ADDRESS

TO THE

CITY COUNCIL AND CITIZENS

OF WORCESTER,

BY

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN THOMAS.

warnzstzr:
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY" COUNCIL.
1876.

Uh! 1 3. :31:

ADDRESS

ADDRESS.

IT Was a quiet summer’s morning in the then‘ village
of Worcester, loveliest of the inland villages of the

“ Bay,” indeed of the Nlew England. In 177 6 and for a
half century later, the village consisted chiefly of a

A single broad Way, leading from the north square to the

Common or training-ground, running through this val-
ley and begirt with these hills which nature and culture
had made so beautiful. The street lined on either side
with elms, the neat, many of them elegant, mansions
standing back from the road, With grass—-plat or flower-
bed in front and shrubbery, at the sides, and the general

‘ A air of comfort, refinement, and taste, Were the delight

of all travellers. The shire of the county, the residence

.of its oflicials, it Was distinguished then as now for its
society of educated men and beautiful and accomplished

Women.

On the training-—ground and around the Western porch
of the meeting—house the people of the village had been
suddenly gathered; standing on the porch a young man

s of tWenty—seven years was reading to the intently list--

ening group the Declaration of Independence. Early

6

on Sunday morning, the 14th of July, 1776, the mes-
senger bearing the Declaration to Boston had been
intercepted, and a copy obtained, Which was now read
publicly for the first time in Massachusetts Bay.
Young as was the reader, he had already a history.
Trained in what has so often proved the best of colleges,
the printing ofiice, Isaiah Thomas had established in his
native city of Boston, six years before, the “ Massa-
chusetts Spy.” For six years he had given his press
and himself to the cause of freedom in the colonies.
The “ Spy ” became a power in the Massachusetts Bay.
The provincial government hoped to buy the young
printer : he was not in the market 3 it tried to intimi-
date him: he was without fear; it tried to suppress
him, but he baffled and defeated its craft and its power,
gaining new strength and influence by every conflict.
Trained by the severest discipline of narrow and adverse

fortune, struggle was to him second nature. Striking-

to the root of things, aggressive, defiant of the -civil
and military power of province, parliament and crown,
threatened openly with violence by the soldiers and
privately with assassination, his press and life were in

such imminent peril that John Hancock and other

friends insisted upon his removal from Boston to the

I interior. In a few days they said it would be too late.

On the evening of the 16th of April, 1775, with the aid
of Gen. "Warren and Col. Bigelow, two presses and a
few types were ferried over the river to Charlestown
and put on their way to Worcester.

In the great debate between prerogative and freedom,

7

his press had been among the first to rise from the dis-
cussion of the rights of the colonists as English sub-
jects, to the higher plane of their rights as men. The
Declaration he was reading Was the culmination of his
faith and hopes.

The listening village,--—--—it too had a history, of ten
years’ strife, so fierce that social and family ties Were
burned as flax in its flame 3 bitterer even than the con-
flicts of arms. In these, Wrath and bitterness are
ejected with the cannon or rifle shot or thrust of bayo--
net, and humanity resumes its sway 5 but the Wrath that
finds no outlet but Words is kindled and fanned by their
breath to intenser heat. Some of her citizens most
eminent for ability, culture and, social influence, led by
James Putnam, the learned and eloquent attorney-
general of the province, had adhered to the royal cause,
attesting their fidelity to their convictions by suffering
reproach, confiscation, and exile.

The sons of liberty had had too their cross. These
matrons and maidens, listening With moistened eyes
and throbbing breasts, had husband, son or brother who
had been in the terrible march through the Wilderness
to Canada, and had fallen by the bullet from the ram--
parts or perished in the snows before Quebec. Their
gallant leader in debate and arms, Col. Bigelovv, village
blacksmith, patriot, soldier, statesman, had been for six

T Weary months a prisoner in its citadel. Fitting it is that  

his monument should stand by the side of that which a
grateful city has ere«trtea:l to the memory of the later

soldiers who died to save What he toiled and sufiered to

8

win. Marking the opening and closing gate--ways of
the century, they bear witness to the same spirit of self--
sacrifice, the same devotion to duty and country, in the
sons as in the sires.

Could we read the thought of the most thoughtful of
that listening group, should we find any prophecy of the

T seven years of war to uphold the Declaration, and the

seven years of confusion and disorder, not to say
anarchy, before the blessings of , liberty should be
secured by stable and efiicient government, and the new

nation assume in fact, as in word, “ its equal station

among the powers of the earth” ?

RISE AND GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC.

But the local celebrations, national and local, have
been had. The memories of Lexington and Concord,
of Bunker Hill and Boston, by eloquence and poetry
have been given to the keeping and trust of the new
century. This day belongs to the rise and growth of
the Republic, to the causes that made us “ one people”
and a “ free people,” and to the development and pro-
gress of the nation for the first century of its life.
Some contribution to this history, however fragmentary,
or in the narrowgline of one’s own study and thought,
has seemed to me the fitting service of the occasion.

The rise and g-rowtiz of the Republic,——-I find great

significance in these words. States grow, they are not A

built 5 they are the fruit of time and nature rather than

i of speculation and contrivance. When seemingly built,

9

the structure, to endure, must be of materials which the

i experience and reforms and amendments of generations

have fashioned to the builder’s hand. The living state
grows out of the wants and necessities of a people, and
is the embodiment and expression of its physical, intel-
lectual, and moral life. VVhen its capacities and wants
have outgrown existing forms of government, by
reform, or oftener by revolution, it adapts government
to its new demands and necessities.

Yet, when we look back upon its history it is seen
that what we call revolution is but evolution,---the slow
procession andlifting up from a lower to a higher type
of civil polity. The gods grind slowly. “As for the
philosophers,” said Lord Bacon, “ they construct imagi-
nary laws for imaginary commonwealths, but their dis-
courses are as the stars, which give little light because
they are so high.”

Free institutions are of especially slow growth. We
may trace the progress of English liberty for at least
six and a half centuries, from the morning twilight or
July 15, 1215, when on the little island of the Thames,
between Staines and Windso1°, the sturdy barons wrested

from a subject king the great charter of freedom. Froin

the gray of that morning ‘streamed the rays which t.hread—
ing cloud, tempest, and eclipse have belted the round
earth with the light of English liberty. Slow, indeed,
and devious its progress as the river which witnessed its
rising, which the traveller sees now with languid cur-
rent, now seemingly at rest, now with gentlest curve,
now as if wandering back to its fountain, through sweet
2

10

meadow and lawn, by battle--field and village spire and
churchyard, round castle-Walls, by college-towers and
palace—gardens, beneath the shade of "Westminster,
through the world’s “ mighty heart,” moving, ever mov-
ing to the sea.

The vastness of the theme appals me. The brilliant .

historian and son of Woircester, whom you hoped to
have had with you to-day, has given some five thousand
pages to the history of the Republic to the close of the
Revolution. To confine myself within any bounds, I
must look at the history in "a single aspect, the legal and
constitutional,-—-—dryest, perhaps, and least attractive, but
not, I think, the least useful. The marvellous material
growth and expansion, the increase in Wealth, in num--

bers, in the comforts and luxuries of living, in intel-I

lectual culture, in science, in art, in that union of science
and art by which We have subjected the laws of nature
to the will and service of man,———-have conquered time
and space, and brought the most distant climes and
peoples into society and neighborhood ; the subduing
of the Wilderness, the hand-to-hand grapple with the
savage, the stirring incidents of the old French War, of
the War for independence, of the War for the freedom of
the seas, of the War for national integrity and life,--I
must forego all these.

The useful, I had almost said the only useful Way of
studying our civil institutions is the historical. The
difficulty is to know Where‘ to begin,—-—-perhaps you will
think, Where to end.

11

Rev. Dr. Prince, who would write the chronology of
New England, went back to the creation, and on his
return voyage landed four years after the planting of
Massachusetts. Simple as this method may seem, it was
nevertheless true that all past history was a contribution
to the humble chronicle he was meaning to write. , The
life of to--day is the fruit of the whole life of the past,
a11d the seed of the future. In the divine economy
there is no waste of light or of power. The line of
progress, though we may not always trace it, is clear to
Him who sees the end from the beginning, and in whose
logic, slow it may be but infallible, effect follows cause,
though ages may intervene.

Dealing with matters of history, I must use the freedom
of history 3 her words are or should be words of truth
and soberness. It is among the mysteries that, beings
of hope and aspiration, we find always the Golden Age
in the twilight of the past instead of the kindling dawn
of the future. There are men who so hug the illusion,
old enough to be rebuked by Solomon, that “ the former
days were better than these,” that had they been present
at creation, instead of joining with the stars when they
sang together, and the sons of God when they shouted
aloud for joy, they would have mourned in solemn
dirges the sad departure of chaos and old night.

The world moves, onward and upward, in a spiral line
it may be, but the world moves. A just. sense of the
wisdom of our fathers, a grateful sense of their labors
and sacrifices, is healthful for mind and heart ; the
belief that all wisdom and virtue died. with them, and

12.

that we are degenerate sons of noble sires, is not health-
ful because it is not true.

PLANTING OF THE COLONIES.

To understand the rise and growth of the Republic
we must go back, for a moment, to the settlement of the
colonies. Nothing could be more fortunate, or, if we
see Providence in history as in nature, more providenw
tial, than the time and circumstances of their planting.
The time was fortunate. Had they been planted soon
after the discovery of the continent they might have had
a very different fate and history.

In the intervening century came the Reformation,
rousing from its lethargy the mind and conscience of
Europe, and which, however imperfect its immediate
fruits, was for all time the ‘assertion of the freedom of
the individual spirit in its highest relations, and as a
necessary result, however slowly developed, in its rela—-
tions with the State. R

With the Reformation came the Bible in the vernacu-
lar, the open Bible. We shall fail to understand the
political character of our fathers unless we bear in mind
that for the first century of our history the Bible was
to them not only the record of the divine will and pur-
poses, but the great instrument of their culture, their
political and civil, their secular as well as religious, law
and guide 3 and we shall not be far out of the way if
we discover that in some phases of their life they found
more significance and exhibited a morepractical faith in

13

the Old Testament than in the New; in Moses, the
prophets, than in the beatitudes of the Mount.

We are also to remember the wonderful intellectual
development of England, in all the spheres of thought,
in the last quarter of the sixteenth and first quarter of
the seventeenth century, in which the philosophy of
Bacon was to the study of nature what the Reformation
was to religion.

It was fortunate, be it said with all respect for the
Church, Catholic or English, that the New England
colonies, whose policy and thought have so largely
influenced and moulded those of the Republic, were
founded by the most protesting of Protestants and the
most dissenting of Dissenters. Our history needed this
peculiar element,---the capacity of suffering, the sturdy
self-reliance, the vigilant outlook of pilgrim and Puri-
tan, the sterner stuff, the firmer fibre of which the men
and women were made, who could leave England in the
days of its material prosperity, the homes of their child--
hood, the graves of their fathers, facing wilderness, want
and savage, simply to pray as the Spirit taught them to
pray ; who, though they might have worshipped in
solemn temples, in cathedral choirs, the eye ravished
with beauty and the air with music, preferred the rude
log-house in the forest or the temple not made with
hands, and to royal favor the favor of the King of
kings 5 who, instead of basking in sunshinecould stand
out in the cold, and when they got into their new homes
could bar the doors not only against all sorts of intrud-
ers, but against bishop and king 3 men and women who,

14

though not without the failings of their tune and failings
of their own which it is not easy to love, had the quali-
ties which fitted them to be the founders of empire,
conditores 67%/pe7~iorum, and what is higher and better,
the founders of free states.

We must remember also that the colonies were settled
after the opening of that great conflict between freedom
and prerogative in England, which in its later stages we
call the Great Rebellion, and of which the first great
issue was the denial of any power of taxation except by
the people represented in Parliament. The colonists
bore to their new homes the logic and the courage of

this debate. “ England,” said Mr. Burke, “ is a nation

which I still hope respects and formerly adored her free-
dom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part
of your character was most predominant.”

This great conflict drew to itself all the thought,
activity, foresight, and vigilance of crown and parlia-
ment and people, and led to the neglect of the colonies,
for a generation. When. the storm subsided for a time
into the dead sea of despotism and .rottenness, and
attention was drawn to the colonies as possible sources
of profit, they had acquired a considerable degree of

strength and stability. They had from necessity become.

adepts in the art and practice of independent local gov-
ernment,andr their confidence in and attachment to it
were thenceforth the conviction and passion of their
history. Indeed the New England colonies during the

’ first generation of the planters were substantially inde-—

pendent states. The only practical limitation upontheir

15

independence was in the powers they conferred upon

the confederation of the New England colonies, and the

forming of that confederation was not only the assertion

of self-government, but the germ and prophecy of a

new nation.

Nor must we leave out of the account the distance of
the colonies from England, the three thousand miles of
inhospita.ble. ocean that rolled between 3 without steam
or telegraph equal to half the circuit of the globe to--
day. To the colonies, remoteness was to some extent
neglect, and neglect was safety. It tool: a long rod and
outstretched arm to reach them. “ To every thing there
is a season and a time to every purpose under the
heaven.” N 0 man can venture to say that with the
present facilities of access and intercourse, the present
practical neighborhood of England and America, local
self—government or separate government would have
been secured. The ocean, with its depths throbbing

. with command and threat, and the steamer flitting over

its bosom, swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, to enforce
them would have been not a barrier but an easy path-
way to aggressive a.nd restraining power.

There was one gift of England to the colonies,--—-I
had almost said her only gift,»-that of wise and good
men. The little island has always been magnet parens
mlrum and never more fruitful than when the colonies
were planted. She sent, or rather by her harsh discipline
drove, to the wilderness some of her choicest spirits, men
of liberal culture, trained in her best schools and in her
universities, by whose wisdom, foresight, and goodness

16

were laid the foundations of that system of educa-
tion for the whole people which in our progress towards
free institutions has been the most eficient motive
power, our inspiration, our safety 3 and so may be for
the coming generations unless they make the sad mis-
take of divorcing the culture of the brain from the
culture of the heart.

Another thing the planters brought with them was
the common law of England. 011 this matter there has
been, I think, no little mistake and exaggeration. The
fact is, that the young states could not have lived under
the common law of England as it was at the opening of
the seventeenth century: they would have been crushed
by the weight of the armor.

Whatrthe colonists brought with them was so much

only of the common law as was adapted to their condie W

tion. In Virginia it was more closely adhered to 3 but
the common law, which the New England colonists did
not like, was found not to be adapted to their condition.
Its rules which protected their rights as men, its doc-

trines and muniments of personal liberty, they adopted

and used, not always with their brethren or the stranger
within their gates, but always and often effectively
against arbitrary power at home. The laws regulating
the descent of land in the mother country they would
not have. They saw that the effect of the rule by
which the real estate passed to the eldest son had been
to keep property in few hands, and thus to build up and
sustain an aristocracy. The change of the law by
which landed estate was divided among the children

17

(the eldest son, however, taking two parts) had more
influence than any other one fact in leading the way to
democratic institutions. We shall not appreciate its full
influence unless we recollect how large a proportion of
what we call property was then real estate. To-day
colossal fortunes may be built up without a rood of land.
Indeed, by our system of corporations and corporate
stocks, vast quantities of landed estate have been trans—-
muted into personal property.

So much it seemed to me well to say as to the time
and circumstances of the planting of the colonies and
of the material of which they" were composed.

FORMS OF GrOV'ERNMENT.

A word should be said as to the forms of government
under which the plantations grew up to States.

By the settled principles of public law the country
occupied by the colonies Was part of the dominion
belonging to the Crown of Great Britain by right of
discovery 3 with perhaps the additional title in the case
of New York of right by conquest from the Dutch.
The title to every acre of land was held immediately or
mediately by grants from the Crown. Wlhatever title
the Indian may have had to the soil, it was the exclusive
right of the government to extinguish it, and to exclude

all persons from gaining any title by grants from the

natives. With the moral basis of this law I have not to
deal. It is the law recognized by all civilized states,

a l and affirmed by our highest judicial tribunal.
3

18

Again, all civil authority used in the colonies was
derived from the Crown as representing the sovereignty
of the British Empire. The voluntary compacts, as
those entered into in the harbor of Cape Cod and in
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven, however
important in the lessons they taught of the true founda-
tion of govermnent in the consent of the governed,
were temporary only and clearly in conflict with the
settled law of the time.

The difierent forms of colonial governments, the
charter, the provincial, and the proprietary, are worthy
of attention as indicating the want of any uniform and
stable policy in the parent country, and especially in the

s most important feature of all, the extent of self-govern-

ment granted and control reserved by the granting
power; though on this last point it should be remarked
that there was nothing Crown or Parliament esteemed

as less binding than the solemn contract contained in a

colonial charter.

Some of the charters, had they been held sacred,
would have given the people of the colonies govern-
ments substantially independent. The charter creating
the body politic by the name of “ the Governor and
Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England ”
when the corporation was removed and the charter

transferred, so that the powers of government might be
used by the actual settlers, with the breadth of construc- A

tion they gave to the powers granted and the rigid
limitation of the powers reserved, really’ created an
independent State. A

19

The charter granted by Charles II. to Rliode Island

established so free ,a government that it continued to be,
with slight changes, the organic law of the State for
smty-five years after the separation; and for freedom in
matters of religious concernment, was in M advance of
some of the present constitutions of the States -of the
Union. But whatever the difference of forms of gov-
ernment, into the consideration of which I have not time
to enter, there was in all the pledge “ that all subjects of

the Crown who should become inhabitants in the col»-

onies and their children born there should enjoy all the
liberties, franchises, and immunities of free and natural
subjects, as if they and every one of them were born
within the realm of England,”-—--words of large import
which England forgot, but the colonists did not.

The other fact to be remarked is that either by these
charters or by their own acts and the acquiescence of
the Crown and Parliament, they established representa-
tive assemblies, which slowly but firmly absorbed to
themselves the powers of government, as the House of
Commons in England has done by holding the purse
and the power to say “ we give and grant.”

Much of the work of human life is like that of
Penelope on the shroud of Lacrtes,---tl'1e unravelling in
the night what was woven in the day. But the history
of the colonies from the time of their planting to the
close of the French War in 1763, with retrocession here
and there, was a struggle for self-government, freedom,
and the right to grow on the one hand, and for the

tightening of bonds and repression on the other. 

20

T INTERIOR LIFE OF THE OOLONIES.

The circumstances and conditions of the interior lzfe
of the colonies, which seem_at first view adverse to their
growth and material prosperity, were most influential in
moulding the character of their institutions and opening
the way to ultimate freedom and independence. The
subduing of the wilderness, the conflicts with the sav-
age, and, when the savage was quiet, with each other,

bred in them hardihood and self-reliance, and a certain A

aptitude not to say love of combat with sword, tongue,
and pen. The separation and isolation within the colo-~
nies, of town, precinct, and school district, gave the
habit and practice of local government. "Wherever
there were people enough to have a meeting--house,
school—house, tavern and store, grew up a little democ-

racy, and these democracies, represented in the legisla- it

ture, made up the State.

This attachment to local government, and jealousy
and distrust of outside power by the colonists, is the
key to and solution of much of their future history.
Beneficent in its early results, and later when kept
withinireasonable bounds, it has in the great exigencies
of our nation’s history crippled our strength and imper--
illed our safety. They were attached to their charters,
because they secured to them the rights and immunities

of English subjects 3 but their construction of the char—- l

ters was always in the direction of self-government;

and to the laws of England, which restricted this right

or their rights of trade and commerce, they gave the

21

smallest share of obedience practicable. In every stage
of their history, there is constantly outcropping the
opinion and sentiment that the young States were
planted by their care, Watered by their tears, preserved
by their vigilance, the fruit of their labors, and that a11y

attempt of the parent country to control and subordin- ,

ate and sacrifice their interests to her own, Was not only
in violation of their rights as English subjects, but of
their higher rights as men.

ACTS on NAVIGATION AND LAWS on TRADE.

Such Was the colonial policy of England, as illus-
trated in her acts of navigation and laws of trade 5 she
neglected the colonies, except when they grew to be
sources of profit to herself, to her trade and manufac-
tures; and then came the policy of monopoly and
repression.

I remember being deeply impressed by reading some
remarks made by Mr. Huskisson, one of the wisest of
English statesmen, in 1826, in the House of Commons :
“ It is generally believed,” he said, “ that the attempt to
tax our American colonies, Without their consent, Was
the sole cause of the separation of those colonies from
the mother country. But if the Whole history of the

A periodbetween the year 1'7 63 and the year 17 73 be

attentively examined, it Will, I think, be abundantly evi-
dent that, however the attempt at taxation may have
contributed somewhat to hasten the explosion, the train

had been long laid in the severe and exasperating

22

efforts of this country to enforce, with inopportune and

increasing vigor, the strictest and most annoying regu-
lations of our colonial and navigation code.”

a“ Every petty adventure in which the colonists em-—
barked was viewed by the merchants of this country
and the Board of Trade of that day as an encroachment
on the commercial monopoly of Great Britain. The
professional subtlety of lawyers and the practical
ingenuity of custom-house officers were constantly at
work in ministering to the jealous but mistaken views
of our seaports. Blind to the consequences elsewhere,
they persevered in their attempts to put down the spirit
of commercial enterprise in the people of New England
until those attempts roused a very different spirit,--—that
spirit which ventured to look for political independence
from the issue of a successful rebellion.”

My own studies and reflection have led me to think
that the laws of navigation and trade were, if not
the proximate, perhaps the predoininanit and most
efficient cause of separation. 

The importance of their study is obvious. They
show the earlier and later policy of England towards
her colonies, her settled purpose to subordinate their
commerce, trade, and manufactures to her own. They
touched all the colonies, the Southern as well as the
Northern, the tobacco of Virginia and the rice of
South Carolina, as well as the lumber, fish, and cattle of

New England, thus indicating to them that there were

vital matters in which their interests were one.
Mr. ‘Webster said,----—I do i not know whether the

23

remark has got into tprint,—-- that the best Way to study
the history of England was in her statutes at large. I
cannot embody the provisions of these statutes in
an address, but must content myself with a very
general and, of course, imperfect outline.
V. The commercial monopoly did not begin with acts of
Parliament, but With orders of the king, in council.
Soon after tobacco was imported into England

  (1621), heavy duties Were laid upon it by orders of the

crown. As this “ daft ” king in his “ counterbl.ast ” had
announced that the habit of smoking proceeded directly
from the Evil Spirit, it is strange he did not strike at
the root, and forbid the raising of the tempter’s seduct-
ive enchantment. The planters sent it to Holland, when
came a new order that no tobacco or other product of the
colonies should thenceforth be carried into any foreign
ports, until they Were first landed in England and the
customs paid.

The beginning of restrictive legislation, curiously
enough, was With the convention or republican parlia-
ment of 1651, Whichiconfined the trade with the planta-
tions to English or colonial built ships, belonging to
English subjects, or subjects of the plantations, with
the exception of such articles as should be imported
directly from the original place of manufacture in
Europe. This was a regulation of commerce springing
from the rivalry of England With Holland, then the
great carrier of the World, but as the colonies were not
then building ships the result Was they had to pay the
English carrier his own price.

24:

The Act of the 12th Charles II., two years
after his restoration (for the English Statute Book
ignores the reign of her greatest soldier and ruler),
affirming the same restrictions as to ships, ordered that
sugars, tobacco, and other enumerated articles, products
of the plantations, should, if exported, instead of being
carried directly to the place of consumption, be first
landed in England, Wales, or other British plantation.
To the list of enumerated articles additions were made,
from time to time, of molasses, tar, pitch, turpentine,
rice, furs, and many others. The object and efiect of
these laws was to force the colonies to sell their
products in the English market only, for they could not
be sold to any other people without paying the charges
of freight to Great Britain, the port dues and commis-
sions there, and amsecond freight to the country of
sale. In substance, the connnand was, sell to us or not
at all.

So much for the export trade, and the market for the
sale of colonial products. An act two years later
(1663) limited the 'import trade and commerce of the
colonies, providing that no commodity of the growth or
manufacture of Europe should be imported into the
king’s plantations, but what shall have been shipped in
England, Wales, or town of Berwick, and in English

built shipping, and carried directly to the plantations.’

That is, you may sell only to us and you must buy only
of us, whether the thing purchased be of our growth or
manufacture or not. If a man went from Boston to
Scotland to buy carpeting, he must fiI'St ship to Eng-

3.3» ‘

25

land, pay the dues and commissions there, then find an
English ship to carry it to his home, however much
better or chea.per freight could be found elsewhere.

In the preamble to this act, among the reasons given
for its adoption, are the keeping the colonies in “ d
firmer dependence upon England, and the ‘ vent’ of

English woolens and other manufactures and come

modities.”

To this point of time the intercourse of colony with
colony had been left free, but in 1672 certain colonial
products, transported from one colony to another, were
subjected to duties 3 for example, sugars, tobacco, and
cotton wool.

In the view of the colonies these acts were not only
destructive to their interests, but in violation of their
charters, which secured to them the liberties, franchises,
and immunities of English subjects. In Massachusetts
and Rhode Island they were pretty faithfully disobeycd,
and in the other New England colonies so generally
that in 167 5 the Lord’s committee of the colonies in-
quired of the Lord Treasurer, Danby, with a sort of
grim humor, “ whether the comniisioners of the customs
considered the Acts as extending to New England ?”

Representations were about the same time made to
the King, by English merchants and manufacturers, that
the inhabitants of New England disregarded the Acts
of Navigation and traded freely with all parts of
Europe, by which the navigation and revenues of Eng-
land were greatly injured, and their dependence on the
parent cojontry rendered less secure, if not totally

26

destroyed ; which being interpreted meant, We can’t
sell them our goods at our own prices; they have the
folly to buy where they can..buy cheapest. Their prayer
was that the people of New England might be com-
pelled to obey the laws, that is, buy of them only. The
committee on plantations having heard the complaints,
resolved that “ the Acts should be enforced.” But it
was——--as we have discovered in this age of resolutions-——~
one thing to resolve and another to execute. And in
1677, we find Edward Randolph, in answer to inquiries

of the committee of plantations, stating that in Massa-it

chusetts no notice was taken of the Acts of Navigation
or any other laws made in England for the regulation
of trade, and adding, “ All nations have free liberty
to come into its ports and vend their commodities

without any restraint, and in this as well as other

things that Grovermnent would make the world believe
they are a free State and do act i11 all matters accord-
ingly.”

The agent of Massachusetts wrote from England
E“ that without the laws were complied with there can
nothing be expected but a total breach and all the
storms of displeasure that may be.” The General
Court, in reply, acknowledged that they had 11ot been
observed, “ because they had never received theirassent,
and therefore were not obligatory. They apprehended
them to be an invasion of the rights, liberties, and prop-
erties of the subjects of His Majesty in the colony, they
not being represented in parliament.” They say, how-

even, that as His Majesty had signified his pleasure that '

E 

27

the Acts should be observed in Massachusetts, they had
made provision by a law of the colony that it should be
attended to. This provision was the Colony Act of
October, 1677. As it was frequently stated in the con--
troversies resulting in separation, that the power of
parliament in the matter of regulating commerce and
the external taxation of the colonies had never been
questioned, a.nd so affirmed by Franklin in his examina-
tion before the House of Commons in 1766, and by
Macaulay, apparently upon his authority, a century later,
itmay be Well ‘to note this declaration of the General
Court of Massachusetts, as one of many instances in
which that power was denied. ‘ V

_The revolution of 1688, which did so much to
enthrone “ liberty in law ” in England, proved of little
advantage to the colonies 3 none whatever in matters of
trade and commerce. The Dutch king brought with
him none of the spirit of commercial freedom of Hol-
land. In 1696, When his attention had been Withdrawn
for a time from the affairs of the continent, the Board
of Trade was authorized to inquire into the condition of
the plantations, as Well With regard to the administra-
tion of government, as in relation to commerce, and

1 (here we have again the policy of . England in a nut-

shell) “how these colonies might be rendered most
beneficial to this kingdom.” An act was passed about
the same time for the vigorous enforcement of the Acts
of Navigation, authorizing, among other things, oficers
“to visit, search, and seize, vessels and their cargoes, and

to enter all houses and storehouses, to seize goods

28

illegally imported, and declaring any law or usage of
the colonies in conflict With the Acts of Navigation, or
with any other law hereafter to be passed in this
kingdom relating to the plantations, null and void.”

But the genius of enterprise a.nd industry in the New
England colonies was irrepressible.

In the early part of the eighteenth century the
colonies, especially those of N eW England, had become
engaged in a lucrative trade With the French, Spanish,
and Dutch West Indies, the northern colonies carrying
to them fish, lumber, grain, horses and cattle, and taking
in exchange the products of those islands, rum, sugar,
and molasses.

The English sugar--planters complained of this trade
as injurious to them, and in 1733 Parliament imposed
heavy duties on rum, sugar, and molasses, imported fi*om
foreign colonies ; duties so onerous as to have resulted

in prohibition and the entire cutting ofi" this branch of

their trade, had the laws been fully enforced, but
happily they could not be fully enforced 5 the protecting
ocean rolled between. A
This brief outline may give you some idea of the
attempts of English merchants to monopolize the trade
in the products or raw material of the colonies. ,
Not less greedy and grasping were the manufacturers
of England. No sooner did the colonies begin to
manufacture for themselves, than the English manufac-
turers determined to prevent any interference With their
own industries, and this not by making cheaper or better

\

29

goods, but by depriving the colonies of any right or
power to compete with them. I

In 1699 the policyrof repression began by an Act
providing that no wool yarn or woollen manufacture
should be shipped or laden in the colonies, i11 order to
be transported from thence to any place whatsoever.

In 1719 the House of Commons declared that “the
erecting manufactories in the colonies tended to lessen
their dependence on Great Britain.” Language has
been said to be an instrument for the concealment of
thought. The disguise is too thin here : We should
write, to lessen the profits of our business.

In 1731 complaints were made to parliament that
“the colonies were carrying on trade, and setting up
manufactories detrimental to the trade, navigation and
manufactures of Great Britain.” The Board of Trade,
being directed to inquire, reported that such was the
fact, enumerating among the manufactures, those of
wool and flax, iron, paper, hats and leather. I find,
however, no legislation immediately following the
report.

In 1732 the company of hatters in London complained
to parliament that hats in large quantities were made in
New England and exported to Spain, Portugal, and the
British West India Islands. Their influence procured
an Act (1732), first, to prevent the exportation of hats
from the colonies to foreign countries 3 secondly, from
being carried from one colony to another ; and thirdly,

A because folly was capable of a further step, hats were

forbidden being “shipped or laden upon a horse, cart or

30

other carriage with the intent to be exported to any other
plantation, or to a11y place whatever.” It was further
provided that no hatter in the ‘colonies should employ
more than two apprentices at once, or make hats unless
he had served an apprentice to the trade seven years ;
and that no black or negro should make a hat. One is
led to ask what sort of brains were under the hats of
England, to deal thus with colonies who, as Montesquieu
expresses it, “ had become great nations in the forests
they Were sent to inhabit.”

The iron manufacturers were equally anxious that the
dependence of the colonies on the mother country
should not be lessened. In 1750 pig iron and bar iron
might be imported into England duty free, but parlia-
ment prohibited the erection or continuance of any mill

or other engine for slitting or rolling iron, or any plating»

forge, or any furnace for making steel, under the penalty
of two hundred pounds. Nay, more, every such
engine, plating forge, and'furnace was declared a com-—
mon nuisance, to be abated by the governors of the
colonies, on the information of two witnesses on oath,
within thirty days, or the governors to forfeit five
hundred pounds for each neglect of duty.

These statutes are a faithful and abiding record of
the dealings of England with her American colonies, of
the narrow, jealous and selfish policy she pursued up to
the time of separation in the regulation of their com-
merce, trade, and industries, of her settled purpose to
use, restrict or suppress them for her own aggrandize—
ment. I confess I could never read the record without

31

Wrath and indignation 5 and I do not find myself in a
very amiable mood in reviewing her dealings with us

since the separation. With all my reverence for her

jurisprudence, and especially her muniments of personal
liberty, her literature, her great masters in every depart-
ment of thought, for her social and domestic virtues,
to us she has been less than magnaniinous, less than
just.

It is of no use to say such were the policy and wisdom
of the times. The colonial policy of France, Spain and
Portugal was in the spirit of their own governments at
home 3 that of England in direct conflict with the spirit
of her constitution. England was capable of wiser and

A better things. The questions involved were to be

settled, not by a broad political economy of the freedom

of commerce and industry, but by the simplest, most

elementary principles of justice and right. And the
folly and injustice of the whole colonial policy were laid
bare by the wisest and profoundest of her writers on
economical science, Adam Smith, in his lectures at the
University of Glasgow, in 1748, afterwards embodied in

A   the “Wealth of Nations,” published in the year 1776 ;
1 to the industries of the world a new declaration of inde-

pendence. At the close of his great chapter on the

a colonial policy he denounces the English laws of trade
as “ a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of ‘

mankind.”

VIGOROUS ENFORCEMENT OF THE NAVIGATION LAWS.

i 'What our fathers called the French war was the final

32

struggle between England and France for dominion in
America.

After the capture of Quebec, which really settled the ,

issue, the claim was made i11 parliament to raise revenue
in America to meet some share of the burdens the war
had imposed on the mother countr , and to defray the
expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the
colonies.

The efforts and sacrifices the colonies had themselves
made in the war were well known. Thirty thousand
colonial soldiers had fallen by disease or the sword.
The expenditures of Massachusetts alone had exceeded

by two and a half millions of dollars the sum reimbursed .

by parliament, and this without resort to paper money.
She had kept an average of from four to seven thousand
men in the field, besides men for garrison duty and
recruits for the British regiments. Parliament, in the
year 1763, voted more than seven hundred thousand
dollars to repay the expenses of the provinces in the

last year of the war,----a direct admission that they had

contributed to the common cause more than their just
proportion.

Prudence would have said to the British ministry,
We must deal gently with the colonies. They no
longer need our protection; they have no longer the
French and the Indian on their western frontier.
French statesmen and English had predicted that the
taking of Canada by England might result in their
independence. With almost prophetic sagacity Ver-
gennes had said, “England will repent of shaving

33

removed the only check that could keep her colonies in
awe. They stand no longer in need of her protection.
She will call on them to contribute towards supporting
the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they
will answer by striking off all dependence.”

Ministry and people undervalued then, as they had
ever before and have ever since, the capacity and spirit
of Englishmen born on American soil. This sense of
superiority had been constantly shown to the American
officers and troops in the seven years’ war, and had
alienated and wounded them. On the other hand, the
intermixture of the soldiers of the colonies and the pur-
suit of a common end had tended to remove, to some

extent, local prejudices, and to give to the colonists a

sense of common interests.

In 1760 the British ministry determined to enforce
the Navigation Acts with greater rigor. N 0 time could
be more inopportune for such a purpose, and this, per-
haps, explains why it was selected. Orders were sent
to the ofiicers of the customs to enforce them, especially
in Massachusetts where they had been openly disobeyed.
For this purpose the oficers applied to the Superior
Court of the Province for writs of assistance, as they
were called, to enable officers to break open shops,
warehouses and dwelling»-houses in search of goods
imported in violation of these laws.

The legality of the writs was argued before the
Superior Court, James Otis appearing for the merchants
of Boston to contest their issue. The traditions would

show that though the legality of the writ was keenly
_ A 5

34:

contested, the more effective part of the argument with
the people was the vigorous and eloquent attack upon
the justice and validity of the whole body of the laws
the writ was sought to enforce, as in violation of the
charter, of the English constitution, and of natural
justice. ‘

There can be no doubt of its effect, not only upon his
hearers, but upon the public mind and heart throughout
the continent. It struck a chord to which all the colonies
were responsive. It touched grievances they all had
suffered, and for the removal of which unity of action
was the only hope. John Adams puts the matter with
an intensity which, with the old man eloquent, seems to
have grown with years, “ Otis was a flame of fire. Ameri-
can independence was then and there born. Then and
there was the first scene of the first act of _opposition
to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain.” Treating the
drama of which he speaks as the united opposition of
the colonies, the remark is just.

There can be no doubt with the careful student of our
history» that the practical grievances sustained by the
Acts of Navigation and of Trade were many and mani-
fold, as compared with any imposed or sought to be
imposed by internal taxation. They swathed the grown
man with the bandages of childhood. They dwarfed
and crippled the growth of the colonies. They were
not merely taxes on property acquired, but a denial of
the right to acquire it. To the Nortliern colonies who
had no great staples and could not live by agriculture
alone, they were a denial of the means of living.

35
The difliculty was that the power of parliament to
regulate the commerce of the empire had been too

generally conceded, and it was not readily seen how
these Acts were to be taken from under this general

A and comprehensive power. When, however, attention

was drawn to the matter of internal taxation, and the
attempt to raise revenue by acts of a parliament in which
the colonies had no voice, it was perceived that the same
objection was applicable to any laws whose direct pur-
pose or effect was to raise a revenue from the colonies‘.

The colonists were slow, however, in reaching this

result. In the report of the committee on colonial
rights in the Colonial‘ Convention of 1765, at New
York, it is acknowledged “ that the parliament collect-

, ively considered as consisting of king, lords and com-

mons, are the supreme legislature of the whole empire,

and as such have an undoubted jurisdiction over the
colonies, so far as  consistent with our essentiali rights,

of which also they are and must be the final judges,
and even the applications and petitions to the king and
parliament to implore relief in our present difficulties

will be an ample recognition of our subjection to and

dependence onthat legislature.”

Dr. Franklin, in his examination in the House of l

Commons, in 17 7x6,-———the most striking of all the exhi-
bitions of his wonderful shrewdness and tact,~———declared
that “the authority of parliament was allowed to be
valid in all cases except such as should lay internal

taxes. It was never disputed in duties to regulate

commerce.” One must sp.eak»‘With trembling under the

86

shadow of so great a name, but, as before shown, the
records are otherwise. Nor can the distinction Franklin
draws between the external duty laid on a commodity
and an internal tax, to wit, that the payment of the first
is voluntary and the other forced,——-voluntary because
the subject is not compelled to buy the commodity after
the duty is added,»--be regarded as sound. As applica-
ble to the necessaries or comforts of life, there is no
clifi’crence. The House of Assembly, New York, put
this matter with great clearness and force the year

before: “For with submission, since all unpositiovzs,

whether they be vluteruial taxes or duties paid for u27zcz.t
we consume, equally diminish the estates upon which
they are charged, what avails it to any people by which
of them they are impoverished ‘P Everything will be
given to preserve life 3 and though there is a diversity

in the means, yet the whole wealth of a country may

be as effectually drawn off by the exaction of duties as
by any other tam upon their estates.”

The declaration of rights by the Continental Congress
of 17 74, after claiming for the colonies free and exclu-
sive legislation in all cases of taxation and internal
policy, indicates that on the subject of ewterual taxation
there had been great change and progress of opinion.

“ But from the necessity of the case,” says the decla-

ration, “ and a regard to the mutual interests of both‘

countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such
Acts of the British parliament as are boua fide restrained
to the regulation of our external commerce, for the
purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the

37

whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial
benefits’, of its respective members 3 excluding every idea
of tawation, internal or emtemal, for raising as revenue on
the subjects in America without their consent.” It is safe
to say that this distinction would soon have been found
unsatisfactory 3 that some of the most oppressive of the
laws of trade could not be said to have distinctly for
their object the raising of revenue, but to secure to the
English subjects on the other side of the water monopo-I
lies in trade and manufactures, not only offensive to
the pride, but destructive to the interests of the English
subjects in America.

They could not and ought not to have tolerated the
distinction. If a man had brains and could raise wool

he had a right to make a hat to cover them, and if he"

found iron ore in his soil he had a right to make a pot
to boil his fowl or pork. These are natural home-bred
rights, which no refinement of logic or policy and no
force of precedent can take away or impair.

INTERNAL TAXATION.

The enforcement of the Navigation Laws was but
part of the plan now entered upon to raise a revenue
from the colonies. That for internal taxation soon
followed, and underlying these a purpose and design so
to modify the government of the colonies as to bring
them more directly under the power of parliament and
crown. In the winter of 17 64: a resolution was adopted,
without a negative vote, by rparliament, that it might

38

“ be proper to charge certain stamp duties in the colo-
nies.” On the 13th of February, 1765, the bill for the
Stamp Act was introduced in the House of Commons.
On the 27th it passed, with less resistance than usually
was made to a common turnpike bill. On the 8th of
March the bill was agreed to by the House of Lords
without debate or dissenting vote. On the 22d of
March it received the royal assent by commission, the
king being, as now understood, insane. The distinction
between internal and external taxation, if seen, was
utterly disregarded by theruling statesmen of England,
if men may be called statesmen whose course was
marked by such pride, weakness, vacillation, and
capacity of doing the wrong thing almost every time,
and the right thing at the wrong time, as char-
acterized the British ministry and King from the
close of the French war to the peace of 1783.0 Such
a plan had been suggested to Robert Walpole and
William Pitt, but their robust sense had rejected it.
We could not state to-day the impolicy of these mea-
sures more forcibly than Walpole did years before they
were adopted : “ I will leave the taxation of the Ameri-
cans for some of my successors who may have more
courage than I have, and less a friend to commerce than
I am. It has been a maxim with 1ne during my admin-
istration to encourage the trade of the American
colonies to the utmost latitude 3 nay, it has been neces-‘
sary to pass over some irregularities in their trade with
Europe; for by encouraging them to an extensive,
growing foreigncommerce,.if they gain £500,000, I am

39

convinced that in two years afterwards, full £250,000 of
this gain will be in His Majesty’s excheqner, by the
labor and product of this kingdom, as immense quanti-
ties of every kind of our manufactures go thither, and
as they increase in the foreign American trade more of
our produce will be wanted. This is taming them more
agreeably to their own constitution and laws.”

The entrance upon the policy of the internal taxation
of the colonies seemed to attract as little attention with

V the people of England as with parliament. The ques-

tion whether John VVilkes should have a seat from
Middlesex was deemed of much higher moment. But
whatever the state of opinion and feeling in England,
in America such had been the progress of opinion that
the logic of the policy was substantially settled, and the
practical question was the mode of resistance. With
the enforcement of the navigation laws superadded,
submission to men like our fathers was impossible. One
party or the other must give way. These were the
entering wedges ; the acts of the next ten years were
but the blows of the beetle. 0 A

The repeal of the Stamp Act was but a lull in the
storm, and accompanied as it was by the assertion of
the right of parliament to bind the colonies in all cases
whatever, and followed by the declaration of the leader
of the ministerial party in the House of Commons
(Charles Townsend), “that America should be regu-
lated and deprived of its militating and contradictory
charters, andits royal governors, judges, and attorneys

40

rendered independent of the people,” was an act of
supremest folly.

The repeal was followed the next year by what was
known as the Townsend Revenue Act, imposing duties
on glass, paper, painters’ colors, and tea, making pro-
visions for the execution of the laws already existing,
for establishing a Board of Customs at Boston to collect
revenue, and for legalizing writs of assistance. The
line of separation distinctly drawn, discussion, increas-
ing‘ in intensity and bitterness, served only to widen the
breach, till the colonies reached the conclusion that there
was no safety in conceding to parliament any legislative
power over them.

The suggestion of representatives from the colonies
in parliament was impracticable. The distance, with
the then means of intercourse, was too great, and the
power and influence of the home government and repre--
sentation would have utterly overshadowed them.

And the other system thought of for granting supplies
to the crown by the colonial legislatures would, as 1363--
Lolme suggested to Franklin, have proved unsatisfac-
tory to the people of England, as tending directly to
make the crown independent of the House of Commons.
The only solution of the difficulties was separation.

If one were asked to state with precision the legal
cause of separation he would find it dificult to give an
answer. The statesmen and jurists of the colonies and
of later times have never agreed upon the matter.

It is dificult to say that taxation without representa-
tion was, an hundred years ago, a violation of the rights

41

of the colonists as English subjects. It has oeen esti-
mated that not more than a tenth part of the English
people were represented in parliament. Whole com-

, munities, like the city of Manchester, had no representa-

tio11. In spite of the splendid declamation of Chatham
it is not plain to see how there can be sovelreign power
without the power to tax.

“ Let,” said Lord Chatham, “the sovereign authority
of this country over the colonies be asserted inbas strong

terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every -

point of legislation whatever, that we may bind their
trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every
power whatever, except that of taking money out of
their pockets without their own consent.” As matter of
good sense the distinction cannot be maintained. If I
am forbidden to use brain or hand to get money into my
pocket it is useless to complain of a tax which assumes
to take it out. A

It does not meet the difficulty to say that “taxes were A

a voluntary gift and grant of the commons alone.” The
proposition was not quite true, for the concurrence of
the lords and the assent of the king were necessary to
a tax. A But if true, it was also true that the House of
Commons was part, and the most efihctive part, of the
sovereign power of England.

. Now, assuming the existence of a constitution in
England paramount to an Act of parliament, which
means that an Act of parliament including king, lords
and commons maybe declared void by the co1n*ts, it is

6

42
not easy to see that the navigation laws were not within
the sovereign power to regulate commerce.

It is easy to see that they were most flagrant abuses
of power, that they were in violation of the spirit of
the colonial charters, that they were destructive of the
liberty, happiness, and growth of the colonies, that they
justified and required revolution, and appeal from the
constitution of England to the elder charter, on which
the divine hand had written the sacred rights of human
nature. Charles James Fox said, that “ among the con-
troversies that had arisen there is no other in which the

natural riglits of men on the one hand and the authority

of artificial institutions on the other were so fairly put in
issue,” and the united colonies an hundred years ago to-
day, declaring the causes which impelled them to the
separation, put the issue on the simple ground of
natural rights ; averring that to secure these rights,
“governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed ; that
whenever any form of government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it.”

The declaration was itself the act of separation. It
recognized as an ecczisting fact the union of the colonies
into “ one people.” It was “ one people” dissolving the
political bands that had connected them with another,
and assuming its separate and equal station among the
powers (or nations) of the earth. “Such had been the
revolution of opinion as to the power of parliament,
that the declaration ignores its existence, refusing to

4:3

recognize that the colonies had ever had any connection
with or dependence upon it. Parliament is known in
the declaration by the word ‘others.’ It charges the
king with having combined With ‘ others i’ to subjectus
to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unac--

knowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts

of ‘ pretended legislation.”

l The union of the colonies was necessary for their
common defence and protection, and for admission into
and intercourse with the society of nations. The differ-
ences, the local prejudices, resulting froin their charters
and forms of government, their manners, religion, tastes,
trades, and domestic policies, were for a time ‘forgotten,
or at least waived in the presence of common interest
and peril, and of a common longing for l:arger liberty
and freer development. It required no great delibera-~
tion or sagacity to decide what should be the character
of their institutions or the forms of their governments.

Republican institutions were not more their purpose

and aspiration than the necessity of their condition.

The power of the crown taken away, there was left no
material out of which to construct lords temporal or

. spiritual, or court or king. Indeed, so democratic had

their governments grown to be that it is marvellous to
see how slight a change of frame-work was necessary
to convert the Province of Massachusetts Bay into the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

GOVERNMENT IN TE REVOLUTION.

,There was a new nation, but without established

44

government. The articles of confederation, though
their preparation was begun in l776, were not submitted
to the States till November, 1777, and, requiring the
unanimous consent of the States, did not go into efi"ect
till March 1, 1781; less than eight months before the
surrender of Lord Cornwallis and his army to the com—-
bined forces of France and the United States, and the
substantial termination of the war. There was, how-
ever, a government, of somewhat indefinite powers, but
a natiomtl government. It is sometimes called a revo--
lutionary government, but in the instructions given by
the provincial and state assemblies to their delegates
will be found, I think, authority for the powers actually
used by the Continental Congress.

The resolution of the Provincial Congress of New
Jersey, laid before Congress on the 2-8tl1 of June, 1776,
may be cited as an example :—

“ Unite with the delegates of the other colonies in

‘declaring the united colonies independent of Great

Britain; entering into a confederation for union and
common defence 5 making treaties with foreign nations
for commerce and assistance, and to take such other
measures as may appear to them and you necessary for
these great ends 3 promising to support them with the
whole force of this province 3 always observing, what-
ever plan of confederacy you enter into, the regulating
the internal policies of this province is to be reserved to
the Colony Legislature.” A
But if not by original grant its powers were certainly
used with the acquiescence of the new States. If

45

springing from the exigencies of the new nation,
Government would have expanded its powers to meet
its exigencies, as did the Puritan parliament of 1645,
and the convention of 1688. It declared independence,
it carried on war, it organized a national army and
navy ; it established prize courts ; it emitted bills of

credit and contracted debts on national account; it

regulated duties on imports and exports; it made
treaties, it formed foreign alliances ; it created for six
months a dictatorship; but it consisted of a single
house of delegates from the States, each State having
an equal vote. it Its great defect was the want of power
to execute its own decrees----if it made‘ a requisition for
troops, to enforce it, or if it made a requisition for
money, to levy and collect a tax.

Had there been power in the National Government to
use at its will and discretion the resources of the
countr , the war might have been brought to a much
earlier close and without foreign aid.

THE CON FEDERATION.

I am entering upon the familiar paths of history, and
must hasten my steps. One lesson which our history
constantly teaches us, I must venture to repeat ; it is
the deeply-rooted and excessive attachment of our
fathers to local government, through all its gradations,

from the school district to the State ; with what firm-

ness, even under the pressure of imminent danger to
liberty and life, they refused to give to the Continental
Congress adequate powers to carry on the war ; how,

46

when the war was over, they fell back within their old
boundaries 3 with what reluctance they conceded to the
national government its most essential functions 5 by
what close and narrow construction they sought to limit
and restrict the powers so reluctantly granted ; and
how, when the powers of the central government have
been strained, the people, the exigency past, fall back
upon their old love, caring not so much for government
for the people as government by the people I

It was out of i this state of conviction, habit, and
feeling that the confederation was begotten, born, and
died. It fell from its inherent weakness. Its defects
may be stated in a word :-———-

It was a league of States in which they had equal
power. .

It was without power to regulate commerce.

It legislated for States and governments instead of
the individual subject or citizen.

But its greatest vice and weakness was the want of
power to construe and execute its own laws. It had an
indefinite discretion to call for men and money. It
could not command obedience, and, as “ government is
not influence merely,” it did not receive it. Without
power to provide for the national debt to foreign nations

or its own citizens, it was, from birth to death, at hoe

and abroad, a shame and a reproach.

TIEEE CONSTITUTION.

But this ugly adversity had a jewel in its breast.
Out of this nettle danger we plucked the flower, safety.

47

Out of this confusion and disorder came the Constitu-
tion and solid union and living nationality. The people
were very slow in reaching the conclusion that radical
change was necessary. I do not think it can be fairly
said that a majority of the people were in favor of the
Constitution. Mr. John Quincy Adams, in his oration
on the Jubilee of the Constitution, declared in his em-
phatic way that “ the Constitution was extorted from
the grinding necessity of a reluctant people.” Its

adoption was one of the occasions in which the leading _

minds of the country had a predominant influence.

My own impression has been that the weight of
Wasl1ington’s opinion and character, and the expecta-
tion that he would be called upon to administer the new
government, turned the scale. Fortunate man, not only
in the elements of his character, but in his great oppor-
tunities,-———tl'1e war for the independence of his country
and the establishment for it of firm and stable yet free
government! As Mont Blanc among the Alps lifts
itself in simple grandeur above the surrounding sum-—
mits, so in this age of great men rises the lofty form
and majestic presence of him who “was first in war,
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

To the genius and foresight of Hamilton, when a
young man of twenty—three years, we owe perhaps the
first suggestion of a national government with sover-
eign powers. The fiI‘St proposition of a convention to
revise and amend the Confederation was from the
Legislature in New York, in 1782, and probably at

‘Hamilton’s suggestion. The proposition which led

48

directly the Way to the convention which framed the
Constitution came from the Legislature of Virginia, in
January, 1786, for a convention from the States to
regulate commerce With foreign nations. five of the
States only sent delegations to it 3 but these concurred
in an earnest application to Congress to call a con»-
vention to revise, amend, and alter the Articles of
Confederation.

The delegates of twelve of the thirteen States met in
May, 1787. Fortunately for the country, it was a union
of men of capacity, experience, Wisdom, probity, and
breadth of views never surpassed in a deliberative body
among men. They Went beyond. their instructions.
Instead of simply revising or altering the Articles of
Confederation, they reported a Constitution to be or»-
dained and established by the people of the United
States,-————a constitution which Was to act, not upon

A States nor through the States upon citizens of States,

but directly upon citizens of the United States 5 with
a broad but Well defined sphere of national government,
Within that sphere supreme and clothed With adequate
powers to construe and execute its own laws. As 00111-
pared With the confederation, it Was a revolution. The
union under the Articles of Confederation was made
perpetual, and by their terms no alteration could be
made in any of them unless the alteration was agreed
to by Congress and confirmed by the legislature of
every State. It was a compromise. In the constitution
of the senate, clothed With high legislative, executive,

49

and judicial functions, and in other important features,
the old equality of the States was continued.

The attachment to State institutions, the jealousy of
central power, were the obstacles the friends of national
government had to overcome in the convention and on
the question of the ratification of the constitution by
the people in the States. To these, fidelity to history com-
pels us to add, the existence in a portion of the people
of a spirit of hostility to law and order and any form
of efficient government in state or nation, which the
confusion and disorder of the times and the imbecility
of government had tended to create and foster.

The new government went into operation in April,
1789. It was when, on the 30th of April, 17 89, Wash-
ington was inaugurated as President, the United States
really assumed “its equal station among the powers of
the earth.” .

There were defects in the Constitution ; there have
been errors and defects in its administration : but in
spite of these it has given to this country for eighty-
seven years the most stable and beneficent government
the century has known. ‘It has settled the question
whether free government is possible among men, and
for the last half—century the governments of England
and of the continent have, it may be unconsciously,
been profiting by its example. Whe11 other matters in
our history vex or wound us, as they will if we feel a
stain like a wound, we may for solace turn to the proem
of the Declaration and the preamble of the Constitution

7 .

50

as the first verses of the best chapters of the past cen--
tury’s history.

THE NEW CENTURY.

With what emotions, with what convictions, did we
hail the dawning light of the new century I Were the
wings of the morning those of the angel of death or of
life, of despair or of hope ‘P I answer for myself, of life
and of hope; nay, more, of faith and of trust. We
have causes for anxiety and watchfulness, none for
despair. The evils of the time are not incurable, and
the remedies, simple and eficient, are in our hands.

We have passed through a period of expenditures
almost without limit, and, therefore, of infinite tempta-
tions. Wars, it would seem, especially civil wars,
loosen the moral ties of "society. Civil convulsions
always bring more or less bad men to the surface, and
some are still afloat,-—-——1nen, whose patriotism not ex-
hausted in contracts for effete muskets, spavined horses,
and rotten ships, are ready and waiting for like service.

We have, in the feverish, delirious haste to get rich,
which a currency capable of indefinite expansion always

excites, results, more direct and palpable, in unsettling ,

values and the foundations of public and private faith,
trust, and confidence.

The evils are curable, but not by noise of words, not
by sonorous resolutions witliout meaning, or only the
ymreaning the very simple reader injects into their empty
veins. r

y We may put an end to corruption by leading our-

is‘;

r( ...,._ .-. .., 1,. ,. 

51

selves honest lives, by refusing to put any man into a
public trust, no matter what his qualifications or past
services, who is corrupt, or suffers himself to walk on
the brink, or winks at those who are wading in 31 by
using the old-fashioned old testament prescriptions for
rulers,——-—“ Men of truth, hating covetousness.” “Thou
shalt take no gift.” “ Ye shall not be afraid of the face
of man.”

The evils of a vicious currency can be remedied only
by return to the path of the constitution and of com-
mercial integrity. The principles are simple’ and
elementary. The “lawful money” of the United States
is the coin of the United States, or foreign coin whose
value has been regulated by Congress; that is the
constitutional doctrine. Money is a thing of intrinsic
value, and the standard and measure of value 3 that is
the economical doctrine. A promiseto pay a dollar is not
a dollar ; that is the doctrine of morality and common

sense. We cannot vitalize a falsehood, make the

shadow the substance, the sign the thing signified, the

promise to pay itself payment. Great as is the power

of Congress, it cannot change the nature of things.

So long as the power is left, or assumed to be left, to
make a promise to pay payment, there will be no per--r
manent security for the stability of values, or of public
or private faith.

One other cure of corruption is open to us,»-—the
stamping out of the doctrine that public trusts are the
spoils of partisan victory. The higher councils may

i A perhaps be changed.‘ An administration: cannot be well

52

conducted with a cabinet, or other oflicers in confiden-
tial relations, opposed to its policy 5 but no such reason
for change applies to ninety-nine hundredths of the
oflices, now‘ exposed in the market as rewards for
partisan service.

Otherwise than in these evils I fail to see especial
proofs of the degeneracy of the times.

"Whether the men and women of this generation had
fallen from the standard of their fathers and mothers,
we had satisfactory evidence in the late war. I care
not to dwell upon its origin or to revive its memories.
The seceding States reaped as they had sown 3 having
sown to the wind, they reaped the whirlwind. Against
what was to them the most beneficent of govermnents,
known and felt only in its blessings, they waged, it
seemed to us, causeless war, for their claim to extend
slavery into the new States and territories never had
solid ground of law or policy or humanity to rest upon 3
they struck at the flag in which were enfolded our most
precious hopes for ourselves and for mankind. They
could not expect a great nation to be so false to duty as
not to defend, at every cost, its integrity and life.

But while, as matter of good sense and logic, the
question seemed to us so plain a one ; that the Union
meant nothing if a State might at its election withdraw
from it ; that under the Articles of Confederation the

Union had been made perpetual 3 that the Constitution  

was adapted to form a more “ perfect union ” than that
of the Confederation, more comprehensive, direct, and
eficient in power, and not less durable in time ; that

53

therewas no word in  looking to separation 3 that it
had careful provisions for its amendment, none for its

, abrogation; capacity for expansion, none for contrac-

tion 3 a door for new States to come in, none for old or
new to go out 3 we should find that, after all, upon the
question of legal construction, learned and philosophical
statesmen had reached a difierent conclusion 3 we should
find, also, what as students of human nature we should
be surprised not to find, that the opinions of men on
this question had, at different times and in different
sections of the country, been more or less moulded,
biased and warped by the effects, or supposed effects,
which the policy of the central power had on the
material interests and institutions of the States. Such
examination, not impairing the strength of our convic-
tions, might chasten our pride. But aside from the
logic, men must be assumed to be honest, however mis—--
guided, who are ready to die for the faith that is in
them.

But not dwelling upon causes, but comparing the
conduct of the war with that of the Revolution, I do

i not hesitate to say that in the loyalty and devotion of

the people to country; in the readiness to sacrifice
property, health, and life for her safety 3 in the temper
and spirit in which the war was carried on; in the
supply of resources to the army, men as well as money 3
in the blessed ministrations of woman to the sick,
wounded, or dying soldier 3 in the courage and pluck

  evinced on both sides 3 in the magnanimity and forbear-

, ance of the victors, the history of the late war shows 3

54

no touch of degeneracy, shows, indeed, a century of

a progress.

If its peculations and corruptions were more con-
spicuous, it was because of the vaster amounts expended

and the vastly greater opportunities and temptations to

avarice and fraud. The recently published letters of

- Col. Pickering furnish additional evidence of the frauds

and peculations in the supplies to the armies of the
Revolution and of the neglect of the States to provide
food and clothing for the soldiers, when many of the
people, for Whose liberties they Were struggling, were
living in comparative ease and luxury. The World
moves. ,

There is one criterion of which I cannot forbear to
speak, the conduct of the soldiers of the late War upon
the return of peace 5 how quietly and contentedlythey
came back from the excitements of the battle--field and
camp to the quiet of home life, and to all the duties of
citizenship ; With a coat, perhaps, Where one sleeve was
useless, with a leg that had a crutch for comrade, but
With the heart always in the right place I T

The burdens of the War are yet with us 3 the vast
debt created, these heavy taxes consuming the very
seed of future harvests ; the vacant seats at the fireside.
Fifteen years, and half a generation of men, have
passed away since the conflict of opinion ripened into

the conflict of arms. They have been years of terrible .

anxiety and of the sickness‘ of hope deferred; yet if
their record could be blotted from the book of life,» if
the grave could give up its noble dead, and all the

fix‘

55

waste spots, moral and material, resume the verdure
of the spring-time, no one of us would return to
the state ‘bf things in 1860, with the curse of slavery
hanging over us and the fires of discord smouldering
beneath us. The root of alienation, bitterness, and hate
has been wrenched out, and henceforth union and peace
are at least possible.

We have no right, the Roman moralist would tell us,
and no cause, to despair of the republic.

The elements of material prosperity are all with us _3
this magnificent country, resonant with the murmurs of
two oceans, with every variety of soil, climate, and

production to satisfy the tastes or wants of man 3 with a

its millions of acres of new lands beckoning for the
plough and spade 3 with. its mountains of coal and iron
and copper, and its veins of silver and gold waiting like
Enceladus to be delivered 3 its lakes, inland seas 3 its
rivers the highways of nations. We have bound its
most distant parts together with bands of iron and
steel 3 we have answered the question of J oh 3 we send
the lightnings over it “ that they may go, and say
unto us, Here we are.”

A We have all the tools of the industries and arts which

A the cunning brain of man has invented and his supple

fingers learned to. use, and abundant capital, the

reserved fruits of labor, seeking a chance for planting

and increase.
The means of intellectual growth are with us. We

have in most of the States systems of education open-

ing to every child the paths to knowledge and to good--

56

ness ; destined, we hope, to be universal. And he who
in our day has learned to read in his mother--tongue

« may be said to have all knowledge for his empire.

And. our laws, though by no means, perfect, were
never so wise, equal, and just as now 5 never so infused
with the principles of natural justice and equity, as to-
day. Indeed, in no department of human thought and
activity has there been in the last century more intelli-
gent progress than in our jurisprudence.

Whateve1° may be said of creeds and formulas of
faith, there never was so much practical Christianity as
now 5 as to wealth, so large a sense of stewardship 3 as
to labor, so high a recognition of its rights and dignity;
into the wounds of suffering humanity never the pour-
ing of so much oil and wine 5 never was man as man,
or woman as woman, of such worth as to--day.

In spite of criticism we have yet the example and
inspiration of that life in which the human and the
divine were blended into one.

In spite of philosophy, Grod yet sits serenely on his
throne, his watchful providence over us, his almighty
arm beneath us and upholding us.

For an hundred years this nation, having in trust the

largest hopes of freedom and humanity, has endured-

There have been whirlwind and tempest; “it has mas-~
tered them, bending only as Landor says the oak: bends

before the passing wind, to rise again in its majesty and a

in its strength.” It has come out of the fiery furnace of
civil war, its seemingly mortal plague-spot cauterized
and burned out, leaving for us to-day a republic

5‘?

capable of almost infinite expansion, in which central

4 power may be reconciled with local independence, and

the largest liberty With the firmest order.

Stanch, With every sail set, her flag with no star
erased, this goodly Ship of State floats on the bosom of
the new century.

I11 her We “ have garnered up our hearts, Where We

must either live or bear no life.”
. And now, God of our fathers, What Wait We for but
thy blessing‘ ? Let thy breath fill her sails, thy presence
be her sunshine. If darkness and the tempest come,
give her, as of old, pilots that can weather the storm.