Durfee, Thoinas
An oration.
Providence, 1653,

^^^^^H

wm

gl^^^

m

JJHHRI

M

^^^1

*y

Wm^^m

w>

JT^J^Z

^-ij

f^M^^^^

e^^Ar

v^%

/ •-'

^^K^

s'>^

v.>

^^^^^e* ^^i

'-t

f , \

'^\.

^mM'

J. ^

: ' ' "*

I'v

'^k'!/'iS

' r J'

* ^ -

'"'

I -f^

..4*''''.

ti.t"-''-

te'
IB'.- -
sr*.'
'I give tkefi Books
\ fpr gfe faundbtg of a. Collegi in. ttis Colony"

¦BilM!-

ORATION

BY THOMAS DURFEE,

July 4tli, 1853.

0
AN

OEATION

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES

AKD

CITIZENS OF PROVIDENCE.

ON THE

SEVENTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY
OF
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE,
July 4, 1853.

BY THOMAS DURFEE.

PROVIDENCE:
KNO-VVLES, ANTHONY & CO., PRINTERS.
1853.

V--." |.

r\

q -H-F

.. -'—I— ' c c '-'

PROVIDENCE, July 16th, 1853.
Thomas Duefee, Esq:
Sir : — 'We have the pleasure to transmit to you the annexed copy of
a resolution passed by the City Council, on the llth of July last.
Respectfully, Your fellow citizens,
THO'S A. DOYLE, -)
E. W. WALKER, / ^
C. W. HOLBROOK, ( ^o^^tt^^.
GEO. W. HALL, )

CITY OP PROVIDENCE.

In City Council, }
July llth, A. D. 1853.1
Resolved, That the committee appointed to make arrangements for
the Municipal Celebration of the Anniversary of American Indepen
dence, be and they are hereby authorized to request of Thomas Durfee,
Esq., a copy of the Oration delivered by him on the fourth of July last,
and cause the same to be published in such manner as they may deem
expedient, for the use of the City Council.
True copy — Attest :
ALBERT PABODIE, City Clerk.

Providence, July 15th, 1853.
Gentlemen : — I have received yours of this date, transmitting a copy
of a resolution of the City Council, passed on the llth of July laati
Returning to the City Council my thanks for so flattering a proof of
their approbation, I place my manuscript at your disposal.
Yours respectfully,
THOMAS DURFEE.
To Messrs. THO'S A. DOYLE, )
E. W. "WALKER, ( p  -,, „
C. W. HOLBROOK, ( Committee.
GEO. "W. HALL, )

OR^ATION.

Fellow-Citizens :
We read in English history that shortly after
the gi-ving of Magna Charta, the high primate of
the Church, surrounded by his bishops in the pomp
of pontifical apparel, with censors burning, stood
in the great hall at Westminster, and, in the pres
ence of the king, the peers, and the commons of
England, did excommunicate and accurse, and from
the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and from all the
company of heaven, and from all the sacraments of
holy church, did sequester and exclude all the vio
lators of that glorious ordinance of British freedom.
The same love of liberty and the same detestation
of tyranny, which, of old, prompted these terrific
fulminations of the church, are to-day speaking in
the jubilant peal of music and bell and cannon, and
in all the bright pageantry, the paeans and the bene
dictions of a national holiday. It were not un
profitable to trace the progress of this Liberty from
that day, when she stood amongst our ancestors,
panoplied in curses and anathemas and planting her
faith on the terrors of an unseen world, down a no-

ble line of heroes and martyrs, through trying vicis
situdes of triumph and disaster, brightening along
the slow march of centuries, by hard-wrung conces
sions from despot and bigot, and by the growing
light in the masses of the people, until this time,
when, as the morning blushes from peak to peak,
and spire calls to spire across the belt of half a hemi
sphere, she hears the united thanksgivings of twenty
millions of free-men rejoicing in her beneficence.
But the occasion permits only such a passing glance
along this line of beacon-fires, blazing on the emi
nences of the past, as will throw light upon the in
stitutions and principles which, whatever their ori
gin, drew their fullest inspirations from the Ameri
can Revolution.
The benefits which we inherit from the Eevolu-
tion, though incalculably great, may be briefiy stated
thus : — The secure establishment of a free govern
ment ; the example of a disinterested patriotism ;
the precedent of a wise administrative policy.
Our fathers established a government avowedly
deriving its powers from the consent of the govern
ed ; and the conformity of this principle with the
character and habits of the people aff'ords the surest
pledge of its continuance. This idea of government
though it then acquired a new and more perfect ex
pression, was not the offspring of the Eevolution.

Dimly foreshadowed or distinctly defined, it has
always been an element of the Anglo Saxon char
acter. The old Roman conqueror remarked it in the
German forests, when our Teutonic ancestors elected
their warrior chiefs by the clashing of their shields.
With them it migrated to England, breathed its life
into the British Constitution, and developed itself in
the contest between prerogative and privilege — the
divine right of the king and the chartered immu
nities of the subject. It is this contest that gives
an enduring interest to English history. One party
traced the sources of royal power directly to God
himself; the other to a constitution which reposed
on the will of the governed ; — both fought within
the shadow of a mighty truth. For in one sense
all government is divine. Man is formed with such
social attributes that some government is ordained
in the very laws of his nature, but the kind of gov
ernment is of human election not of divine ordi
nance. God has said, "Let there be Law," as plain
ly as of old He said, "Let there be light," and, in
the infancy of nations, the king stands forth as the
visible symbol and bright manifestation of this will
of heaven. It is not strange, then, that in the ru
der ages of English history, this distinction between
the di-vine and necessary origin of government, and
the human and elective character of its administra-

8
tive functions should have been oftener overlooked
than recognized. The distinction was rather felt
than understood ; and the king, inheriting the glo
ries of an ancestry whose origin was hidden in the
golden mist of fable, encircled with regal pomp and
personating the majesty of a mighty nation, with
vast intellectual and physical resources at his com
mand, could easily deceive a simple populace and
perhaps himself, with the idea that this imperial pow
er, which he traced back through the long succession
of his sceptred lineage, was no other than heaven's
boon, vouchsafed to him, to be dispensed at his gra
cious will, rather than the sacred trust of his people,
to be administered as they prescribed and for their
good. Many things favored this idea. He was the
anointed of the church and swayed the crozier of
ecclesiastical supremacy. He held the sword, and,
wherever the English flag floated victoriously over
the contests of English valor, the triumphant heart
of the nation bowed to him as the source of their
martial prowess. By a legal fiction he was immor
tal, could do no wrong and was the fountain of jus
tice. The honors of the prelacy and the peerage
were in his gift and he signed the patents for newly-
discovered climes. From him the oldest nobles of
the realm held the tenure of their dignities and were
but too often the minions of his caprice. His

power, descending in the line of a single family with
its inherited maxims of self-agrandizement, main
tained and enlarged itself with the consistency of a
single will, while the people resisted Avith the inde
cision of numbers. When Louis the Fourteenth of
France said, "I am the State," he scarcely wielded
a single prerogative, which was not claimed by some
of the English Kings.
Instinctively the thoughts of the mind seek an
expression, which shall make them palpable to the
senses. Now what could have more strikingly em
bodied the idea of a divine right of government,
which, so true as a general law, is false only in ar
rogating an exclusive form of organization, than
this imposing assemblage of sovereign powers "? In
France such was the result ; in England there was on
ly an oscilating tendency towards it. Why was this ]
The answer lies in the differences of national character.
The French are a nation of abstractionists and car
ry all things to extremes. The English are men of
practical sense and love the security of moderation.
The subtle acumen of the French mind delights in
scientific analysis, which pushes the expression of
truth to its ultimate formulas. The sturdy com
mon sense of the English dwells in the realities of
practical life and never sacrifices positive good for
theoretical perfection. Even in their recreations
9

10

you find the same characteristics, impelling the one
to frivolous gaiety or delirious excitement, satisfying
the other with a sober comfort. It is owing to this
difference of character, manifesting itself in politics,
that the French of one age repose in an absolute
monarchy, and, in another, , hurry to the verge of
anarchy ; that to-day they expel a constitutional
monarch to indulge the Utopian dream of a perfect
political equality, and to-morrow bask their fickle
hearts in the meritricious splendor of a despotism.
England, on the other hand, clings even to old abu
ses, out of respect to some contingently resulting
benefit, and revives antiquated precedents, which
can only plead their by-gone services as a palliation
for present mischief She moves forward holding
always by the past, exhibiting the completest ex
ample extant of a progressive conservatism. Her
history is the history of common sense applied to
politics. This original practical tendency of the Eno-lish,
now reposing on its sturdy tenacity and now incited
to action by English liberty, was still further devel
oped by their political training. From early times
they claimed, exemption from taxes unless levied by
their own representatives ; the right of trial by a
jury of their peers ; protection, under the writ of
habeas corpus, from arrest and imprisonment except

11

for causes known to the law ; and the right of im
peaching the powerful ministers of the crown, be
fore the House of Lords, for high crimes and mis
demeanors. These privileges gave them the cen
sorship of the royal expenditures, power to prevent
the acquisition of the means of oppression and to
exact the redress of grievances ; secured their lives,
liberty and property from infringement and restrain
ed the exorbitance of official power within its
legitimate sphere. The possession of freedom is it
self one source of the virtues by which it is perpet
uated. Waging the contest with the royal prerog
ative from the vantage ground of these chartered
rights, English liberty repaid the debt, which she
owed to the practical mind and moral character of
the people, by the new enlargement which she im
parted to that mind and that character. She in
spired the greatest deeds in English history and
glowed in the grandest conceptions of English litera
ture. From sire to son, by the hearth-side of the
English yeoman, descended the traditions which
told how their fathers kindled with patriotic resent
ment, when the king's bailiff presented his warrant
for illegal taxes, when their brethren were impris
oned without precept, condemned without the judg
ment of their peers, restricted of the free right of
speech or invaded in the sanctuary of their homes.

12

And thus did liberty grow into the habit of their
life ; she was no brilliant apparition, that emerged
and vanished in the smoke of civil contests ; her ap
peal was made to the sanctity of law, to time-honor
ed customs, to immunities older than tradition, to
institutions sacred by glorious memories, to prece
dents with the force of statutes and to reason stron
ger than precedent, and to the eternal rules of jus
tice, so that every victory for freedom was no less a
victory in the moral development of the nation. — ¦
Once only does she imbrue her hand in royal
blood, and then, only after the forfeiture of repeated
pledges given for her security. At no time do you
find her clamoring for abstract principles. She sheds
no blood for the empty phantoms of liberty, equali
ty, fraternity. That is a French frenzy. But when
one of the institutions, through -which a principle is
bodied into practical life, is perilled either by vio
lence or treachery, then you hear the sentry note of
alarm sounded by the free press of England; you hear
the oracles of the law uttered by the courts, within
whose precincts liberty sits enshrined by the side of
j ustice ; while the indignant voice of parliament blends
with the public clamor to swell the volume of irre
pressible denunciation, and if this does not prevail
there is still left the final and triumphant appeal to
the irresistable remonstrance of theBritish bayonet.

13

But why do I dwell upon the manifestations of
this spirit in English history^ Because the in
heritor of a noble patrimony feels safer in its pos
session from having traced the unblemished chain
of title, by which it has descended. We too are
the heirs of English glory and English liberty. For
us too did she endure this discipline of centuries of
trial ; for many generations, her history is our his
tory ; her blood warms our hearts and her experi
ence has moulded our character ; that character has
qualified us for the achievement of self-government,
and therefore, in celebrating our independence from
her, it is not unmeet we do it with generous ac
knowledgments, as the enfranchised son, while re
gretting the faults, piously remembers the bene
factions of his parent.
The liberty and the character, which we inherited
from the mother country, and which are so indisso-
lubly wedded in English history, received a new ex
pansion in the American Revolution. American
colonization was itself one movement of the free
spirit of the age. The colonists of New England
were the Puritans, than whom no sincerer lovers of
freedom ever breathed the English air. They had
disclaimed the authority of the English hierarchy,
and in the same bold spirit, with which they ap
pealed from the church to the Bible, they appealed

14

from the king to the constitution. To statesmen of
their school, England owes it that she was not de
moralized and enslaved by the corrupt and despotic
dynasty of the Stuarts. Flying persecutions at home,
they sought freedom in the western forests. Other
adventurous spirits settled other parts of the new
world. They came under royal charters, Avhich, sub
ject to the jurisdiction therein reserved to the king
and council, secured to them their heritage of Eng
lish rights and English laws. By virtue of these.
Parliament had no power to tax them and no direct
authority in their internal administration. Their
contributions were levied by themselves, in response
to circular letters addressed by the king to their pro
vincial assemblies. Under their charters they had
established these. Many of them chose their own
governors. Their division into thirteen separate
colonies had brought more directly home to each
citizen the responsibilities of government and trained
him in its rights and duties. For this reason
they had more practical knowledge, and more
thoroughly understood the theory and history of
politics than men of the same class in England.
Yet in all this they were Englishmen with English
ideas, tracing their rights to Magna Charta, and
basing their reasonings on the principles of the
revolution of 1688.

15
The immunities of such a people the king and
parliament attempted to violate. We will not speak
uncharitably of England. The problem of colonial
administration was perplexing at the best, and the
intervention of three thousand miles and an ocean
could hardly have simplified its intricacies; yet jus
tice requires that we should condemn her policy.
It was selfish, illiberal, short-sighted — aiming sim
ply to make America a source of profit. Her trade
should swell the gains of English commerce ; her
wants supply the market for English manufactures ;
the younger sons of the nobility and the favorites
and sycophants of the crown should be pensioned
on her civil and military offices. The long cata
logue of grievances, to which this policy led, is writ
ten in the Declaration of Independence. Prominent
among them is taxation by parliament. So long as
America retained the right to grant or refuse her
contributions, some emergency might arise, when
she could extort the redress of her grievances ; if
this right were lost, then was she doomed to irre
trievable oppression. The old issue was raised,
whether a free-born Briton could be taxed by any
other than his representatives, so often of old deci
ded in favor of freedom ; and she felt, she should
be recreant not only to herself and to posterity, but
to immortal memories, if now it were decided other-

16

wise. Dissolving, therefore, the ties of a forfeited
allegiance, and declaring, that " governments are in
stituted amongst men deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed," — she appealed
no less to English history than to the inherent rights
of man for her justification, and did not fail to find
champions even at the foot of the throne. The
events of the revolution are too familiar to need re-
pitition here. The result of the contest was the
independence of America and the establishment of
a government, which, preserving all that was most
valuable in the English constitution and laws, abol
ished every vestige of hereditary power, and planted
itself on the principle of political equality.
In this wise, did the imperfect germ of self-gov
ernment, transplanted from the German forests into
the genial soil of the English character, deriving
thence the elastic vigor to resist the long continued
aggressions of a throne, which rested on the posses
sion of physical power and the arrogation of divine
right, and gathering strength from resistance, ex
pand, through the Revolution, to its crowning matu
rity in the American Constitution. And, therefore,
do I claim for it a secure establishment, because it
hath come in the progress of a natural development,
as the product not of evanescent causes but of the
indigenous elements of our national character.

17

Fellow Citizens ! I will speak briefly of the spirit
in which our ancestors achieved this great result, —
of their example of disinterested patriotism.
Few now are left of those who. once survived the
revolution. Here and there you meet some vene
rable man, marked with honorable scars and wrin
kled with unremembered troubles, bowed beneath
the burthen of many infirmities, whose thin locks
are bleached by the frosts of ninety winters, whose
listless eye has long since grown dim with sorrowful
experience, within whose heart the chords of many
a cherished and many a bitter feeling will never
again vibrate to the touch of human sympathy. The
important intelligence of the day, the great discove
ries in science and art, the improvements that
enhance knowledge and multiply enjoyment, reach
him without interest, and the most touching events
of his household scarcely ruffle the torpor of his fa
culties. Yet there is thrilling life in that form.
Touch upon some event, whisper but the name of
some hero of the revolution — the faded eye kindles,
the wan and furrowed face glows with animation,
new vigor erects that bent and tottering frame, the
eloquence of forgotten tones lingers on those lips,
and the intelligence of a better day lights up his
intellect. His soul still pants with the valor of
3

18

Bunker Hill and Monmouth and Lexington — still
burns with its ancient devotion to Lafayette ahd
Greene and Washington, What is the spring of
this quenchless enthusiasm, defying time and sor
row and surviving almost the recollection of his
wedded life, — the one living spot unblemished by
decay 1 The inspirations of an heroic passion have
once elevated him above his ordinary humanity.
His heart, once pledged to the service of a great
principle, to the defence of sacred rights — kept its
fidelity in the face of hardship and sacrifice
and danger and death, and the sense of noble duties
nobly discharged rewards the hero with undying
memories of a time, when the love of self was all
absorbed and glorified in the love of country.
If any one should measure this greatness of soul,
this enthusiasm of self devotion, simply by the bat
tles of the revolution, he would very imperfectly
conceive its character. Greater battles have been
fought to serve the crazy whims of a tyrant. But
no tyrant ever accomplished what America achieved.
His army is formed from compacted forces inured
to submission, — hers from the dissentient passions
of a rebellion. The reduction of many minds to
single-hearted obedience is easy under the pressure
and discipline of established power ; she must effect
it by the force of a great sentiment, which, seizing

19
the free wills of the community, bends them to a
common object. Thirteen different states must for
get their differences in a federation of their coun
cils ; thousands of men, too rich to suffer from the
grievance of taxation or too poor to be reached by
its exactions, must lay aside their private interests
in devotion to the public. It is done. Otis and
Adams and Franklin and Henry and Jefferson smite
the chords of patriotism with the memory of tra
ditional right and the prophecy of predestinated
freedom, until that divine instinct of the soul, which
makes it sweeter to die in the service of truth than
to enjoy the richest rewards of its renunciation,
quickens the conscience of a nation. It is a moral,
not a martial greatness, that gives its glory to the
revolution. The lofty temper, with which they en
tered on the war against desperate odds, after seven
years of exposure to the direst sufferings — cold, hun
ger, poverty, sickness, captivity and death — after
hope was blighted and the scant rewards of their
service had dwindled in the depreciation of a fac
titious currency, still preserved its original force
unspent. In the hour of appalling darkness which
no human sagacity could penetrate, they moved on
wards with serene confidence in the benignity of
Providence, and, thus supporting their patriotism
on the arm of religion, devoted themselves unshrink-

20

ingly to death. Not inaptly of them may be said
what was said of the old Athenians slain in battle ;
"Besto-wing thus their lives on the public, they
have every one received a praise that will never de
cay, a sepulchre that will always be most illustri
ous — not that in which their bones lie mouldering,
but that in which their fame is preserved — to be on
every occasion, when honor is the employ of either
word or act, eternally remembered."
But there is another element of the spirit of that
time, which must not be forgotten. The patriotism,
that sits with clasped hands beside the altars of
home, in its unwitnessed endurance is scarcely less
heroic than that, which with undaunted courage
mingles in the storin of battle. The mind touched
by the honorable ambitions of civic life, the heart
that garners up the treasure of household affections
or enshrines the mystery of earliest love, goes forth
shielded by many prayers and returns smitten by
that undistinguishing hand, leaving to others the
wounds which no human art can heal. Yet the
charities, that shed their charm by the fireside, not
only intertwine but foster the virtues, which con
stitute the ornament and strength of states. The
widowed mother, already once despoiled, buckles
his father's equipments around her son, inflames
with noble words his quick sense of glory and valor,

21

faltering now not with fear but tenderness, and,
with the parting benedictions of love and religion,
devotes him to her country's service. In the fa
tigues of the march, in the privations of the camp,
in the perils of battle, in the vision of inevitable
death, that remembered form still cheers, still en
courages, still points forward to the post of honor,
and upward, through the assurances of faith, to the
recompence of duty. Beside his humble grave, hon
ored with no public sorrow and marked by no memo
rial inscription, stands the solitary mourner, and,
from that simple mound where every earthly joy lies
buried with her son, lifts upward a thankful heart,
because he still reposes in the soil of freedom. For
ever honored be this finer and less appreciable, but
scarcely less potent, influence of the Women of the
Eevolution !
If the strictness of truth require the qualifying
touch of a darker pencil, it may be trusted to the
scrupulous exactness of the historian. Better for
us is it, that we take home to our hearts these
brighter patterns for study and imitation, remember
ing that, though not summoned to the glory of dying
for our country, a no less pure and honorable fame
awaits the man who lives for its improvement. *

* This and the preceding paragraph, on account of the lateness of the hour,
were omitted in the delivery.

22

The men, who established our government upon
the permanent basis of the federal constitution, like
wise moulded its earliest administrative policy. At
the head of the administration were Washington
and Adams ; in the cabinet were Jefferson, Hamil
ton, Knox and Randolph, all distinguished for their
revolutionary services. Arduous duties devolved
upon them — to discharge a heavy public debt, to
devise a system of national finances, to revive a lan
guishing commerce, to encourage manufactures and
the mechanic arts, to allay the jealousies and har
monize the interests of thirteen states, A foreign
policy was to be adopted, a matter embarrased in
the outset by the attempt of foreign emissaries and
many of our own citizens to involve the country in
the contests of the French Revolution. The ques
tion of international intervention, Avhich has so late
ly agitated the public mind, was then presented, and
it was determined, that while the government would
entertain every proposed alliance of amity and com
merce, it would observe a strict neutrality in the
political concerns of other nations. Who shall say
how much depended on the wisdom of these initia
tory measures; or what slight variations from their
line of pohcy might have disturbed the delicate bal
ance of adjustments, which sustains so many sepa-

23
rate sovereignties in obedience to one central law,
have retarded the material prosperity of the country
or committed it to a series of pernicious entangle
ments -with foreign polities'? The views which
guided that administration, are bequeathed to us
in Washington's Farewell Address, The fundamen
tal principle of its policy was to confine American
energies to the improvement of American resources —
in one word, self-development. Under the guid
ance of this principle, occasionally modified in its
application by the emergence of new interests or
the change of parties, the country has achieved its
unexampled progress of material and political pros
perity. May never the madness of partizan passion,
the lust of territorial conquest or the eloquent cas
uistry of a misguided philanthropy seduce her from
a policy so pregnant with beneficent results !
This liberty, thus acquired and thus extended
through the constitution and laws to all the con
cerns of civil life, and this common country, thus
auspiciously inaugurated in its career of improve
ment, have descended to us for enjoyment and trans
mission. We are one link of that society, which,
renewing itself from generation to generation, per
petuates not only the succession of human life but
the civilization of the race. The individual perish
es  she is immortal, and, in her archives records

24

the title, and keeps for herself the fee fo this fair
inheritance of government and law and liberty, of
science and art and literature, and the garnered har
vests of industry and genius — from all her ample
possessions, allowing to man simply usufruct. On
him she bestows, without price, the use of all her
gifts — the boon of civil liberty, purchased of yore
with such precious blood. Has he then no duty
but their enjoyment ¦? Let him not be deceived!
Let him not, misintrepreting the praises of liberty
by the wise and the good, too hastily infer that she
comes to bring the palms of manly excellence, rath
er than to open the lists in which they may be won.
Let him never forget those darker days of France,
when the votaries of freedom, exulting in the
apotheosis of human reason, defied the sanctions of
morality and religion and placed
" Within the sanctuary itself their shrines.
Abominations ; "
and, from this fearful warning, let him learn in time,
that she brings no exemptions from human en
deavor and only multiplies the obligations of
duty. The civil franchises and the political rights
which she confers, valuable as they are, are chiefiy
valuable because they insure the inviolabilty of the
reason and the conscience, — of that nobler liberty
wherewith the truth doth make us free. This liber-

25
ty, the brightest flower of an exalted manhood, no hu
man law can confer. This the individual must
achieve for himself Yet it is the element from
which spring the fruits of the purest virtue, the pro
ducts of the noblest genius, the enduring excellen
cies of literature and philosophy and art. If these
have flourished under the sway of tyrants, it is only
because, even in the absence of civil rights, the
mind has dared to cherish its own proper freedom.
For this reason, Socrates in prison and Grotius in
exile, disdaining to purchase the favor of people or
king by the s:nallest concessions of this birthright
of the soul, stand at the summit of moral heroism.
For the same reason, what scale can graduate the
pusillanimity of that free born citizen, who, blessed
with every civil immunity, yet surrenders, from
mere cowardice of thought, his private judgment to
the shifting currents of popular opinion or the impe
rious despotism of ancient abuse, or still more, basely
barters it for a price. Heaven forbid, that any
American should ever fathom the depth of such a
degradation ! And yet the spirit of our fathers,
speaking from the annals of their time, doth chal
lenge from us a higher elevation of intellectual and
social freedom than we have yet attained ; doth de
mand from us that we shall be less the plagiarists
of European manners and less the copyists of Euro-
4

26

pean thought; that we shall more willingly
forego the idolatrous service of wealth in the culture
of the higher faculties of our nature, and that, keeping
inviolate the union between freedom of thought and
freedom of speech, we in our turn shall infuse some
what of that grand and liberal spirit, in which they
fashioned the fabric of our government, into the
lofty creations of genius and reason — into the beau
tiful forms of poetry and art. And on this day, when
we are all so pardonably profuse in our ascriptions
of self-applause, may we not also hear those ances
tral voices, breathing through exultant congrega
tions, like the wind-woven music of a forest, with
the impressive announcement, that the glory of a
nation lies not in its opulence, not in its material
power, scarcely in the freedom of its laws, but in
the intelligence, the virtue, the magnanimity — 'the
intellectual and moral pre-eminence of its citizens.
But what, it may be asked, amid this unbounded
freedom of thought and this unrestrained licence of
expression, shall insure the stability of Government ?
Nothing, but a continuance of the national virtues
in which it was established, and, chief amongst them,
a profound sense in the popular mind, of the obli
gations of the laAv, Between the wide extremes of
social rank and along the extended gradations of
pecuniary inequality, lurk the abundant motives for

27

sedition and the powerful temptations to rapacity ;
•yet affluence may revel in her palace while poverty
starves at its threshhold, and luxury may slumber
by the thoroughfare where wretchedness stalks un
sheltered, and the reverential conviction of the pres
ence of a law, that wakes and protects and punishes,
shall appal the heart of the conspirator and stay
the hand of the robber. It is on this sentiment that
repose the solid foundations of our Republic, Let
no well-wisher of freedom dare to tamper with it !
Rather let every citizen cherish it in himself and his
children, not as a blind instinct of fear, but as an
enlightened persuasion of the reason, remembering
that it is interlinked with the tenure of all his
rights, and that in disobeying it he is disloyal to
himself and repudiates his own humanity, rendering
thus the most fearful expiation, even though no oth
er punishment overtake his guilt.'* An English
author has sneeringly described our government as
"an anarchy, regulated by the street-constable." Let
us accept his taunt as our glory ; for the full majes
ty of the law doth walk abroad in the humblest
functionary that executes its precepts, and the mo
ment it becomes less venerable in his person than in
the proudest monarch on his throne, that moment

* For a beautiful passage upon the obligations of law, see Cicero, De Ee-
pub Lib. Ill, Cap. 22, quoted by Sir James Mackintosh in his "Discourse on
the Law of Nature and Nations."

28

our government shakes to its centre and we do in
deed become an anarchy, not regulated, but at the
mercy of the passions and caprices of all sorts and
conditions of men.
Next to a respect for the law, if it be not implied
in it, the surest bulwark of our institutions is a ven
eration for the Union, A fabric, whose strong foun
dations were laid by Washington and his great com
peers, as the grand experiment of the age, and which
has thus far so abundantly redeemed the auguries of
its institution in the unparalleled prosperity which it
has confered, which, with an expansiveness almost mi
raculous, advances the broad shield of the Consti
tution over the constantly emergent destinies of
new-born States, and which, in its extension, has re
flected the meridian splendor and still glows with
the setting glories of a Clay and a Webster, needs
scarcely plead its transcendant utility to insure its
duration. No, fellow-citizens ! I will not insult
your understandings and your hearts by the conjec
ture of its dismemberment. No ! — it stands too se
curely established in the history of its unnumbered
blessings — too intimately interwoven in the amalga
mation of its diversified interests, ever to be abol
ished ; No ! — bearing proudly up the constellated
banner of the nation, it remains, and will remain
forever, firmly clasped and cemented together in the

29

fusion of the ties that make us one people, with one
language and one blood, one system of laws and one
form of government, a common history and a com
mon tradition, the same shrines of rehgion, the same
monuments of national glory and the same ancestral
graves.

THE FOLLOWING "WAS THE

VOLUNTARY ON THE ORGAN.

INTRODUCTORY ANTHEM— by the Juvenile Choik.
-VVOBDS BY GEO. P. MOKEIS.
Freedom spreads her downy wings,
Over all created things;
Glory to the King of kings,
Bend low to him the knee !
Bring the heart before His throne^
Worship Him and Him alone ! —
He 's the only King we own —
And He has made us free !
The holiest spot a smiling sun
E'er shed its genial rays upon,
Is that which gave a Washington,
The drooping world to cheer !
Sound the clarion-peals of fame !
Ye who bear Columbia's name ! —
With existence freedom came,
It is man's bu'th-right here !
Heirs of an immortal sire.
Let his deeds your hearts inspire ;
Weave the strain and wake the lyre
"Where your proud altars stand!
Hail with pride and loud hurrahs.
Streaming from a thousand spars.
Freedom's rainbow-flag of stars !
The symbol of our land.

PRAYER— BY Rev. J. C. Stockbridge.
Music — by the American Brass Band^
Reading of the Declaration of Independence.
BY WILLIAM M. RODMAN, ESQ.
MUSIC— BY "West's Cornet Band.

SONG — BY the Juvenile Choir.
^V0KDS BY MHS. ij. H. SIGOUKNEY.
C:iime ! beneath whose genial sun
Kings were qucU'd and freedom won ;
AVhere the dust of "Washington
Sleeps in glory's bed, —
Heroes from thy sylvan shade
Chang'd the plough for battle-blade, —
Holy men for thee have pray'd, —
Patriot martyrs bled.
Crownless Judah mourns in gloom —
Greece lies slumb'rlng in the tomb —
Rome hath shorn her eagle plume —
Lost her conquering name, —
Youthful Nation of the West,
Rise ! with truer greatness blest,
Sainted bands from realms of rest.
Watch thy bright'ning fame.
Empire of the brave and free !
Stretch thy sway from sea to sea, —
"Who shall bid thee bend the knee
To a tyrant's throne ?
Knowledge is thine armor bright,
Liberty thy beacon light,
God himself thy shield of might,
Bow to him alone.

o n. -A. m o i»r ,
BY THOMAS durfee, ESQ.
MUSIC — BY THE American Brass Band.
SONG — BY THE Juvenile Choir.
THE FtAe OF OUR UNKOIV,
¦SVORDS IST GEO. P. JIOKKIS, ESQ.
" A song for our banner ? " The watchword recall
Which gave the Kepublic her station ;
" I'nited we stand, divided we fall! "
It made and preserves us a nation !
The union of lakes — the union of lands —
The union of States none can sever —
The union of hearts — the imion of hands —
And the Flag of our Union forever !
What God in his infinite wisdom designed,
And armed with his weapons of thunder,
Not all the earth's despots and factions combined,
Have the power to conquer or simder !
The union of lakes, &c.
BENEDICTION— BY the Rev. J. C. STOCKBRiDca;.

YALE

Makers
Syracuse, N. Y.
PAT.JM. 21,IIOfr

'*">>. ^-S'

.*i^"

-K'

• .Ana. ''.

» 1 , 4 t, Tl Hit ^ 4 .