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ADDRESS 
 
 MR. ALEXANDER DIMITRY, i«o^ ^b«3> 
 
 THE UNION LITERARY SOCIETY 
 
 WASHINGTON CITY, 
 
 JULY 4, 1839. 
 
 WASHINGTON : 
 
 BLAIR AND RIVES, PRINTERS. 
 1839. 
 

Washington, July 6, 1839. 
 
 Sir: We have the honor to communicate to you the following reso- 
 lution, adopted by the Union Literary and Debating Society, and to 
 request your compliance with the same : 
 
 ^'Resolved, That this Society have been highly gratitied with the 
 address delivered bv Mr. Dimitry this day; that it is their desire the 
 same should be published ; and that a committee be appointed to com- 
 mauicate to Mr. Dimitry this resolution, and request a copy of the 
 address for publication." 
 
 We remain, most respectfully, 
 
 Your obedient servants and fellow members, 
 
 Alf.x. Dimitry, Esq. 
 
 T. W. DONOVAN, 
 
 J. DENT, 
 
 THOS. R. HAMPDEN. 
 
 Washington City, July 6, 1839. 
 
 Gentlemen : In compliance with the resolution of the Society, con- 
 veyed to me through your note of this date, I have the honor to trans- 
 mit to you a copy of the address delivered before them on the 4th 
 instant. 
 
 Your obedient servant and fellow member. 
 
 ALEX. DIMITRY. 
 Messrs. T. W. Donovan, I 
 
 J. Dent, > Com. U. L. Society. 
 
 Thos. R. Hampden, j 
 
A D D R K S S . 
 
 Fellow citizens and associates 
 
 of the Union Literary tSocieti/ : 
 That an occasional recurrence to first principles of 
 action is necessary to the adjustment of our conduct, 
 may be laid down as an axiom equally true in 
 politics as it is in morality. The influences of time 
 but too often obliterate the impressions received from 
 early motives, and as frequently leave us without the 
 friendly guide that should regulate our actions in life ; 
 while, on the contrary, sober and honest examina- 
 tions of the original maxims impress us with a deeper 
 conviction of their correctness, whether moral or 
 pohtical — dispel our irresolutions when v/e doubt, and 
 rectify our obliquities where we have erred. Hence 
 it is binding on us, periodically, to revive the recol- 
 lection of the motives which impelled our forefathers 
 to declare their independence, and prompted them to 
 effect the revolution. Our duty to ourselves and to 
 our country invites us to look back to its rise and 
 progress, and to make an application of its principles 
 to the government of our actions. A familiarity with 
 the means which called us into national existence 
 alone can identify us with our national importance, 
 and point out the way of guarding our republican 
 institutions. The impulse given to civil commotions 
 often grows out of the factious spirit of demagogues, 
 who speculate on the name of liberty, or the vicissi- 
 
6 
 
 tildes of revolution. Ours, on the sliglitest view of its 
 origin and developement, will prove to have sprung 
 out of a purer and a holier source. Ten years before 
 British extortions had roused the resentment of tlie 
 colonists, Condorcet, with a wonderful prescience of 
 coming events, had foretold their schism from the 
 step-dame embraces of the metropolis. Indeed, a 
 bare advertence to the temper of the human mind, 
 betrayed in the restlessness of the eighteenth century, 
 and compared vvith the political systems of then 
 existing governments, will show that a great revolu- 
 tion was infallibly impending over the world. In 
 what part of the globe its outbreak could be expected, 
 was not sufficiently evident ; but of the imminence of 
 a mighty convulsion every thinking mind was satis- 
 fied. The absolute monarchies of Europe had reached 
 an exorbitance of unlineal power ; and the people were 
 every where weary with lavishing life to consolidate 
 the ambition of royal despots, and coining their hearts' 
 blood to gratify the luxuries of royal paramours. 
 Under these circumstances it was easy to foresee that 
 some change was inevitable ; while in two ways only 
 could its occurrence take place. It was necessary 
 that either the people themselves should have asserted 
 the principles of nature and of reason, gradually but 
 steadily proclaimed by the voice of philosophy ; or, 
 that governments should anticipate them, and model 
 their policy on the forms of popular opinion. 
 
 To have looked for the latter course would have 
 been to have expected an improbability : while the 
 corruption, the ignorance, and the perverseness of our 
 sometime rulers enforced a resort to the right of 
 
revolution. Hurling the memorable Oeclciratioii ot 
 Independence, to which you have just hstened. as a 
 war defiance to the monarchs of earth, our ancestors 
 summoned their oppressors to the arbitrament of their 
 wrongs ; and the full and rapid triumph of rational 
 liberty avenged the abuses of centuries, and settled the 
 rights of mankind. Had not the previously teeming 
 causes, to which I liave referred, hastened the maturity 
 of freedom, bare common sense had taught the colonists 
 that Englishmen, of cis-atlantic birth, derived from the 
 charter of nature precisely the same rights as those of 
 biiiglisbmen born under the meridian of Greenwich ; 
 and that a ditierence of seventy degrees of longitude 
 could neither abrogate moral obligations, nor defeat 
 natural rights. Better than their European fathers 
 were they, perchance, acquainted with the sacredness 
 of those rights, common to every individual of the 
 hmnan species, and among which they reckoned the 
 essential one of rejecting laws in which they had 
 not concurred, and withholdmg taxes unsanctioned by 
 their assent. The ministry, in fact, would seem to 
 have shaped their measures, in regard to this country, 
 on the supposition that Heaven had created America 
 like Asia, for the peculiar use and exclusive profit of 
 British aristocracy ; and prepared, beyond the western 
 seas, a vassal people, whom they could wield, in their 
 own good time, to subdue the liberties of European 
 England. They becked to the easy and venal repre- 
 sentatives of the English people ; and the colonies were 
 insulted by the violation of their laws, and ground 
 down by the imposition of a shameful tribute. Re- 
 pelling the insult with a spirit slow to anger, but 
 
8 
 
 tierce in its awakened wruth, our ancestors solemnly 
 declared iheir independence lioni the rule of England. 
 But not limited to this conntry only were the 
 eflects of that noble declaration. It burst, with the 
 crash of a thunder-bolt, over the heads of kings, 
 striking terror to their souls ; while, to the nations of 
 earth, it came over the ocean like a dithyramb, wild 
 and unexpected, yet breathing of freedom and hope. 
 It was at once the judgement and the sentence of 
 the strong-handed and powerful of the world. It told 
 the selfish and corrupt society of the day that the 
 measure of its wrongs had been filled, and its usages 
 and laws forever abjured. Then was seen, for the 
 first time, a people casting off the yoke of oppression, 
 and peacefully modelling such institutions and laws 
 as were best conducive to their happiness — institutions 
 based on the solemn acknowledgement of the natural 
 rights of man, and framed for the uninterrupted pre- 
 servation of those sacred rights. In the war which 
 broke out between two of the most enlightened nations, 
 one of them defended the imprescriptible rights of man- 
 kind ; while the other opposed the impious doctrine, 
 which subjects those rights to prescription, political 
 figments, and conventional rules. That great and 
 novel cause was pleaded before the tribunal of public 
 opinion, in the presence of assembled Europe. The 
 rights of man were victoriously sustained by our fore- 
 fathers in many a well-fought and triumphant battle- 
 field ; and as highly developed ui masterly writings, 
 which, circulating from the Ural mountains to the 
 chain of the Algarvian hills — from the shores of Ice- 
 land to the furthermost point of Sicily — reached the 
 
most degraded and enslaved of the nations of the old 
 continent. The spectres of human beings who fam- 
 ished in the midst of luxury and opulence — the artisan, 
 who wasted his muscle to strengthen the already strong- 
 hand of power — the peasant, who fertilized the furrow 
 that yielded no harvest for him and his — the very serf, 
 who nightly pillowed his head on his fetters — all 
 started to hear that they had rights ; and that, across 
 the waters of the Atlantic, there was a young and 
 generous people who dared vindicate and defend those 
 rights against the aggressions of a gigantic power. 
 Single-handed at first, unprovided with any of thei 
 appliances of war, they threw the energies of a holy 
 cause and the resolves of the purest patriotism in a 
 contest which challenges the annals of the world for 
 a parallel. Yet, in order that no virtue should be 
 wanting in the consecration of that hallowed strug- 
 gle, they avoided the improvidence and rashness that 
 broke forth into sudden insurrection, and exhibited 
 to the world the calm and unanimous resistance of 
 a people, mildly, though firmly, opposing the arro- 
 gations of power. They bore with the vexations 
 of England's mercenaries as long as they could be 
 endured, and held bacii: the blow of recrimination ; 
 sueing, but vainly sueing, for a redress of their 
 grievances. It was not till the moan of despair cried 
 to heaven for vengeance — till the winds of our hem- 
 isphere were burdened with the wail of suffering, 
 and until the danger of obedience became greater 
 than the worst evils of war, that they were compelled 
 to appeal to the God of battles. This was the last 
 Una of the patience of the colonists, and of the iiii- 
 2 
 
10 
 
 prudence of their ruler. The abuse of the power 
 vested in one individual clashed harshly with the 
 general idea of justice and the natural rights of man, 
 and led the people to prefer a legal form of govern- 
 ment to the will of delegated task masters. 
 
 Since the triumph of our revolution, European 
 speculatists, in their fanciful theories, have endeavored 
 to prove that the conduct of the colonists was illegal, 
 in forswearing their allegiance to Britain, and resisting 
 the assumed authority of Parliament. The attempt, it 
 must be confessed, comes rather unseasonably ; and 
 might, at best, were we so disposed, serve to point a 
 sarcasm. But it is an undeniable fact — and all the 
 fallacies of theorists cannot undo it — that the people of 
 this comitry were not instantly under the jurisdiction 
 of Parliament. They received from the King of Eng- 
 land the charter of their colonial institutions. By 
 mutual consent they organized their own assemblies — 
 invested them with all the powers of legislation for 
 their domestic government ; while their decrees were 
 sanctioned by the King, or ratified by his immediate 
 representatives, the Governors of the provincial settle- 
 ments. The only authority which Parliament could 
 ever claim, in relation to this country, was the power 
 of enacting laws restrictive of its commerce. Beyond 
 this, it had nothing to enforce. By a clause which, if 
 I mistake not, appears in every colonial charter, the 
 emigrants to this country were to enjoy all the rights 
 of Englishmen. Now, the first and most essential right 
 of the English people is a disposal of their property, or, 
 that which is equivalent to it, the enactment of laws 
 affecting property through the medium of their own 
 
11 
 
 representatives. To the House of Commons alone, 
 independent of the House of Lords, belonged the power 
 of appropriating revenue for the wants of the Govern- 
 ment, and, of course, of imposing and regulating tax- 
 ation. This same privilege was, therefore, exclusively 
 vested in the Commons of America — the immediate 
 representatives of this country. These representatives 
 were the members of their own Legislatures, elected by 
 themselves; and, consequently, in their legislative bodies 
 alone existed the right of creating imposts. The 
 British House of Commons possessed no control over 
 the domestic economy of the colonial Government; 
 its power expired with the limitations of its navigation 
 and trade. Even Junius himself, the warmest and 
 ablest advocate of the Grenville administration, tells us 
 that the right of taxation assumed by Parliament was, 
 at first, a right merely speculative — a right not intended 
 to be exercised. Indeed! aright merely speculative — 
 a right never to be exercised ! A doctrine so un- 
 intelligible, so closely verging on absurdity, requires 
 no comment, and almost demands an apology for its 
 introduction. 
 
 From this condensed statement of the question it 
 follows that this claim of Parliamentary supremacy, 
 against the will of the colonists, was equivalent to 
 an extortion, in resisting and resenting which our 
 ancestors were fully justifiable, both in a political and 
 moral relation. After years of remonstrance and efforts 
 towards conciliation, feehng justified in annulling a 
 compact unobserved by the other party, the inhabitants 
 of this country, goaded to insurrection by the wanton- 
 ness of royal hirelings, arose in their might to chastise 
 
12 
 
 the insolence of a licentious soldiery. With a cause, 
 the justice of which could silence the scruples of the 
 most conscientious asserter of " the right divine and 
 sacredness of kings," they nerved themselves for the 
 fight, and entered the lists mailed in a panoply that 
 mocked defeat, and armed with weapons which insured 
 success. With a virtuous and unshaken trust in their 
 God, they rushed to battle, and the Almighty showered 
 his blessings on the combined endeavors of virtue, 
 justice, and liberty. One proud trait marks their con- 
 duct througrhout the course of a conflict alike 
 unmatched by the severity of its privations and the 
 number of its sacrifices. With a singleness of purpose 
 which nothing could swerve, they rushed to the con- 
 test to right the wrong, and redeem the pledge which 
 they had given to mankind. And nobly, too, did they 
 redeem that pledge! Even while the present was 
 bristling with danger, and the future lowering with 
 death, the might of freedom's sword, unbroken and 
 unresting, was still seen in our fathers' hands, smiting 
 the scale of eternal justice, and swaying its beam on 
 the side of humanity and truth. 
 
 Of the close of that glorious struggle I need not 
 discourse. Oftiraes does "narrative old age" while 
 ftway the watches of the winter night, and fire the 
 ds^y dreams of our youth, with the recital of its thriUing 
 perils, its unmeasured hardships, and its final triumph ! 
 The scattered remnants of that maniple of heroes, 
 prouder than any Macedonian phalanx or Roman 
 cplj^^rt — the truly immortal battalion, who reared a 
 raimpart of stout and undaunted hearts around the 
 trampled rights of our land — are fast sinking into the 
 
13 
 
 grave ; and, as they totter to its endless rest, like the 
 old legionaries of Rome, flinging a last farewell to their 
 idol — morituri te salutant — they turn to the purer 
 image of our country, and hail it with a dying breath ! 
 
 We have, so far, in acquitting ourselves of our duty, 
 confined these remarks to the past of our country, and 
 the glorious achievement of the revolution. We trust 
 that it will not be deemed inappropriate to the occasion 
 on which we have met, to look into the probable social 
 results of that revolution, and the future effects that are 
 likely to flow from the substitution, for the doctrine of 
 divine right under which the monarch rules, of the 
 doctrine of revolutionary right, in virtue of which the 
 people enact their own laws. The sovereignty of the 
 people is the one positive and essential feature in our 
 Declaration of Independence ; and, by the triumphant 
 manner in which it was vindicated, and the practical 
 purposes to which it has been applied, it is, henceforth, 
 an established and indefeasible fact. The cotemporary 
 of truth, it is the loftiest idea that can have currency on 
 earth, and is at once the living and human translation 
 of the omnipotence of God himself. Wide of being, 
 in its essence, as some have asserted, the brute triumph 
 of physical force concentrated in majorities, it involves 
 the uiost philosophic doctrines to which the mind 
 can direct its speculations. It cannot, and shall not, 
 pass away from the earth until the Creator shall have 
 dissolved its elements, and recalled its tenants to hi$ 
 own eternity ! Such is the great truth developed, 
 and the firm conviction secured by the trials and 
 sacrifices of our ancestry. Under its influences we 
 feel the high-toi>ed dignity of am nature ; we give to 
 
14 
 
 the winds the fallacies of the sophist ; and bnng lo 
 the people soundly vigorous and nobly plebeian ideas, 
 like trusty weapons, to wage the war of freedom 
 against the assailers of its rights. I say sound and 
 vigorous ideas ; because, on their progress rests the 
 progress of human destinies. To look at the mere 
 superficies, or glance at the first appearance of things, 
 we might, perhaps, be led into a doubt of the effective 
 influence and continuous presence of truth. But take 
 human society in its essence and all its bearings ; 
 delve into its living and real powers ; dwell on the 
 universal and secular labors of man's intellect ; place on 
 the summit the sovereignty of the people as the very 
 perfection of the whole ; and we will find in the 
 picture a support for every daring, a reward for every 
 sacrifice, and a reason for every hope. Our general 
 feelings, our morals, the very essence of our institutions 
 and laws, and, in some respects, our arts and sciences, 
 are all logical deductions of the principle. As there 
 is nothing in man, as a social being, but what is 
 directly or indirectly derived from it ; so at no period 
 can there be any real and salutary improvement of the 
 individual or of society, unconnected with its exercise. 
 We are, therefore, satisfied in our own minds — though 
 the contrary be maintained by the gifted historian of 
 modern civilization* — that, far from being a stranger 
 to the social revolution, which is teeming in the womb 
 of futurity, that principle is its prime mover and cause. 
 It claims, now and henceforth, the improvement of 
 the condition of the masses, to whom ignorance, toil, 
 sufiering, and want, seem to have been allotted as 
 their share of our splendid social compacts. 
 
 ♦Guizot, Hist, de la Civilization moderne. 
 
15 
 
 It solicits laws based upon the religion of equal rights, 
 if not protective of labor against capital, and productive 
 of a more equitable distribution of the common wealth. 
 
 It requires that the few shall not wield, to their 
 almost exclusive interest, the administration of the 
 interests of all. 
 
 It demands that a flagrant system of legislation — 
 the eternal refuge of privileges, which we vainly try 
 to disguise under lying names — be not pursued to 
 the verge which makes " the rich richer, and poorer 
 the poor." 
 
 It entreats that the sum of happiness and comfort, 
 destined by the common Author for all his children, be 
 equally accessible to all; and that the fraternity of man- 
 kind cease to be a vvord of empty sound and galling 
 derision. 
 
 We must not, we dare not, deceive ourselves on 
 this head. The sovereignty of the people is not 
 merely the source of political power : it is also one 
 of the formulas of civil society ; better calculated than 
 any other to express the dignity of our nature, and 
 secure the welfare of our kind. Every society owes 
 to its worthy members the bread of the body — that is, 
 the means of labor ; and, to all, the bread of the spirit- 
 in other words, the means of acquiring knowledge. 
 All laws, or systems of law, therefore, which, in their 
 direct or indirect, remote or proximate tendency, shall 
 not be framed for the improvement of mankind, or 
 shall not have " the greatest good of the greatest 
 number" for their end, are evil and anti-social laws; 
 laws without principle, cohesion, or morality. 
 
 The fervor of our desires may warp our judgment 
 
16 
 
 as to the indication of the times ; yet, in the midst 
 of the indecisions which characterize our condition, 
 we cannot but mark the workings of a spirit, through 
 the artificial strata of society, which inspires hope 
 for the present, and promises better for the future. 
 Knowledge is daily penetrating the ranks of the 
 people ; its diffusion has never been more widely 
 spread. Where your partial legislation has not 
 sufficiently provided for it, the desire of the masses 
 grasps at it with intuitive energy. Knowledge, which, 
 from the origin of society, had passed from the hands 
 of privileged men to the mysterious shades of temples 
 and sanctuaries ; which had to be snatched away 
 from its religious obscurity, by the daring of a few 
 gifted minds ; which, once the property of the school 
 for centuries, after having been that of the priesthood, 
 settled down into a prerogative of the aristocracy ; 
 knowledge is now diffused over the world — attainable 
 by all, assuming all forms, and infusing itself into 
 all minds. Despots themselves appeal to its powers 
 for the maintenance of their sway ; and the absolute- 
 monarchs of Prussia and Austria have established 
 broad systems of education, perverted from its nobler 
 uses, to inculcate, in the minds of the people, the 
 doctrines of passive obedience to their masters' will. 
 But, inasmuch as our favored country is concerned, 
 this growing popularity of knowledge, after the only 
 truly popular revolution which has ever occurred, is 
 a blessing of Providence : it involves a link of cause 
 and effect, which it is important to trace out. 
 
 With the sum of human ideas, hoarded duHrig 
 three hundred years of intellectual travail, our fore- 
 
It 
 
 fathers purchased and paid our poUtical emancipation. 
 The legislative labors of the convention are, properly 
 speaking, the translation and fusion of previously ac- 
 quired political notions into a new form of polity. Our 
 Declaration of Independence having reinstated the 
 power and the dignity of the people, it sent that people 
 back to the progressive school of human knowledge and 
 human freedom. For the last twenty years we have 
 had an almost imperceptible change in the ideas of 
 society. Theories, all growing to a wider diffusion 
 of freedom, have resumed their course and their 
 experiments, while the knowledge that has been 
 acquired tends to a more universal spread. On one 
 side the theorist, the pioneer in the march of 
 intellect, tests new combinations of truth ; and the 
 people, on the other, achieve the mastery of already 
 recognized doctrines. These are parallel and equally 
 necessary operations of the mind, through the agency 
 of which a greater number of individuals will be 
 called to participate in the blessings of science. But, 
 the sway of society belonging almost exclusively to 
 intellect, we are urged to the conclusion that the 
 social evolutions must necessarily follow the intellec- 
 tual developement. As man, in his individual capacity, 
 is sovereign through the means of knowledge ; so are 
 the people, in their collective body, through the instru- 
 mentality of the same law : for the sovereignty of 
 the people, after all, is but the sovereignly of the 
 human mind, portioned among a majority, which 
 daily becomes more enlightened, and which increases 
 as it is better informed. 
 3 
 
18 
 
 Under the principles deduced from the dogma of 
 ihe sovereignty of the people, and the perfectibility 
 of the mind, the action of the present and future 
 generations cannot be mistaken. They arc bound 
 to tlie performance of a holy mission, whose tendency 
 is to throw off the rubbish of worn-out doctrines, in- 
 crusted, by ages of fraud, into the natural and political 
 rights of man ; and the crowning developement of 
 which must be the sure, however gradual, reconstruc- 
 tion of the social fabric, out of new elements of 
 sociality. Indeed, that we have reached one of those 
 periods of transition and renovation, is what few, of 
 unbiassed judgment, can rationally call in question. 
 At no epoch, since the diiiusion of the redeeming 
 truths of Christianity, has there existed so keen a 
 presentiment — so general a conviction of some great 
 and instant change. Some view it with a foreboding 
 of awe, and others with an aspiration of hope ; 
 because, as they turn to the future, or the past, they 
 see images of life or death reflected in its spectrum. 
 But all believe in — man}'-, no doubt, wish for — a deep 
 change and a material reform. It may, therefore, be 
 accomplished. We would vainly attempt to arrest 
 the passing hour, chain the pinion of time with 
 the improvements which it bears, or poise ourselves 
 in the midst of the present social chaos. There is, in 
 the essence of human events, a sovereign and irrevo- 
 cable necessity superior to all earthly power. Of 
 what avail will be our puny arm in rolling back the 
 torrent of intellectual ideas and human progress, 
 scooping their way along the steep of centuries, and 
 wending to that illimitable ocean which will eventu- 
 
19 
 
 ally absorb all created things? Aii irresistible force 
 propels mankind ; and, whatever we may do, they 
 will reach their foreshaped destinies. None shall, 
 none can, check them on the highway of ages ; for on 
 that highway, man, the unwearied traveller, gradu- 
 ally and progressively prepares his course for eternity. 
 
 Yet fatal as this tendency may be, the concurrence 
 of man is required in all that is to be achieved for his 
 welfare. The virtuous and the good themselves — those, 
 at least, who are held as such in common opinion — are 
 liable to many and strange illusions on this subject. 
 They sometimes attempt to convince themselves that, 
 after all, matters are not as deplorable as they seem; 
 that there is little danger and too m.uch alarm; in order 
 that they may thence fashion a pretext for their guilty 
 indifference. At other times, they exaggerate the dan- 
 gers of so unsettled a state of things, in order to infer 
 either the vanity of human efforts at improvement, or 
 the necessity of strong and coercive governments. At 
 others again they agree on the urgency of applying a 
 final remedy to the evil. But the duty is not theirs; 
 they are not delegated to reform abuses or hasten im- 
 provements ; they wrap themselves in senseless apathy, 
 and look from afar on the structure, ravaged by the 
 conflagration, or uprooted by the storm. 
 
 To oppose the latent and nobler energies of our na- 
 ture, after this manner, is to be guilty of the veriest 
 improvidence. Can it be supposed that its forward 
 march can be beaten back by the opposition of a 
 mere power of inertness ? Has society, at any period 
 since the Christian era, been known to absolutely 
 retrograde? Is not its life progressive? And what 
 
20 
 
 is that life, but the innate power which compels it 
 incessantly to modify itself on the type of a more 
 perfect order of tilings, from which it expects the re- 
 medy of crymg evils and the advent of a greater weal, 
 to which it invincibly aspires? The connexion be- 
 tween the s^ood expected and the evils to be undone, 
 and the speculative principles which guide society in 
 the selection of the means to reach that end, may, with 
 a show of reason, be conti^sted by some. It may be 
 objected, that, proceeding on false notions and Utopian 
 grounds, society, instead of improving, would iujpair 
 its condition by such a course. To this society ofters 
 a fact in answer. It has. no doubt, suffered from its 
 own heaving efforts. The war which we, ourselves, 
 have waged against the abuses of the past, has, no 
 doubt, and in other lands, produced evils which we 
 cannot deny. But has society been deceived as to the 
 legitimate and healthy results of that war? Compare, 
 not to go farther, the state of the world previous to our 
 Declaration of Independence, with the present condition 
 of the people, and let any one maintain that nothing 
 has been achieved, or that the conquest has been fatal 
 to mankind ! They have conquered an inheritance of 
 freedom and equality ; they have opened a wider circle 
 to commercial, manufacturing, and mechanical activity. 
 The light and property of science, descending to a 
 greater number than ever they had before informed, 
 have raised the masses in the scale of human impor- 
 tance. Is this nothing? It is not, we confess, what 
 they have a further right to expect ; but that which 
 lurks beyond, and which, therefore, is the Object of an 
 unquenched desire — in what direction shall it be looked 
 
SI 
 
 for 1 Do we fancy that we can ever persuade the peo- 
 ple that, in order to find that, they must retrace their 
 footsteps to the starting point ? Ah ! fellow members, 
 that ground is furrowed by a thousand crimson 
 streams, fed and swollen by the life-blood of martyrs 
 and victims ; and the air is groaning with the still lin- 
 gering and unexpended shrieks of human agony. The 
 shackles of the past, imposed and rivetted by brutal 
 force, we can all understand ; but the hope of bondage, 
 wilfully courted and gladly welcomed, has never entered 
 the heart of even the most senseless of tyrants. Hold 
 out to the eagle, hovering in the freedom of his native 
 air, the chain which he has but now shivered, and see 
 whether the noble bird will stoop his proud pinion for 
 the ignoble lure ! 
 
 It is a constant law, founded on the very nature of 
 thinofs, in the intellectual and the social, as well as in 
 the physical, world, that each (act proceeds from another 
 one, according to a certain connexion, which links 
 thought to thought and deed to deed, so that what 
 precedes is the logical ratio and the efficient cause 
 of what follows. This is the sovereign law, which for- 
 bids society to retrace its course through the previous 
 conditions which once marked the successive phases of 
 its growth. It is, therefore, as impossible that nations 
 should abandon their notions of right and wrong, of 
 justice and injustice, for the imperfect ones which were 
 sufficient for them in their infancy, as it would be im- 
 possible for the whole of creation to run up the stream 
 of time, and return to its very origin. Thus, in the 
 act that carries society forward, in the instincts, the 
 sentiments, and in the substance of the general idea* 
 
22 
 
 that direct its course, nothing- can be changed without 
 the disturbance of an organic law. 
 
 To maintain the contrary either in practice or theory; 
 to attempt to perpetuate the fatal influence of the 
 maxims which have hitherto swayed the world; to 
 contrive the dependance of civil order or physical 
 power instead of liberty and equality, its natural bases, 
 is to resist the sovereignty of the people, and vainly 
 to combat that which no influence can countervail. 
 Those whom evil passions could madden into such an 
 attempt, or convert into satellites of unjust power, or in- 
 struments of insolent pretensions ; those who, continue- 
 ing to divide the children of the same father into two hos- 
 tile classes, the one made up of the privileged few, and 
 the other of the toiling majority, would say to the few: 
 yours are the power and the enjoyments, the leisure 
 and the wealth of the world ; and to the many, yours 
 is the lot of submission, labor, wretchedness, hunger, 
 and thirst: those will soon be put under the ban of 
 sounder opinion, branded as felons against the dignity 
 of mankind, and rebels warring against the things willed 
 of God. Their doom is written out, and they cannot 
 bury it under the abuses by which they may yet, for a 
 time, be allowed to profit. Whether, therefore, we look 
 beyond, or go down within, ourselves, to question the 
 mysterious instinct of a futurity, here and hereafter, 
 inherent hi each creature, every impulse warns us that 
 a great reform is in progress in the world. Social life, 
 hampered by a state which, as a noble poet has sung, 
 '• is not in the harmony of things," leaps with impatient 
 energy from its restraint. The wrappings, which 
 swathed it in its infancy, are crumbling fast under the 
 
23 
 
 breath of time, and the future opens a wider field to its 
 statelier course. A twofold process of destruction and 
 regeneration, the latter not apparent to him who does 
 not search below the surface, is slowly working its way- 
 through society. It repudiates time-worn institutions, 
 and discards the ideas that vivified them before reason 
 had reached a higher and a purer notion of right. New 
 feelings and new thoughts proclaim a new era in 
 human affairs. The voices that wander from the ruins 
 of the past bring to the present generations strange 
 sounds that admonish, and mystic words that encourage, 
 them on their onward path. Full of fervency and trust, 
 they advance to that quarter of the heavens whence 
 the light is radiating, leaving behind them the spectres 
 of things that have been, gibbering in congenial night. 
 They cannot, if they choose, retrace their steps. " There 
 is a divinity that shapes their end;" and its providential 
 power compels them to advance. What matter the 
 perils of the march, and the weariness of the road ? 
 They know that the visions of glory burst not on the 
 patriarch's eye, until after the trials and journeyings of 
 the arduous day ; and the ladder that bears the ascend- 
 ing races of mankind towers before their sight, till its 
 topmost round is lost in the mystic splendors of heaven! 
 The shout of the crusader again is heard — God wills it! 
 For this earth is one holy land, in which sacred wars 
 are yet to be fought in behalf of man and of his happi- 
 ness. Genius, too, — eloquence and song — inspirits 
 them with its prophet tones. From the mountain's 
 height it points to the far off land, where the genera- 
 tions shall rest, after their passage through the desert of 
 life ; while our posterity, at some future day, tenants of 
 
24 
 
 that happy land, will hand from age to age, with the 
 memory and names of the workers of our indepen- 
 dence, the memory and names of those who cheered 
 their fathers in their weary pilgrimage to the shrines of 
 a loftier freedom and a higher civilization. 
 

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