commonwealths rejoice under one com- mon flag, into whose field one star after another OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 7 ascends almost as peacefully as the stars arise in the sky ; for though one and another has risen red, and through a horizon which was lowerino- it has soon passed into peaceful and full com- munion with its fellows. The American citizen, finishing a short tour on the continent of Eu- rope, and the flag of his country first greeting his eye on some American highland, finds himself counting — so peaceftdly has it come to pass — whether there is one more star in the field of that flag than when he left home; and yet that quiet star may symholize the addition of a State to the American Union as picturesque as Ger- many, and larger than France. Thus we live, " U Pluribiis TJmim^' the Custom-House asserting the national prerogative in all the seaports, and no commonwealth collecting a farthing of tribute from the merchantmen for itself; and yet each State having a life of its own, which makes the outgoings of the morning and evening there, to rejoice. Each separate State has its own organic life ; it is a little world of itself. How it came to pass that the States were made willing to be confeder- ated as they now are, what jealousies there were at ceding to the general government its necessary constitutional powers, and how these j)owers were yielded, as it were, inch by inch, and how these young, sovereign commonwealths each sj)oke and 8 OUR FAMILY OP STATES. felt, in doing it, as men would who might be in danger of having their personal identity and their consciousness invaded, is too familiar to need more than a passing allusion. Few things are more interesting than to become well acquainted with one of these States. There you will learn new tales of early heroic adventure, legends, Scandinavian mounds, stones marked, or placed, mysteriously, and carrying you back, per- haps, to Asia and hoary antiquity for their probable solutions ; rivers, each with its romantic rise, and course, and tributary streams, themselves historical, and dear to many a town and village; mountains, caves, forests, prairies, natural bridges, springs ; and then a whole new Flora and Fauna; new kinds of fishes, curious geological formations, mar- vellous foot-prints of man, beast, or bird; great, solemn marks on the hill-tops in the rocks ; the arts adapting themselv^es to the local features of that State ; its life in the wilds, and, not far off, its city -life; its old families and their history; its early records, its historical collections, its modern changes, its gems of beauty in the shape of dwellings and pubhc edifices and gardens ; its old graveyards and new cemeteries ; here and there some idioms, or a mere shibboleth of pro- nunciation, which link a portion of the people with some old history, and which serve to identify them ; and then the going forth of the seasons OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 9 with their diversified liibors and fruits, the clinui- tolog-y, the sunsets, all seemingly unlike those with which the day pronounces elsewhere its bene(hc- tion ; and the ordering of the constellations, which encamp and march there by apparently new arrangements; old ocean itself consenting to the sovereignty of that State by answering to some name with which the discoverers and early settlers baptized it ; and the festivals, the articles of food peculiar to that region, the style of personal beauty and manners, the fashions ; the great as- semblies, where the distinguished men of that region appear; in short, the innumerable ways in which natural and moral and social beauty, there, as Wordsworth says, " is spread o'er the earth, In stray gifts, to be claimed by whoever shill find; While a rich, loving kindnes?, redundant and kin'l, Moves all nature to gladness and mirth." And then, withal — for what were music without the minor key ? — the histories of sadness, the controversies, the courts of law, the modes of funerals, and the customs of mourning, — all these, and unutterably more, go to make uj) the goings- on of life, distinct, uncommunicated life, in each and every one of these thirty-three nations which are called States. Let a man take one of them, Maine, for example, and give himself to the 10 OUR FAMILY OF -STATES. pleasurable study of that youngest, yet most majestic of the Atlantic States ; or let him thoroughly understand the State of New York, where, as though it were an earthly patent-office, the Creator has caused almost everythino- great to make its record ; and he will enlarge his mind, and be filled with resources of pleasure, like that which Madame de Stael says every one has who learns a new language ; and when he visits the old world he will carry in his mind a useful scale of dimensions for viewing natural ob- jects, while thoughts of capability and future greatness here, will make him grateful for the good land which God has given him. We cover so many degrees of latitude and longitude that there are few productions of any clime which are not, or may not be, cultivated in the United States or their territories. Our prairies are objects of wonder to Europeans ; our forests and the changes of the leaf in autumn have attracted the notice of transatlantic poets. One of the most striking and beautiful traits of scenery in our part of the country is the large sheets of water which are constantly greeting the eye : — " ponds," alas ! the people call them ; but in Switzerland, or the north of England, they would be lakes, with romantic or classic names. We have lakes, properly so called, with an extent of coast embracing more miles than OUll FAMILY OF STATES. 11 even our seaboard ; sucli rivers, such a variety and extent of mines, such a diversified face of country, now regular without monotony, now ir- regular and wild without being precijjitous and uninhabitable, such mannnoth caves, such water- fiills, as are possessed by no other part of the globe. We have winter in all its dread majesty, and, also, beauty ; snow-storms wild as polar tempests, ice of sufficient thickness to survive transportation to the remotest east ; trees glazed with fairy frostwork like enchanted grottos and palaces, and cold sufficient to satisfy any love of extremes; and ere it comes, our wild birds, stretch- ing their flight to our Southern borders, remind us that wild flowers will bloom in one part of our land while the rigors of winter yet reign in another. We need only to know more of the land in which we dwell to feel enthusiasm for its natural endowments as great as that whicli Jias ever been felt by the men of any nation for the land of their birth. If there be a people in history who have occa- sion to be grateful, not to say proud, of their origin and ancestry, we, if true worth and true heroism are considered, are that people. Indeed, no nation ever had so much reason for gratitude and happiness in this respect. This is true whether we look to .Jamestown, or Maryland, or Pennsylvania; to Georgia with her Oglethorpe, 12 OUR FAMILY OF' STATES. or South Carolina Avith her Hug-uenots; or to the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, or to those Scotch-Irishmen who came to New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and other States, and are represent- ed to us in these days by Andrew Jackson and Calhoun. If we cannot say that the forefathers of New England, like the founder of the Hebrew nation, went out, not knowing whither they went, it is because they went out with the certain knowledge of having a wilderness for their home, not with hope alternating with fear as to tlieir destination ; but with positive assurance of hard- ship and trials. Like the Hebrew patriarchs, in- deed, "by faith they dwelt in tabernacles;" wild Indians eying them from behind the trees, and watching on the hills for the smoke of new^ ham- lets, to guide their attacks ; their cooking-uten- sils hung over the fire on poles between the trees ; " the bullock," as one of their writers says, •' lowing in the shed, and the lion answei'- ing him from the thicket ; " for " there be Lyons here," says another ; exploration, sickness, death, Indian wars only deepening their confidence in God, who, they said, had honored them by calling them to follow Christ into a waste, howling wil- derness. If you wish for rudeness and barbarity in hardship, for the origin of a State, did Rom- ulus and Remus lie at the breast of such a wolf as the Pilgrim Fathers did at Plymouth ? If OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 18 you seek for motives as giving- chaiacter to an enterprise, all the conquerors of the glohe may not he named in comparison with those wlio, not for territory, nor for gold-mines, nor as adven- turers, nor as shipwrecked huccaneers, came here not only for freedom to worship God, hut, as King James's Plymouth Charter says, that they might "reduce such savages as they should find wander- ing in desolation and distress, to civil society and the Christian religion." While remote antiquity and fabulous tradition have obscured the oriofin of many kingdoms, the history of the Pilgrims is so identified with the history of England, be- sides being in itself distinct and well defined, that it furnishes more materials for the fancy, and more that impresses the imagination, than any veiled history, however romantic, attbrds. Still, if we need the effect of obscurity in our begin- ning to gratify the imagination, we have it in those remarkable surmises respecting this conti- nent, which seem to have existed so many ages before it was known. There is a singular allu- sion in the writings of the Latin poet. Seneca, about the beginning of the Christian era, to an undiscovered continent. " The time will come," he says, " in remote years, when the ocean will unloose the j)resent boundaries of nature, and a great country will ap})ear. Another Typhis will discover new worlds, and Tliule will no longer 14h our family -of states. be the limit of the earth." The Elysiaii Fields, spoken of by Homer and Horace, were imag- inary islands- west of Africa ; and thus there existed in the human mind, ages since, a pre- sentiment that discovery was not yet exhausted. Columbus insisted that the balance of the globe required us to believe in the existence of this continent. In a book published at Boston in 177^5 called " America known to the Ancients," allusion is made to the circumstance that Hanno, the Carthaginian general, had sailed thirty days westward from the pillars of Hercules, (or Straits of Gibraltar,) and the supposition is entertained that he must have seen this continent, or the Western or West India Islands. But if it were so, tradition, like people who were raised from the dead, was made to hold her peace respecting it, till, in the progress of human events, a suit- able people was raised up to be the progenitors of a nation on these shores. God did not open the gates of this western continent to such a people as the Moors fleeing from Spain, nor to wandering adventurers from the dark-minded hordes of continental Europe or of Asia. Fer- dinand and Isabella the Catholic, were not per- mitted to make settlements on this territory. Spanish America, our elder sister, was prevented ^ from invading this future home of the English Pilgrims. The Cabots, with their Bristol crews, OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 15 which had for many years been employed in the Icelandic fisheries, completed the work wiiich Co- lumbus had left unfinished, and in time the land was planted with men, the like of whom, as set- tlers, the world had never seen. As time rolls on, and distance and its enchantments multiply, our poets and tale-writers, the writers of songs and ballads throughout the States, will have sources of inspiration to their patriotism in the national origin and history, the associations with which, like the fountains of the great deep in its genesis, are now slowly strengthening themselves till they become profound and wide for the illim- itable range of fancy. While the increase of population in Great Britain for ten years was three hundred thousand, for tlie same time in this country it was seven hundred and fifty thousand. If we were like the population of India or China, where human beings are measured, as it were, by the acre or mile, our great increase would be important to the eye of political economy only as presenting so many more mouths for some great staple of food. But as we shall continue to need something besides rice, and something more luxu- rious than cotton cloth, with our present rate of increase we shall draw^ largely upon the resources of the whole earth. The United States contain three million four hundred thousand square miles, 16 OUR FAMILY OF^ STATES. while England and Scotland contain only ninety thousand. The State of Maine is as large as the whole of Scotland ; Georgia could hold Eng- land and Wales. And yet the British posses- sions on this continent are a larger territory than the United States. National greatness is surely not reckoned by the square mile, nor by popula- tion. The remotest East may yet look to us as the great central power in the commercial world. When Tyre ceased to be the emporium of ancient commerce, it was a greater shock to the commercial world than it would be if bills of exchange on Boston and New York, instead of London, should be the familiar symbols of trade. We shall no doubt see further illustra- tions of the divine purposes which ])laced this western continent by itself between two oceans, and kept it secluded till the world was able to people it with a seed which should be w^orthy to fulfil its great destiny. Our afternoon has not yet come ; and if God be for us, it will never come. As the convexity of the earth is so grad- ual that the eye does not perceive it, so the great career of this nation may have no assignable zenith. God has not appointed nations to wrath any more than individuals ; he is no more willing that nations should perish than men. A nation's life may not hereafter necessarily be like human life with its infancy, manhood, old age and death. OUR FAMILY OF STATES. ]J The tides of commerce breaking* open new ports for trade, and piling- sand bars, as it were, at the mouths of harbors, it is true, bring- decay to nations, and give importance and renown to others. But Venice and the Dutch Repubhc will not, in their decline, be the symbols of this nation, if, with our greater natural and social advantages, we fear God ; and especially if we propagate the Gospel in the earth — the surest means of maintaining it at home, by a law analogous to that which connects exports with the prosperity of agriculture and manufactures. If we do this, there is enough in our natural, social, political constitution to excite the expec- tation of perpetual increase and prosperity, and, as the end of all and the highest honor to which man can attain, we shall be benefactors to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual interests of our fellow men. We have no titled dignity nor feudal proprie- torship to protect the influence of unworthy men. He who would rise to eminence by being the architect of his own fortune, must build that fortune as some require their bees to build their cells — in a glass house ; — so that the people know a man thoroughly, his going out, his coming in, his down-sitting and his up-rising. No public speaker, ancient or modern, ever had an audience better fitted to inspire him, or 18 OUR FAMILY OF STATES. to gratify his best ambition, than he who, speak- ing;' on any pubhc occasion, from a platform, or pulpit, in a city, or village, at the opening of a railroad, or in behalf of Washington's tomb, consecrating a cemetery, or naming a New England hill, is conscious, as every American speaker may be, that, if his words be worthy of attention, he may almost think of being lis- tened to as well-nigh instantaneously as sound can travel, by a whole nation such as this. If he or his theme awakens the general regard, he may, by the slightest effort of imagination, see two oceans commanding silence on their shores, that they may listen. " no ripple breaks the reach, But silvery waves go noiseless up the beach." There is an image of that audience, however, which may come to him while he speaks, more subduing still, and that is, a group of thirty- three sisters. As the goddess of beauty came in a cloud to a Grecian warrior in battle, or as one, pursuing some great and good enter- prise or performing some act of love, catches a sight of a constellation which he and the family had, years ago, chosen for their cyno- sure, the American orator, with the image of all our States present to his mind, feels his " noble rage " mount higher, and, if he has a OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 19 large heart, lie will speak as only he can speak whose thoughts are the offspring and pledges of love. What names we have ! Of all the names of nations there is none so heautiful as ours. There is a household charm ahout the words which compose it, and still they are the name of a mighty people. " God brought him out of Egypt; he hath, as it were, the strength of a unicorn." The masculine pride which loves to give feminine titles to noble objects, and gratifies its love of beauty and grace in doing so, has clothed our stalwart Commonwealths, many of them, with maidenly associations in their names. " The Old Do.iilnion " is Viroj-inia. The State which was like a rampart of cotton bales to the Britisli cannon, with Old Hickory's arm over her, is Louisiana. The brave advocate and example of toleration on a large scale, the daugh- ter of Lord Baltimore, is crowned with the name of Maryland ; Florida, with flowing garb and a certain Seminole air of beauty, and the Carolinas, and States with names — found in every house- hold — which are mere " matters of fact," and Indian names, enshrining some legend or natural feature, or some word or " smile " of the Great Spirit, — all these belong to our household. All these wait on the instructions of one whom the people delight to honor. Perhaps they send and 20 OUR FAMILY OP STATES. call him each within her borders, and with elo- quence inspired by the ever-varying associations with their personal histories, he makes their hearts burn within them, and binds them closer tog-ether in the bonds of household love, as he rehearses the character and deeds of one whose name awakens throughout the world an all but supernatural reverence. If any age since the crolden age of Greece furnishes anything that brings to mind her wandering bard, or the fath- ers of the drama, or the orators that swayed her States, it is to be seen in our day in a son of New Enoland, going from one great household to another of this family of States, and breathing the enchantment of domestic love upon the East and West, the North and South. What other land o-ives just such opportunity for such a spec- tacle 1 This man and his mission are a good exponent of our domestic, national relationship ; and the example has, perhaps, its greatest interest in its immeasurable applicability to other things of the same and various kinds which will contrib- ute to the healthful life and permanence of our nation. It is one of the greatest things which can be done for States or individuals, to make them love one another. Love is diplomatist, ar- bitrator, plenipotentiary. The farmer was right, indeed, who told his neighbor that good fences were an excellent means of good neighborhood ; OUR FAIMILY OF STATES. 21 but tlie fences being- as they should be, we need to think of sometliing^ else besides poachers and the impounding of cattle ; nor would we consider our relation to each other, as a fjiniily of States, as having its great exani])le in the habits of the bears, who peacefidly " spend the season of their hybernation in adjoining dens." What is life to a misanthrope or churl ? It is not good for man to be alone, — neither for the common- wealth, nor for the individual. Japan is alone. Let scholars, whose desire for the interchange of thoughts should not be surpassed by the enthu- siasm of men in the industrial arts, dwell more on the inestimable value of a land naturally af- filiated in all its parts like this, to one wdio has anything to say which deeply moves himself. As light and sound are dependent upon an at- mosphere for transmission, fellowship between the different parts of a country is essential to those who desire to impress themselves on the minds and hearts of their fellow men. That which is true of the American orator in this respect, has a more impressive illustration in the American writer. Our country, as a field for the writer of the English tongue, is ap|)reciated by British authors ; nor is there one who w^ould not be happy if, retaining all his British advan- tages, he (!ould have our North and West and South for an ima^e of his readers, as he writes. 22 OUR FAMILY OF -STATES. Our country in its literary surface, so to speak, has an emblem in the surface of the best agri- cultural parts of England, where a traveller from New England is deeply impressed with the green hedges which serve them instead of stone walls; so that while you see boundaries all over the landscape, they seem to be for ornament rather than for defence ; they are, it is true, disjunc- tive, and yet they are conjunctions disjunctive ; they look like graceful apologies for any seeming difference between " meum and tuimi " ; they give softness and repose to the whole landscape. So it is theoretically with our States. It is this family of States, to whom you, fellow-students, are to send forth the creations of your genius and talent — the fruits, in every form, of your literary industry ; this congregation of nations, in every one of which, if we be worthv the name of scholars, we shall find more than a welcome — an enthusiasm enhanced by the family-love which, below the alluvium of jeal- ousies and alienations, dwells deep in the heart of each commonwealth toward sister States. When an eminent sculptor arose, not many years since, in the comparatively new State of Ohio, the old States had one thrill of delight which they could not have felt if Old Virginia, or the Old Bay State, had been his home. They forgot for the time that he was born in Vermont ; for OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 28 he bad passed through several different occupa- tions in Ohio, and it was there that he came forth as sculptor. Let any man put f school in the land should contain the seals of all our States ; thus assisting- our children to heconie familiar with the synihols of other States besides their own. Lessons in the knowl- edg-e of one another would thus be learned. There should also be more interchang-es of portraits and busts of their distinguished men by the several States ; for it is, after all, an insufficient view of the good which the repre- sentative arts can accomplish, to adorn our libraries and cabinets, as we oug-ht indeed always to do, with the likenesses of our own g-reat and good men. Public acts of amenity, graceful expressions of good feeling, and obei- sances, between public men and States, have a powerful influence on private character and hap- piness. There is a certain oil of which we read, which is the most potent of oils., and that is, — The Oil of Gladness. One drop of it has a wonderful effect to stop the grating of the individual heart ; would that it could be applied by us to one another more frequently ; it is good for States and for public men in their intercourse with each other. More frequent allusions, in a grateful spirit, to our inestimable common blessings, the recognition of good in each other, a sympathetic and discriminating manner of treating the sorrows aiul trials which we are severally called to bear, would make 26 OUR FAMILY OF STATES. these States the happiest nation on the face of the earth. In the language of a sacred poet, — " O, may I see thy tribes rejoice!" God hasten the reign of good feeHng. It may be presumption to think that this union is indestructible ; for nations which have already perished teach us that, in ourselves and apart from obedience to God, our national fabric can easily be dissolved. But this land seems to be made for the human mind to exult in the fullest religious and civil liberty, to run the race of intellectual and moral greatness unassisted by adventitious helps, unimpeded by proscriptions of birth, or any private or social position. A very humble boy may be sitting on one of those seats, his feet not reaching the floor, who may be in his day the star by which this nation will steer her course to further renown. ^ We have had, and no doubt shall continue to have, our family controversies ; one State and an- other considering itself aggrieved, and one part of the family espousing or contesting its claims ; but we are yet the United States, and we must be, or dwindle, all of us, to petty sovereignties, vexatious one to another, a by- word among the nations. One effect of dismemberment would be to ex- cite prejudice and dislike in the people of the several States against each other. Nothing is of easier and more rapid growth than prejudice. OUR FAMILY OF STATES. £7 We should set loose all the biul passions of hiiinaii nature, with all their meannesses and bitterness and deadly strife, should we ever become hostile commonwealths. We could withstand the world in aruis ; but our peril is in ourselves. In the hei<>bt of prosperity we may, nevertheless, by being alienated one from another, fulfil these words : " Hearts that the world in vain has tried, And sorrow but more closely tied, That stood the storm when waves were rouoh, Yet, in a sunny hour, fall off ; — Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity." But there is a secret framework, of which most of us are as unconscious as we are of the ligaments in the body until they suffer damage, by means of wdiich we are held strongly together. Going into a paper-mill in Worcester county not long since, the proprietor, in answer to my in- quiry, told me that he made paper only for the newspaper press ; and in reply to the question, what newspaj)er establishments he supphed, he said that for fourteen years he had made paper for a New Orleans news[)a))er. It was an illus- tration of the way in which our States are bound together, and of the means, in part, by which they will be kept united. Differences of opinion, as we all know, have existed for the last fourteen years between Worcester county, Massachusetts, S8 OUR FAMILY OF -STATES. and New Orleans ; but, nevertheless, here was New Orleans sending her money to her opponent ; and her opponent was sending paper to her, on which to say whatever she mi^-ht please against her manufacturer. These things are stronger than the bars of a castle. A small electric cable, less than an inch in diameter, would be more powerful than the chain cables which moor frigates, to bind together the nations. We should be hopeful and cheerful. Instead of borrowing trouble, let us borrow largely of the future for joy and gladness, even at the risk of appearing a little fanatical ; for we shall then but counterpoise the little fanaticism in the other direction, which occasionally appears in various parts of the land. There were two partially in- sane brothers in one of the towns in this State many years ago, one of whom came into the meeting- house on the Sabbath, and putting his arm round a pillar, said, " In the name of God, I shall pull down this house." The people experienced some- thing corresponding to that which we call a panic ; but they were entirely composed by the turn of pleasantry which their feelings received when his brother stood upon his seat and cried out, " Let him try." He may have been as insane as his brother, but that house is yet standing. If in any section of the land where the in- ventive arts, rather than the sedative pursuits OUR FAMILY OF STATES. QQ of agriculture, exert their influence, the human mind is greatly stimulated, we must expect that, in many cases, evil will he in proportion to the good, as good things and evil things growing together on the same soil are apt to he corre- spondingly great. We all know, for example, that if a soil can hoast of the largest sugar-cane, it will also he found to have the largest alliga- tors ; and those qualities which make that soil peculiar, will cause its monsters to he proportion- ately endowed. If, therefore, the human mind is greatly stimulated in any section, that people must not think that they are ahsolutely worse than all nations, or sections, hut must ascrihe it to those general influences which make all things among them great, and therefore they must not he astonished if they have distinguished puhlic thieves, and large specimens of unreasonahle men. We have no Inquisitions, nor laws against freedom of speech ; we suffer men to speak as they please if so he that they stop this side of hlasphemy ; else the law is invoked ; hut fanatics are usetully employed, under Providence, as de- monstrators of dangerous errors ; they teach us most impressively the ruinous consequences of their follies ; all is said which can he said on their side, and so we hecome more firndy estah- lished in the truth, and we are continually gain- ing converts to us in those who are afraid to 30 OUR FAMILY OF. STATES. follow them any nearer to the gulf of perdi- tion. We must not fret ourselves because of evildoers. We must not be tempted, in any part of the land, to relinquish effort for the public refor- mation and general improvement, through dis- gust or impatience at difficulties which every- where demand courage and strength, and, withal, the meekness of wisdom. It is a bad sign when any detract from the reputation of their own immediate portion of this great national inheritance, instead of laboring faithfully and patiently for its prosperity and honor. The blessings of God's providence are distributed with wonderful consideration and benevolence to the various parts of the land. As Samoset cried to our forefathers at their landing-place, " Welcome, Englishmen ! " we wish to unite with the other States and make our whole land one Plymouth Rock to the weary and sorrowful of all lands. We look with the deepest interest into that wonderful kaleidescope, our Western population, to see what types of character are to present themselves ; nor will any of us be jealous if the seat of literary em- pire among us should pass beyond the moun- tains. We also confess with pleasure that which we have not unfrequently seen, that a Southern constitution with a Northern training OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 81 affords a specimen of niiiid and manners, and of all that is beautiful and charming in man and in woman, such as cannot he surpassed in the whole human family. Our rich men desire to vie with their brethren through the land in consecrat- ing their wealth to the founding and endowing of literary institutions, thus building themselves im- perishahly into the minds of all generations. As every state and nation has its style of character, we desire to be emulous with other States in ev- erything which makes a people cultivated, urbane, and gives them that gentleness which makes us great. We may be allowed, without the charge of vanity, to think that we have here in New England some fruits of experience which are wor- thy of consideration and respect. As our Penob- scot foresters observe the moss which the trees collect on their north sides, and by this natural compass recover their way, so we of the North, if we have less of sun, and of rank and rapid growth than other parts of the land, have gath- ered about us some things which make it not wholly unsafe for others to walk by them. — The subject is full of delicate and practical rela- tions ; so that, if you find yourselves liable to take merely ideal views of things, be so good as to bear in mind the cautionary remark of a Professor of Natural Philosophy in one of our Colleges, many years since, whose exposition of 82 OUR FAMILY OF- STATES. some interesting law in mechanics excited an en- thusiastic feeUng in the class. " But, gentlemen," said the teacher, '' consider, that while this appears well in words, you will have to allow at least one fifth for friction." Our subject is one of those which, in the very nature of things, involves friction. But the class were resolved to enjoy themselves over the discovery which they were contemplating ; and so they continued their ex- pressions of pleasure, notwithstanding the friction. As Balaam "lifted up his eyes, and saw Israel abiding in his tents according to his tribes, and the Spirit of God came upon him," that same Spirit can fill the heart of every misan- thropic prophet with love to these our tribes, and with visions of our future glory. The world itself will one day be seeking the union of its great families. Happy will it be if the final demonstration of its possibility, and the illustration of its beneficent effect, shall be found in these United States. As one puts a shell to his ear and fancies that he listens to the sea, our Union sings to our hearts not merely of one small shore, but of our whole race as a future Family of States. Anti-type of God's Israel ! " Rejoice, Zebulon, in thy going out, and Issachar in thy tents." Pleiades among the nations ! Land of Com- monwealths ! " Thou shalt yet call thy walls. Salvation ! and thy gates, Praise ! " Jan 24 1861