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No. 14. Serial. Price, 10 Cents. 
 
 THE 
 
 PULPIT AND ROSTRUM. 
 
 gtxmvw, 0wrttotw, iapter ^tttoxm, &t. t 
 
 PHONOGRAPHICALLY REPORTED BY ANDREW J. GRAHAM AND CHARLES B. COLLAR. 
 
 Success of our Republic; 
 
 A.N" OEATION 
 
 Hon. EDWARD .EVERETT, 
 
 DELIVERED IN BOSTON, MASS., JULY 4, 1860. 
 
 ^ 0F W % 
 
 £ 
 
 NEW YORKX 
 H. H. LLOYD & CO., 25 HOWARD ST. 
 
 London : Trubncr & Co. , CO Paternoster Row. 
 July 20th, 1860. 
 
THE PULP^^-lTO jBO'STRU 
 
 AN ELEGANT SERIAL IN PAMPHLET FORM, 
 CONTAINS PHONOGRAPHIC REPORTS OF THE BEST 
 
 SERMONS, LECTURES, ORATIONS, 
 
 ANDREW J. GRAHA3I and CHARLES B. COLLAR, Reporters. 
 Twelve Numbers, $1.00, in advance; Single Number, 10 ceo 
 
 i 
 
 The special object in the publication of this Serial, is to preserve in convenient form th 
 thoughts of our most gifted men. just as they come from their lips ; thus retaining their freshnc 
 personality. Great favor has already been shown the work, and its continuance is certain 
 successive numbers will be issued as often as Discourses worthy a place in the Serial can be I 
 out of the many reported, we hope to elect twelve each year. 
 
 TWELVE NUMBERS ARE READY. 
 
 No. 1.— The Rev. T. L. Cutler's Sermon on CHRISTIAN RECREATION 
 UNCHRISTIAN AMUSEMENT. 
 
 No. 2. — The celebrated Addresses of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and . 
 T. Brady, Esq., on MENTAL CULTURE FOR WOMEN. 
 
 No. 3.— The eloquent Discourse of Prof. 0. M. Mitchell, of the Cincinnati ( 
 vatory, on the GREAT UNFINISHED PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 No. 4.— THE PROGRESS AND DEMANDS OF CHRISTIANITY. By the 
 Wm. H. Milburn (the blind preacher). With an interesting Biographical Sket 
 
 No. 5. — The great Sermon of Rev. A. Kingman Nott (recently deceased 
 JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION, delivered in the Academy of Music. 
 York, February 13, 1859. 
 
 No. 6.— THE TRIBUTE TO HUMBOLDT. Addresses on the career of the 
 Cosmopolitan, by Hon. Geo. Bancroft, Rev. Dr. Thompson, Profs. Agassiz, Li 
 Bache and Guyot. 
 
 No. 7.— COMING TO CHRIST. By Rev. Henry Martin Scudder, M.D., 
 Missionary to India. 
 
 No. 8.— EDWARD EVERETT'S ORATION at the Inauguration of the Sta 
 Daniel Webster, at Boston, Sept. 17, 1859. 
 
 No. 9.— A CHEERFUL TEMPER; a Thanksgiving Discourse by Rev. Wm. A 
 of Madison Square Church, N. Y. 
 
 No. 10.— Edward Everett's Address, and Rev. John A. Todd's Sermon o 
 Death of WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 No. 11.— Hon. THOMAS S. BOCOCK'S ORATION, Address of Clark Mills, 
 Artist, and Prayer of Rev. B. H. Nadal, D.D., on the occasion of the inaugu: 
 of the Mills Statue of Washington, in the City of Washington, February 22, b 
 
 No. 12.— TRAVEL, ITS PLEASURES, ADVANTAGES AND REQUIREM1 
 A Lecture by J. H. Siddons, the distinguished English Lecturer. Delivered at 
 ton Hall, New York, February, 1860. 
 
 No. 13.— ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE; Addresses by Rev. Henry Ward Bei 
 Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D., Rev. Jos. P. Thompson, D.D., and Prof. ( 
 Mitchell. Delivered in New York, Feb. 17, 1860. 
 
 Back or current numbers are promptly mailed from the office, on receipt of the 
 
 We have RUFUS CHOATE'S celebrated Dartmouth College Oration on 1 
 Webster, a large elegant pamphlet. Price, postpaid, 30 cents. 
 
 Also, THE WONDER OF MAN'S CONSTITUTION, a very valuable Serin. 
 Rev. Sam'l T. Spear, D.D., before the Brooklyn Young Men's Christian Associ 
 Feb., 1859. Price, 12 cents, postpaid. 
 
 H. H. LLOYD & CO., Publishers, 
 
 25 HOWARD ST., NEW TO 
 
3-713 
 
 SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 
 
 Oration delivered by Him. Edward Everett, at Boston, July 4, 1860. 
 
 Eighty-four years ago this day, the Anglo-American Colonies, 
 acting by their delegates to the Congress at Philadelphia, formally 
 renounced their allegiance to the British Crown, and declared their 
 Independence. We are assembled, Fellow- Citizens, to commemo- 
 rate the Anniversary of that great day, and the utterance of that 
 momentous declaration. The hand that penned its mighty sentences, 
 and the tongue which, with an eloquence that swept all before it, 
 sustained it on the floor of the Congress, ceased from among the 
 living at the end of half a century, on the same day, almost at the 
 same hour, thirty-four years ago. The last survivor of the signers 
 closed his venerable career six years later ; and of the generation 
 sufficiently advanced in life to take part in public affairs on the 4th 
 of July, 1770, not one probably survives to hail this eighty-fourth 
 anniversary. They are gone, but their work remains. It has 
 grown in interest with the lapse of years, beginning already to add 
 to its intrinsic importance those titles to respect which time confers 
 on great events and memorable eras, as it hangs its ivy and plants 
 its mosses on the solid structures of the past, and we have come to- 
 gether to bear our testimony to the Day, the Deed, and the Men. "We 
 have shut up our offices, our warehouses, our workshops, we have 
 escaped from the cares of business, may I not add from the dis- 
 sensions of party, from all that occupies and all that divides us, to 
 
 ivi23(; 
 
2 SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 
 
 celebrate, to join in celebrating, the Birthday of the Nation with 
 one heart and with one voice. We have come for this year 1860 
 to do our part in fulfilling the remarkable prediction of that noble 
 son of Massachusetts, John Adams — who, in the language of Mr. 
 Jefferson, was " the Colossus of Independence, the pillar of its sup- 
 port on the floor of Congress." 
 
 Although the Declaration was not adopted by Congress till the 
 4th of July (which has accordingly become the day of the An- 
 niversary), the resolution on which it was founded passed on the 
 2d inst. On the following day accordingly, John Adams, in a 
 letter to his wife, says : " Yesterday the greatest question was de- 
 cided that was ever debated in America, and greater perhaps never 
 was nor will be decided among men. A resolution was passed 
 without one dissenting colony, that these United States are and of 
 right ought to be free and independent States." Unable to restrain 
 the fullness of his emotions, in another letter to his wife, but of 
 the same date, naturally assuming that the day on which the res- 
 olution was passed would be the day hereafter commemorated, he 
 burst out in this all but inspired strain : 
 
 " The day is passed ; the 2d of July, 1776, will be the most mem- 
 orable epoch in the History of America. I am apt to believe 
 that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great 
 Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day 
 of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It 
 ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, 
 sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this 
 continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore ! 
 
 " You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. 
 I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost 
 to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these States. 
 Yet through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light 
 and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the 
 means ; that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even 
 although we should rue it — which I trust in God we shall not." 
 
SUCCESS OF OUE KEPUBLIC. 3 
 
 The time which has elapsed since the great event took place is 
 so considerable — the national experience which has since accrued 
 is so varied and significant — the changes in our condition at home 
 and our relations abroad are so vast, as to make it a natural and 
 highly appropriate subject of inquiry, on the recurrence of the Ad- 
 niversary, how far the hopeful auguries, with which our Independ- 
 ence was declared, have been fulfilled. Has " the gloom," which, 
 in the language of Adams, shrouded the 4th of July, 1776, given 
 way on this 4th of July, I860, "to those rays of light and glory" 
 which he predicted? Has "the end," as he fondly believed it 
 would do, proved thus to be far more than " worth all the means?" 
 Most signally, as far as he individually was concerned. He lived 
 himself to enjoy more than a Koman triumph, in the result of that 
 day's transaction ; to sign with his brother envoys the treaty of 
 peace, by which Great Britain acknowledged the independence of 
 her ancient Colonies ; to stand before the British throne, the first 
 representative of the newly-constituted Republic ; and after having 
 filled its second office in connection with him, who, whether in 
 peace or in war, could never fill any place but the first — in office as 
 in the hearts of his countrymen — he lived to succeed to the great 
 Chief, and closed his honored career, as the elective Chief Magistrate 
 of those United States, whose independence he had done so much 
 to establish, with the rare additional felicity at the last of seeing 
 his son elevated to the same station. 
 
 But the life of an individual is but a span in the life of a Nation ; 
 the fortunes of individuals, for good or for evil, are but as dust in 
 the balance, compared with the growth and prosperity, or the de- 
 cline and fall, of that greatest of human personalities, a Common- 
 wealth. It is, therefore, a more momentous inquiry, whether the 
 great design of Providence, with reference to our beloved country, 
 of which we trace the indications in the recent discovery of the 
 continent, the manner of its settlement by the civilized nations of 
 the earth, the colonial struggles, the establishment of Independence, 
 the formation of a Constitution of Republican Government, and 
 
4 SUCCESS OF OUE EEPUBLIC. 
 
 its administration in peace and war for seventy years — I say, it is 
 a far more important inquiry whether this great design of Prov- 
 idence is in a course of steady and progressive fulfillment— marked 
 only by the fluctuations, ever visible in the march of human affairs, 
 and authorizing a well-grounded hope of further development, in 
 harmony with these auspicious beginnings — or whether there is 
 reason, on the other hand, to fear that our short-lived prosperity is 
 already (as misgivings at home and disparagement abroad have 
 sometimes whispered) on the wane — that we have reached, that 
 we have passed the meridian — and have now to look forward to an 
 evening of degeneracy, and the closing in of a ray less and hopeless 
 night of political decline. 
 
 You are justly shocked, fellow-citizens, at the bare statement 
 of the ill-omened alternative; and yet the inquiry seems forced 
 upon us, by opinions that have recently been advanced in high 
 places abroad. In a debate in the House of Lords, on the 19th of 
 April, on a question relative to the extension of the elective fran- 
 chise in England — the principle which certainly lies at the basis of 
 popular government — the example of the United States, instead of 
 being held up for imitation in this respect, as has generally been the 
 case, with reference to popular reforms, was referred to as showing, 
 not the advantage, but the evils of an enlarged suffrage. It was 
 emphatically asserted, or plainly intimated, by the person who took 
 the lead in the debate (Earl Grey), whose family traditions might 
 be expected to be strongly on the side of popular right, that in the 
 United States, since the Eevolutionary period, and by the undue 
 extension of the right of suffrage, our elections have become a 
 mockery, our legislatures venal, our courts tainted with party 
 spirit, our laws " cobwebs," which the rich and poor alike break 
 through, and the country, and the Government in all its branches^ 
 given over to corruption, violence, and a general disregard of publio 
 morality. 
 
 If these opinions are well founded, then certainly we labor under 
 a great delusion in celebrating the National Anniversary. Instead 
 
SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 5 
 
 of joyous chimes and merry peals, responding to the triumphant 
 salvos which ushered in the day, the 4th of July ought rather to 
 be commemorated by funeral bells, and minute guns, and dead 
 marches; and we, instead of assembling in this festal hall to 
 congratulate each other on its happy return, should have been 
 better found in sackcloth and ashes, in the house of penitence and 
 prayer. 
 
 I believe I shall not wander from the line of remark appropriate 
 to the occasion, if I invite you to join me in a hasty inquiry, 
 'whether these charges and intimations are well founded ; whether 
 we have thus degenerated from the standard of the Revolutionary 
 age ; whether the salutary checks of our system have been swept 
 away, and our experiment of elective self-government has con- 
 sequently become a failure ; whether, in a word, the great design 
 of Providence in the discovery, settlement, political independence, 
 and national growth of the United States has been prematurely ar- 
 rested by our perversity ; or whether, on the contrary, that design 
 is not — with those vicissitudes, and drawbacks, and human infirm- 
 ities of character, and uncertainties of fortune, which beset alike 
 the individual man and the societies of men, in the Old World and 
 the New — in a train of satisfactory, hopeful, nay, triumphant and 
 glorious fulfillment. 
 
 And in the first place I will say that, in my judgment, great del- 
 icacy ought to be observed, and much caution practiced in these 
 disparaging commentaries on the constitution, laws, and adminis- 
 tration of friendly States ; and especially on the part of British and 
 American statesmen in their comments on the systems of their 
 two countries, between which there is a more intimate connection 
 of national sympathy than between any other two nations. I 
 must say that, as a matter of taste and expediency, these specific 
 arraignments of a foreign friendly country had better be left to the 
 public Press. Without wishing to put any limit to free discussion, 
 or to proscribe any expression of the patriotic complacency with 
 which the citizens of one country are apt to assert the superiority 
 
(5 SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 
 
 of their own systems over those of all others, it appears to me that 
 pungent criticisms on the constitutions and laws of foreign States, 
 supported by direct personal allusions to those called to administer 
 them, are nearly as much out of place on the part of the legislative 
 as of the executive branch of a government. On the part of the 
 latter they would be resented as an intolerable insult; they can 
 not be deemed less than offensive on the part of the former. 
 
 If there were no other objection to this practice, it would be 
 sufficient that its direct tendency is to recrimination ; a warfare of 
 reciprocal disparagement on the part of conspicuous members of 
 the legislatures of friendly States. It is plain that a parliamentary 
 warfare of this kind must greatly increase the difficulty of carrying 
 on the diplomatic discussions which necessarily occur between 
 States whose commercial and territorial interests touch and clash 
 at so many points ; and the war of words is but too well adapted 
 to prepare the public mind for more deplorable struggles. 
 
 Let me further also remark, that the suggestion which I propose 
 to combat, viz., that the experiment of self-government on the 
 basis of an extensive electoral franchise is substantially a failure in 
 the United States, and that the country has entered upon a course 
 of rapid degeneracy since the days of Washington, is not only one 
 of great antecedent improbability, but it is one which it might be 
 expected our brethren in England would be slow to admit. The 
 mass of the population was originally of British origin, and the ad- 
 ditional elements of which it is* made up are from the other most 
 intelligent and improvable races of Europe. The settlers of this 
 continent have been providentially conducted to it, or have grown 
 up upon it, within a comparatively recent and highly enlightened 
 period, viz., the last two hundred and fifty years. Much of it they 
 found lying in a state of nature, with no time-honored abuses 
 to eradicate, abounding in most of the physical conditions of pros- 
 perous existence, with no drawbacks but those necessarily incident 
 to new countries, or inseparable from human imperfection. Even 
 the hardships they encountered, severe as they were, were well 
 
SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 7 
 
 calculated to promote the growth of the manly virtues. In this 
 great and promising field of social progress they have planted, in 
 the main, those political institutions which have approved them- 
 selves in the experience of modern Europe, and especially of Eng- 
 land, as most favorable to the prosperity of a State ; free represen- 
 tative governments ; written constitutions and laws, greatly model- 
 ed upon hers, especially the trial by jury ; a free and a cheap, and 
 consequently all-pervading Press ; responsibility of the ruler to the 
 people ; liberal provision for popular education, and very general 
 voluntary and bountiful expenditure for the support of religion. 
 If, under these circumstances, the people of America, springing 
 from such a stock, and trained in such a school, have failed to work 
 out a satisfactory and a hopeful result; and especially if within 
 the last sixty years (for that is the distinct allegation), and conse- 
 quently since, from the increase of numbers, wealth, and national 
 power, all the social forces of the country have, for good or evil, 
 been in higher action than ever before, there has been such mark- 
 ed degeneracy that we are now fit to be held up, not as a model to 
 be imitated, but as an example to be shunned — not for the credit, 
 but for the discredit of popular institutions — then, indeed, the case 
 must be admitted to be a strange phenomenon in human affairs — 
 disgraceful, it is true, in the highest degree to us, but not reflect- 
 ing credit on the race from which we are descended, nor holding 
 out encouragement anywhere for the adoption of liberal principles 
 of government. If there is any feeling in England that can wel- 
 come the thought that Americans have degenerated, the further 
 reflection that it is the sons of Englishmen who have degenerated, 
 must chasten the sentiment. If there is any country, or any 
 place, where this supposed state of things can be readily believed 
 to exist, surely it can not be the parent country ; it can not be in 
 that House of Commons, where Burke uttered those golden words, 
 " My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows 
 from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, 
 and equal protection." It can not be in that House of Peers, where 
 
8 SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 
 
 Chatham, conscious that the colonies were fighting the battle not 
 only of American but of English liberty, exclaimed, " I rejoice that 
 America has resisted." It must be in Venice, it must be in Naples, 
 or wherever else on the face of the earth liberal principles are 
 scoffed at and constitutional freedom is known to exist only as 
 her crushed and mangled form is seen to twitch and quiver under 
 the dark pall of arbitrary power. 
 
 Before admitting the truth of such a supposition, in itself so 
 paradoxical, in its moral aspects so mournful, in its natural in- 
 fluence on the progress of liberal ideas so discouraging, let us, for a 
 few moments, look at facts. 
 
 The first object in the order of events, after the discovery of 
 America, was, of course, its settlement by civilized man. It was 
 not an easy task ; a mighty ocean separated the continent from 
 the elder world — a savage wilderness covereel most of the country 
 — its barbarous and warlike inhabitants resisted from the first all 
 coalescence with the new-comers. To subdue this waste — to plant 
 corn-fields in the primeval forest, to transfer the civilization of 
 Europe to the New World, and to make safe and sufficient arrange- 
 ments, under political institutions, for the growth of free principles 
 — was the great problem to be solved. It was no holiday pastime ; 
 no gainful speculation ; no romantic adventure ; but grim, persist- 
 ent, w^eary toil and danger. That it has been upon the whole per- 
 formed with wonderful success, who will deny ? Where else in 
 the history of the world have such results been brought about in 
 so short a time ? And if I desired, as I do not, to give this discus- 
 sion the character of recrimination, might I not, dividing the 
 period which has elapsed since the commencement of the European 
 settlements in America into two portions, viz. : the one which pre- 
 ceded and the one which has followed the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence ; the former under the sway of European Governments — 
 England, Holland, France, Spain — the latter under the Government 
 of the independent United States — might I not claim for the latter, 
 under all the disadvantages of a new Government and limited re- 
 sources, the credit of greatly superior energy and practical wisdom, 
 in carrying on this magnificent work? It was the inherent vice 
 of the colonial system, that the growth of the American Colonies 
 was greatly retarded for a century, in consequence of their being 
 involved in all the wars of Europe. There never was a period 
 since Columbus sailed from Palos, in which the settlement of the 
 
SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 9 
 
 country has advanced with sucli rapidity as within the last sixty 
 years. The commencement of the Revolution found us with a 
 population not greatly exceeding two millions ; the census of 1800 
 little exceeded five millions ; that of the present year will not 
 probably foil short of thirty-two millions. The two centuries and 
 a half which preceded the Revolution witnessed the organization 
 of thirteen colonies, to which the period that has since elapsed has 
 added tAvcnty States. 1 own it has filled me with amazement to 
 find cities like Cincinnati and Louisville, Detroit, Chicago, and St. 
 Louis, not to mention those still more remote, on spots which with- 
 in the memory of man were frontier military posts, to find rail- 
 roads and electric telegraphs traversing forests, in whose gloomy 
 shades, as late as 1789, the wild savage still burned his captive at 
 the stake. 
 
 The desponding or the unfriendly censor will remind me of the 
 blemishes of this tumultuous civilization : outbreaks of frontier 
 violence in earlier and later times ; acts of injustice to the native 
 tribes (though the policy of the Government toward them has in 
 the main been paternal, and conscientiously administered) ; the 
 roughness of manners in infant settlements ; the collisions of ad- 
 venturers not yet compacted into a stable society — deeds of wild 
 justice and wilder injustice — border license, lynch law. All these 
 I admit and I lament ; but a community can not grow up at once 
 from a log-cabin, with the wolf at the door and the savage in the 
 neighboring thicket, into the order and beauty of communities, 
 which have been maturing for centuries. We must remember, 
 too, that all these blemishes of an infant settlement, the inseparable 
 accompaniment of that stage of progress and phase of society and 
 life, have their counterpart at the other end of the scale, in the 
 festering iniquities of large cities, the gigantic frauds of specula- 
 tion and trade, the wholesale corruptions, in a word, of older so- 
 cieties. "When I reflect that the day we celebrate found us a 
 feeble strip of thirteen colonies along the coast, averaging at most 
 a little more than 150,000 inhabitants each ; and that this, its 
 eighty-fourth return, sees us grown to thirty-three States, scattered 
 through the interior and pushed to the Pacific, averaging nearly 
 a million of inhabitants, each a well-compacted representative 
 republic, securing to its citizens a larger amount of the substantial 
 blessings of life than are enjoyed by equal numbers of people in 
 the oldest and most prosperous States of Europe, I am lost in won- 
 
10 SUCCESS OF OUE EEPUBLIC. 
 
 der; and, as a sufficient answer to the charge of degeneracy, I am 
 tempted to exclaim, Look around you ! 
 
 But, merely to fill up the wilderness with a population provided 
 with the ordinary institutions and carrying on the customary pur- 
 suits of civilized life — though surely no mean achievement — was by 
 no means the whole of the work allotted to the United States, and 
 thus far performed with signal activity, intelligence, and success. 
 The Founders of America and their descendants have accomplished 
 more and better things. On the basis of a rapid geographical ex- 
 tension, and with the force of teeming numbers, they have, in the 
 very infancy of their political existence, successfully aimed at higher 
 progress in a generous civilization. The mechanical arts have been 
 cultivated with unusual aptitude. Agriculture, manufactures, com- 
 merce, navigation, whether by sails or steam, and the art of print- 
 ing in all its forms, have been pursued with surprising skill. Great 
 improvements have been made in all these branches of industry, 
 and in the machinery pertaining to them, which have been eagerly 
 adopted in Europe. A more adequate provision has been made for 
 popular education than in almost any other country. I believe that 
 in the cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia more money, 
 in proportion to the population, is raised by taxation for the support 
 of common schools, than in any other cities in the world. There are 
 more seminaries in the United States where a respectable academi- 
 cal education can be obtained — more, I still mean, in proportion to 
 the population — than in any other country, except Germany. The 
 Fine Arts have reached a high degree of excellence. The taste for 
 music is rapidly spreading in town and country ; and every year 
 witnesses productions from the pencil and the chisel of American 
 sculptors and painters which would adorn any gallery in the world. 
 Our astronomers, mathematicians, naturalists, chemists, engineers, 
 jurists, publicists, historians, poets, novelists, and lexicographers 
 have placed themselves on a level with those of the elder world. 
 The best dictionaries of the English language, since Johnson, are 
 those published in America. Our constitutions, whether of the 
 United States or of the separate States, exclude all public provision 
 for the maintenance of religion, but in no part of Christendom is it 
 more generously supported. Sacred science is pursued as diligently, 
 and the pulpit commands as high a degree of respect in the United 
 States as in those countries where the Church is publicly endowed ; 
 while the American missionary operations have won the admira* 
 
SUCCESS OF OUli REPUBLIC. \\ 
 
 tion of the civilized world. Nowhere, I am persuaded, are there 
 more liberal contributions to public-spirited and charitable objects. 
 In a word, there is no branch of the mechanical or fine arts, no 
 department of science, exact or applied, no form of polite litera- 
 ture, no description of social improvement, in which, due allow- 
 ance being made for the means and resources at command, the pro- 
 gress of the United States has not been satisfactory, and, in some- 
 respects, astonishing. At this moment, the rivers and seas of the 
 globe are navigated with that marvelous application of steam as a 
 propelling power which was first effected by Fulton ; the monster 
 steamship, which has just reached our shores, rides at anchor in 
 the waters in which the first successful experiment of steam navi- 
 gation was made. The harvests of the civilized world are gathered 
 by American reapers ; the newspapers which lead the journalism 
 of Europe are printed on American presses ; there are railroads in 
 Europe constructed by American engineers and traveled by Ameri- 
 can locomotives ; troops armed with American weapons, and ships 
 of war built in American dock-yards. In the factories of Europe 
 there is machinery of American invention or improvement ; in 
 their observatories, telescopes of American construction ; and appa- 
 ratus of American invention for recording the celestial phenomena. 
 America contests with Europe the introduction into actual use of 
 the electric telegraph, and her mode of operating it is adopted 
 throughout the French empire. American authors in almost every 
 department are found on the shelves of European libraries. It is 
 true no American Homer, Virgil, Dante, Copernicus, Shakspeare, 
 Bacon, Milton, Newton has risen on the world. These mighty 
 genuises seem to be exceptions in the history of the human mind. 
 Favorable circumstances do not produce them, nor does the ab- 
 sence of favorable circumstances prevent their appearance. Homer 
 rose in the dawn of Grecian culture ; Virgil flourished in the court 
 of Augustus ; Dante ushered in the birth of the new European civ- 
 ilization ; Copernicus was reared in a Polish cloister ; Shakspeare 
 was trained in the green-room of the theater ; Milton was formed 
 while the elements of English thought and life were fermenting 
 toward a great political and moral revolution ; Newton, under the 
 profligacy of the Restoration. Ages may elapse before any coun- 
 try will produce a man like these, as two centuries nave passed 
 since the last mentioned of them was born. But if it is really a 
 matter of reproach to the United States that, in the comparatively 
 
12 SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 
 
 short period of their existence as a people, they have not added 
 another name to this illustrious list (which is equally true of all 
 the other nations of the earth), they may proudly boast of one ex- 
 ample of life and character, one career of disinterested service, one 
 model of public virtue, one type of human excellence, of which all 
 the countries and all the ages may be searched in vain for the par- 
 allel. I need not — on this day I need not — speak the peerless 
 name. It is stamped on your hearts, it glistens in your eyes, it is 
 written on every page of your history, on the battle-fields of the 
 Bevolution, on the monuments of your fathers, on the portals of 
 your capitols. It is heard in every breeze that whispers over the 
 fields of independent America. And he was all our own. He 
 grew up on the soil of America ; he was nurtured at her bosom. 
 She loved and trusted him in his youth ; she honored and revered 
 him in his age, and though she did not w r ait for death to canonize 
 his name, his precious memory, with each succeeding year, has 
 sunk more deeply into the hearts of his countrymen. 
 
 But, as I have already stated, it was urged against us on the oc- 
 casion alluded to, that within the last sixty years the United States 
 have degenerated, and that by a series of changes, at first appar- 
 ently inconsiderable, but all leading by a gradual and steady pro- 
 gression to the result, a very discreditable condition of things has 
 been brought about in this country. 
 
 "Without stating precisely what these supposed changes are, this 
 "result" is set forth in a somewhat remarkable series of reproach- 
 ful allegations, far too numerous to be repeated in detail in what 
 remains of this address, but implying, in the aggregate, the general 
 corruption of the country, political, social, and moral. The severity 
 of these reproaches is not materially softened by a few courteous 
 words of respect for the American people. I shall in a moment 
 select for examination two or three of the most serious of these 
 charges, observing only at present that the prosperous condition 
 of the country, which I have imperfectly sketched, and especially 
 its astonishing growth, during the present century, in the richest 
 products, material and intellectual, of a rapidly maturing civiliza- 
 tion, furnish a sufficient defense against the general charge. Men 
 do not gather the grapes and figs of science, art, taste, wealth, and 
 manners from the thorns and thistles of lawlessness, venality, fraud, 
 and violence. These fair fruits grow only in the gardens of public 
 peace and industry, protected by the law. 
 
SUCCESS OF OUE EEPUBLIC. 13 
 
 Iii the outset let it be observed, then, that the assumed and as- 
 signed cause of the reproachful and deplorable state of things alleged 
 to exist in the United States is as imaginary as the effects are ex- 
 aggerated or wholly unfounded in fact. The " checks established 
 by Washington and his associates on an unbalanced democracy in 
 the General Government" have never, as is alleged, " been swept 
 away" — not one of them. The great constitutional check of this 
 kind, as far as the General Government is concerned, is the limita- 
 tion of the granted powers of Congress; the reservation of the 
 rights of the States ; and the organization of the Senate as their 
 representative. These constitutional provisions, little comprehend- 
 ed abroad, which gives to the smallest States equal weight with 
 the largest, in one branch of the Legislature, impose a very efficient 
 check on the power of a numerical majority; and neither in this 
 nor any other provision <of the Constitution, bearing on the subject, 
 has the slightest change ever been made. Not only so, but the 
 prevalent policy since 1860 has been in favor of the reserved rights 
 of the States, and in consequent derogation of the powers of the 
 General Government. In fact, when the Reform Bill was agitated 
 in England, and by the conservative statesmen of that country stig- 
 matized as " a revolution," it was admitted that the United States 
 possessed in their written Constitution, and in the difficulty of pro- 
 curing amendments to it, a conservative principle unknown to the 
 English Government. 
 
 In truth, if by " an unbalanced democracy" is meant such a gov- 
 ernment as that of Athens, or republican Rome, or the English 
 Commonwealth, or revolutionary France, there not only never 
 was, but never can be such a thing in the United States. The very 
 fact that the great mass of the population is broken up into sepa- 
 rate States, now thirty-three in number and rapidly multiplying, 
 each with its local interests and center of political influence, is itself 
 a very efficient check on such a democracy. Each of these States 
 is a representative commonwealth, composed of two branches, with 
 the ordinary divisions of executive, legislative, and judicial power. 
 It is true that in some of the States some trifling property' qualifi- 
 cations of the elective franchise have been abrogated, but not with 
 any perceptible effect on the number or character of the voters. 
 The system, varying a little in the different States, always made a 
 near approach to universal suffrage ; and the great increase of 
 voters has been caused by the increase of population. Under elect- 
 
14 
 
 SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 
 
 ive Governments, with a free press, with ardent party divisions, 
 and questions that touch the heart of the people, petty limitations 
 on the right of suffrage are indeed " cobwebs 1 ' which the popular 
 will breaks through. The voter may be one of ten, or one of fifty 
 of the citizens, but on such questions he will vote in conformity 
 with the will and wish of the mass. If he resists it, tke Govern- 
 ment itself, like that of France in 1848, will go down. Agitation 
 and popular commotion scoff at checks and balances, and as much 
 in England as in America. When Nottingham Castle is in ruins 
 and half Bristol a heap of ashes, monarchs and ministers must 
 bend. The Reform Bill must then pass " through Parliament or 
 over it," in the significant words of Lord Macaulay; and that, 
 whether the constituencies are great or small. That a restricted 
 suffrage and a limited constituency do not always insure independ- 
 ence on the part of the representative may be inferred from the 
 rather remarkable admission of Lord Grey, in this very debate, 
 that "a large proportion of the members of the present House of 
 Commons are, from various circumstances, afraid to act on their 
 real opinions," on the subject of the Reform Bill before them. 
 
 I have already observed that it would be impossible, within the 
 limits of this address, to enter into a detailed examination of all 
 the matters laid to our charge on the occasion alluded to. The 
 Ministerial leader (Lord Granville) candidly admitted, in the course 
 of the debate, that, though he concurred with his brother Peer in 
 some of his remarks, "they were generally much exaggerated." 
 We, too, must admit with regret, that for some of the statements 
 made to our discredit, there is a greater foundation in fact than 
 we could wish ; that our political system, like all human institu- 
 tions, however wise in theory and successful in its general opera- 
 tion, is liable to abuse ; that party, the bane of all free Govern- 
 ments, works its mischief here ; that some bad men are raised to 
 office, and some good men excluded from it; that public virtue 
 here, as elsewhere, sometimes breaks down under the lust of place 
 or of gold ; that unwise laws are sometimes passed by our Legis- 
 latures, and unpopular laws sometimes violated by the mob ; in 
 short, that the frailties and vice of men and of Governments are 
 displayed in Republics as they are in Monarchies, in the New 
 World as in the Old ; whether to a greater, equal, or less degree, 
 time must show. The question may as pertinently be asked of 
 nations as of individuals, "Why beholdest thou the mote that is 
 
SUCCESS OF OUR EEPUBLIC. 15 
 
 in thy brother's eye, and considerest not the beam that is in thine 
 own eye?" 
 
 An honest and impartial administration of justice is the corner- 
 stone of the social system. The most serious charges brought 
 against us, on the occasion alluded to, are, that owing to the all- 
 pervading corruption of the conntry, the Judges of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, who once commanded the public re- 
 spect at home and abroad, are now appointed for party purposes, 
 and that some of their decisions have excited the disgust of all 
 high-minded men ; that the Judges of most of the State Courts 
 hold their offices by election, some by annual election; that the 
 undisputed dominion of the numerical majority, which has been 
 established, will not allow the desires and passions of the hour to 
 be checked by a firm administration of the law ; and that in con- 
 sequence the laws in this country have become mere cobwebs to 
 resist either the rich, or the popular feeling of the moment ; in a 
 word, that the American Astraea, like the goddess of old, has fled 
 the stars. I need not say, fellow-citizens, in your hearing, that to 
 wherever else this may be true (and I believe it to be truo nowhere 
 in the United States), it is not true in Massachusetts; and that 
 Westminster Hall never boasted a Court more honored or more 
 worthy of honor than that which holds its office by a life-tenure 
 and administers impartial justice, without respect of persons, to 
 the people of Massachusetts. 
 
 Such a Court the people of Massachusetts have no wish to change 
 for an elective judiciary, holding office by a short tenure. In their 
 opinion, evinced in their practice, this all-important branch of the 
 Government ought to be removed, as far as possible, beyond the 
 reach of political influences ; but it is surely the grossest of errors 
 to speak of the tribunals of the United States as being generally 
 tainted with party, or to represent the law, in the main, as having 
 ceased to be respected and enforced. Taking a comprehensive 
 view of the subject, and not drawing sweeping inferences from ex- 
 ceptional occurrences, it may be safely said that the law of the 
 land is ably, cheaply, and impartially administered in the United 
 States, and implicitly obeyed. On a few questions, not half a 
 dozen in number since the organization of the Government, and 
 those partaking of a political character, the decisions of the Court, 
 like the questions to which they refer, have divided public opinion. 
 But there is surelv no tribunal in the world which, like the Su- 
 
IQ SUCCESS OF OUB BEPUBLIC. 
 
 preme Court of the United States, has, since the foundation of the 
 Government, not only efficiently performed the ordinary functions 
 of a tribunal of the last resort, but which sits in judgment on the 
 Courts and Legislatures of sovereign States, on acts of Congress 
 itself, and pronounces the law to a Confederation coextensive with 
 Europe. I know of no such protection, under any other Govern- 
 ment, against unconstitutional legislation, if, indeed, any legisla- 
 tion can be called unconstitutional where Parliament, alike in 
 theory and practice, is omnipotent. 
 
 With respect to the partisan character of our Courts, inferred 
 from the manner in which the judges are appointed, the judges of 
 the United States Courts, which are the tribunals specifically re- 
 flected on, are appointed in the same manner and hold their offices 
 by the same tenure as the English judges of the Courts of common 
 law. They are appointed for life, by the executive power, no 
 doubt from the dominant party of the day, and this equally in both 
 countries. The presiding magistrate of the other branch of En- 
 glish jurisprudence — the Lord Chancellor — is displaced with every 
 change in politics. In seventy-one years, since the adoption of the 
 Federal Constitution, there have been but four Chief Justices of the 
 United States, and the fourth is still on the bench. In thirty-three 
 years there have been nine appointments of a Lord Chancellor, on 
 as many changes of administration, and seven different individuals 
 have filled the office, of whom five are living. As a member of 
 the Cabinet and Speaker of the House of Lords, he is necessarily 
 deep in all the political controversies of the day, and his vast official 
 influence and patronage are felt throughout Church and State. 
 The Chief Justice of England is usually a member of the House of 
 Lords, sometimes a member of the Cabinet. As a necessary con- 
 sequence, on all questions of a political nature, the Court is open 
 to the same suspicion of partisanship as in the United States, and 
 for a much stronger reason, inasmuch as our Judges can never be 
 members of the Cabinet or of Congress. During a considerable 
 part of his career, Lord Mansfield was engaged in an embittered 
 political warfare with the Earl of Chatham in the House of Lords. 
 All the resources of the English language were exhausted by Junius 
 in desolating and unpunished party libels on the Chief Justice of 
 England ; and when the capital of the British Empire lay at the 
 mercy of Lord George Gordon's mob, its fury was concentrated 
 against the same venerable magistrate. 
 
SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 17 
 
 The jurisprudence of this country strikes its roots deep into that 
 of England. Her courts, her magistrates, her whole judicial system 
 are regarded by the profession in America with respect and affec- 
 tion. But if, beginning at a period coeval with the settlement of 
 America, we run down the line of the Chancellors and Chief 
 Justices, from Lord Bacon and Sir Edward Coke to the close of the 
 last century, it will, in scarce any generation, be found free from 
 the record of personal, official, and political infirmity, from which 
 an unfriendly censor might have drawn inferences hostile to the 
 integrity of the tribunals of England, if not to the soundness of her 
 public sentiment. But he would have erred. The character of gov- 
 ernments and of nations must be gathered from a large experience, 
 from general results, from the testimony of ages. A thousand 
 years, and a revolution in almost every century, have been neces- 
 sary to build up the constitutional fabric of England to its present, 
 proportions and strength. Let her not play the unfriendly censor, 
 if some portions of our newly-constructed State machinery are 
 sometimes heard to grate and jar. With respect to the great two- 
 edged sword with which justice smites the unfaithful public ser- 
 vant, the present Lord Chancellor (late Chief Justice) of England 
 observes, of the acquittal of Lord Melville in 180G, that "it showed 
 that impeachment can no longer be relied upon for the conviction 
 of State offenses, and can only be considered as a test of party 
 strength;" while of the standard of professional literature, the 
 same venerable magistrate, who unites the vigor of youth to the 
 experience and authority of four-score years, remarks, with a can- 
 dor not very flattering to the United States, that down to the end 
 of the reign of George the Third (A. D. 1820), "England was ex- 
 celled by cotemporary judicial authors, not only in France, Italy, 
 and Germany, but eve?i in America." I will only add, that, of the 
 very great number of judges of our Federal and State Courts — 
 although frugal salaries, short terms of office, and the elective ten- 
 ure may sometimes have called incompetent men to the bench — it 
 is not within my recollection that a single individual has been sus- 
 pected of pecuniary corruption. 
 
 Next in importance to the integrity of the Courts in a well-gov- 
 erned State, is the honesty of the Legislature. A remarkable in- 
 stance of wholesale corruption, in one of the new States of the 
 "West, consisting of the alleged bribery of a considerable number 
 of the members of the Legislature, by a corrupt distribution of 
 
1& SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 
 
 railroad bonds, is quoted by Lord Grey as a specimen of the cor- 
 ruption which has infected the legislation both of Congress and of 
 the States, and as showing " the state of things which has arisen 
 in that country." It was a very discreditable occurrence certainly 
 (if truly reported, and of that I know nothing), illustrative, I hope, 
 not of " a state of things," which has arisen in America, but of the 
 degree to which large bodies of men, of whom better things might 
 have been expected, may sometimes become so infected, when the 
 mania of speculation is epidemic, that principle, prudence, and com- 
 mon sense break down in the eagerness to clutch at sudden wealth. 
 In a bubble season the ordinary rules of morality lose their con- 
 trolling power for a while, under the temptation of the day. The 
 main current of private morality in England probably flowed as 
 deep and strong as ever, both before and after the South Sea frauds, 
 when Cabinet ministers and Court ladies, and some of the highest 
 personages in the realm, ran mad after dishonest gains, and this in 
 England's Augustan age. Lord Granville, in reply, observed that 
 the " early legislation of England, in such matters, was not so free 
 from reproach as to justify us in attributing the bribery in America 
 solely to the Democratic character of the Government," and the 
 biographer of George Stephenson furnishes facts which abundantly 
 confirm the truth of this remark. After describing the extravagant 
 length to which railway speculation was carried in that country in 
 1844-45, Mr. Smiles proceeds : 
 
 " Parliament, whose previous conduct in connection with railway legislation was 
 so open to reprehension, interposed no check, attempted no remedy. On the con- 
 trary, it helped to intensify the evil arising from this unseemly state of things. Many 
 of its members were themselves involved in the mania, and as much interested in 
 its continuance as even the vulgar herd of money-grubbers. The railway pro- 
 spectuses now issued, unlike the Liverpool and Manchester and London and Bir- 
 mingham schemes, were headed by Peers, Baronets, landed proprietors, and strings 
 of M. P.'s Thus it was found in 1S45 that not fewer than one hundred and fifty- 
 seven Members of Parliament were on the list of new Companies, as subscribers 
 for sums ranging from two hundred and ninety-one thousand pounds sterling (not 
 far from a million and a half of dollars) downward ! The proprietors of new lines 
 even came to boast of their Parliamentary strength, and the number of votes they 
 could command in the House. The influence which land owners had formerly 
 brought to bear upon Parliament in resisting railways, when called for by the public 
 necessities, was now employed to carry measmes of a far different kind, originated 
 by cupidity, knavery, and folly. But these gentlemen had discovered by this time, 
 that railways were as a golden mine to them. They sat at railway boards, some- 
 times selling to themselves their own lands, at their own price, and paying them- 
 selves with the money of the unfortunate stockholders. Others used the railway 
 mania as a convenient, and to themselves inexj^ensive, mode of purchasing con- 
 
SUCCESS OF OUE EEPUBLIC. 19 
 
 stituencies. It was strongly suspected that honorable members adopted what 
 Yankee legislators call log-rolling;' that is, k You help mc roll my log, and I will 
 help you to roll yours ' At all events, it is a matter of fact, that, through Parlia- 
 mentary influence, many utterly ruinous branches and extensions, projected during 
 the mania, calculated only to benefit the inhabitants of a few miserable old bor- 
 oughs, accidentally omitted from schedule A, were authorized in the memorable 
 session of 1844-45. — [Smiles' Life of Stephenson, p. 871.] 
 
 These things, be it remembered, took place, not in a newly- 
 gathered republic, just sprouting, so to say, into existence on the 
 frontier, inhabited by the pioneers of civilization, who had rather 
 rushed together, than grown up to the moral traditions of an 
 ancient community ; but they took place at the metropolis of the 
 oldest monarchy in Europe, the center of the civilized world, where 
 public sentiment is propped by the authority of ages; heart of old 
 English oak encased with the life circles of a thousand years. I 
 was in London at the height of the mania ; I saw the Eailway 
 King, as he was called, at the zenith of his power ; a member of 
 Parliament, through which he walked quietly, it was said, " with 
 some sixteen railway bills under his arm ;" almost a fourth estate 
 of the realm ; his receptions crowded like those of a Royal Prince ; 
 and I saw the gilded bubble burst. But I did not write home to 
 my Government, that this marvelous " state of things" showed the 
 corruption which springs from hereditary institutions, nor did I 
 hint that an extension of the right of suffrage, and a moderate in- 
 fusion of the democratic principle, was the only remedy. 
 
 I have time for a few words only, on the "unscrupulous and 
 overbearing tone" which is said by Lord Grey to " mark our in- 
 tercourse with foreign nations." 
 
 " If any one European nation," he observes, " were to act in the same manner, it 
 could not escape war for a single year. We ourselves have been repeatedly on the 
 verge of a quarrel with the United States. "With no divergence of interest, but the 
 strongest possible interest on both sides to maintain the closest friendship, we have 
 more than once been on the eve of a quarrel ; and that great calamity has only 
 been avoided, because the Government of this country has had the good sense to 
 treat the Government of the United States much as we should treat spoiled 
 children, and though the right was clearly on our side, has yielded to the unreason- 
 able pretensions of the United States. There is danger that this may be pushed too 
 far, and that a question may arise on which our honor and our interests will make 
 concession on our part impossible. 
 
 No one is an impartial judge in his own case. If we should meet 
 these rather indiscreet suggestions in the only way in which a 
 charge without specifications can be met — by a denial as broad as 
 
20 SUCCESS OF OUE EEPUBLIC. 
 
 the assertion — the matter would bo left precisely as it stood before ; 
 that is, each party in its national controversies thinks itself right, 
 and its opponent wrong, which is not an uncommon case in human 
 affairs, public and private. This at least may be added, without 
 fear of contradiction, that the United States, in their intercourse 
 with foreign Governments, have abstained from all interference in 
 European politics, and have confined themselves to the protection 
 of their own rights and interests. As far as concerns theoretical 
 doctrines on the subjects usually controverted between Govern- 
 ments, a distinguished English magistrate and civilian pronounces 
 the authority of the United States " to be always great upon all 
 questions of International Law." (R. Phillimore's International 
 Law, Vol. III., page 252.) Many of the questions wmich have 
 arisen between this country and England have been such as most 
 keenly touch the national susceptibilities. That in discussing 
 these questions, at home and abroad, no dispatch has been written, 
 no word uttered, in a warmer tone than might be wished, is not to 
 be expected, and is as little likely to have happened on one side of 
 the water as the other. But that the intercourse of the United 
 States with Great Britain has, in the main, been conducted, earnestly 
 indeed, as becomes powerful States treating important subjects, but 
 courteously, gravely, and temperately, no one well acquainted with 
 the facts will, I think, deny. 
 
 It would not be difficult to pass in review our principal contro- 
 versies with England, and to show that when she has conceded any 
 portion of our demands, it has not been because they were urged 
 in " an unscrupulous and overbearing tone" (an idea not very com- 
 plimentary to herself), but because they were founded on justice 
 and sustained by argument. This is not the occasion for such a re- 
 view. In a public address, which I had the honor of delivering 
 in this Hall last September, I vindicated the negotiations relative to 
 the Northeastern Boundary from the gross and persistent misrep- 
 resentations of w r hich they have been the subject ; and I will now 
 only briefly allude to by far the most important chapter in our dip- 
 lomatic history. It will show, by a very striking example, whether, 
 in her intercourse with foreign nations, America has been in the 
 habit of assuming an unscrupulous and overbearing tone, or whether 
 she has been the victim of those qualities on the part of others. 
 
 After the short-lived peace of Amiens, a new war, of truly 
 Titanic proportions, broke out between France and England. In 
 
SUCCESS OF OUE REPUBLIC, oj 
 
 the progress of this tremendous struggle, and for the purpose of 
 mutual destruction, a succession of Imperial decrees and orders in 
 Council were issued by the two powers, by which all neutral com- 
 merce was annihilated. Each of the great belligerents maintained 
 that his adversary's decree was a violation of International Law ; 
 each ustified his own edict on the ground of retaliation; and be- 
 tween these great conflicting forces the rights of neutrals were 
 crushed. Under these orders and decrees it is estimated that one 
 hundred millions of American property were swept from the 
 ocean ; of the losses and sufferings of our citizens, in weary de- 
 tention for years at Courts of Admiralty and Vice-Admiralty, all 
 round the globe, there can be no estimate. But peace returned to 
 the world ; time wore away ; and after one generation of the ori- 
 ginal sufferers had sunk, many of them sorrow : stricken and ruined, 
 into the grave, the Government of King Louis Philippe, in France, 
 acknowledged the wrong of the Imperial regime, by a late and 
 partial measure of indemnification.* England, in addition to the 
 capture of our ships and the confiscation of their cargoes, had sub- 
 jected the United States to the indignity of taking her seamen by 
 impressment from our vessels — a practice which, in addition to its 
 illegality and cruelty, often led to the impressment of our own 
 citizens, both naturalized and native. For this intolerable wrong 
 (which England herself would not have endured a day from any 
 foreign Power), and for the enormous losses accruing under the 
 orders in Council, the United States not only never received any 
 indemnification, but the losses and sufferings of a war of two years 
 and a half duration were superadded. These orders were at the 
 time regarded by the liberal school of British statesmen as unjust 
 and oppressive against neutrals ; and though the eminent civilian, 
 Sir William Scott (afterwards Lord Stow r ell), who presided in the 
 British Court of Admiralty, and who had laid the foundations of a 
 princely fortune by fees accruing in prize causes, t deemed it " ex- 
 treme indecency" to admit the possibility, that the orders in Coun- 
 cil could be in contravention of the public law, it is now the almost 
 universal admission of the text writers that such was the case. As 
 lately as 1847, the present Lord Chancellor — then Lord Chief 
 
 * By the treaty negotiated with great skill by Hon. W. C. Rives. 
 t Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stow ell and Eldon, by ¥m. Edward Surtees 
 D. C. L. (a relative), p. 83. 
 
22 SUCCESS OF OUK KEPUBLIC. 
 
 Justice of England — used this remarkable language : " Of these 
 orders in Council, Napoleon had no right to complain ; but they 
 were grievously unjust to neutrals; and it is now generally allowed, 
 that they were contrary to the law of nations, and to our own mu- 
 nicipal laic /" 
 
 These liberal admissions have come too late to repair the ruined 
 fortunes, or to heal the broken hearts of the sufferers ; they will 
 not recall to life the thousands who fell on hard-fought fields, in 
 defense of their country's rights. But they do not come too late 
 to rebuke the levity with which it is now intimated, that the 
 United States stand at the august bar of Public Law, not as reason- 
 ing men, but as spoiled children ; not too late to suggest the possi- 
 bility to candid minds, that the next generation may do us the 
 like justice, with reference to more recent controversies.* 
 
 Thus, fellow-citizens, I have endeavored, without vain-glorying 
 with respect to ourselves, or bitterness toward others, but in a 
 spirit of candor and patriotism, to repel the sinister intimation that 
 a fatal degeneracy is stealing over the country ; and to show that 
 the eighty-fourth anniversary finds the United States in the fulfill- 
 ment of the glowing anticipations with which, in the self-same in- 
 strument, their Independence was inaugurated, and their Union 
 first proclaimed. No formal act had as yet bound them together ; 
 no plan of confederation had even been proposed. A common al- 
 legiance embraced them, as parts of one metropolitan empire ; but 
 when that tie was sundered they became a group of insulated and 
 feeble communities, not politically connected with each other nor 
 known as yet in the family of nations. Driven by a common ne- 
 cessity, yearning toward each other with a common sympathy of 
 trial and of danger, piercing with wise and patriotic foresight into 
 the depths of ages yet to come — led by a Divine counsel — they 
 clung together with more than elective affinity, and declared the 
 independence of the United States. North and South, great and 
 small, Massachusetts and Virginia, the oldest and then the largest ; 
 New York and Pennsylvania, unconscious as yet of their destined 
 preponderance, but already holding the central balance ; Rhode 
 
 * Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vii., p. 218 ; Stor-ifs Miscel- 
 laneous Writings, p. 2S3 ; Phillimo.-e's International Late, vol. iii., pp. 250, 589 ; 
 Manning'* Commentary on the Law of JVations, p. 230 ; Wildman , s Institutes of 
 International Law, vol. ii., pp. 183, 1S5; also, the French publicists, Hautefeuillo 
 end Ortolan, under the appropriate heads. 
 
SUCCESS OF OUR REPUBLIC. 23 
 
 Island and Delaware, raised by the Union to a political equality 
 with their powerful neighbors, joined with their sister republics in 
 the august Declaration for themselves and for the rapidly multi- 
 plying family of States, which they beheld in prophetic vision. 
 This great charter of independence was the life of the Kevolution, 
 the sword of attack, the panoply of defense. Under the consum- 
 mate guidance of Washington it sustained our fathers under defeat, 
 and guided them to victory. It gave us the alliance with France, 
 and her auxiliary armies and navies. It gave us the Confederation 
 and the Constitution. With successive strides of progress it has 
 crossed the Alleghanies, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri ; 
 has stretched its living arms almost from the Arctic circle to the 
 tepid waters of the Gulf; has belted the continent with rising 
 States; has unlocked the golden treasures of the Sierra Madre; 
 and flung out the banners of the Eepublic to the gentle breezes of 
 the Peaceful Sea. Not confined to the continent, the power of the 
 Union has convoyed our commerce upon the broadest oceans to 
 the farthest isles ; has opened the gates of the Morning to our 
 friendly intercourse ; and— sight unseen before in human history — 
 has, from the legendary Cipango, the original object of the expe- 
 dition of Columbus, brought their swarthy princes, on friendly em- 
 bassage, to the western shores of the world-dividing ocean. 
 
 Meantime, the gallant Frenchmen, who fought the battles of 
 liberty on this continent, carried back the generous contagion to 
 their own fair land. Would that they could have carried with it 
 the moderation and the wisdom that tempered our revolution! 
 The great idea of constitutional reform in England, a brighter jewel 
 in her crown than that of which our fathers bereft it, i3 coeval with 
 the successful issue of the American struggle. The first appeal of 
 revolutionary Greece— an appeal not made in vain— was for Ameri- 
 can sympathy and aid. The golden vice-royalties of Spain on this 
 continent asserted their independence, in imitation of our example, 
 though sadly deficient in previous training in the school of regu- 
 lated liberty; and now, at length, the fair "Niobe of Nations," ac- 
 cepting a constitutional monarchy as an installment of the long-de- 
 ferred debt of freedom, sighs through all her liberated States for a 
 representative confederation, and claims the title of the Italian 
 Washington for her heroic Garibaldi. 
 
 Here then, fellow-citizens, I close where I began ; the noble pre- 
 diction of Adams is fulfilled. The question decided eighty-four 
 
24 
 
 SUCCESS OF QUE REPUBLIC. 
 
 years ago in Philadelphia was the greatest question ever decided in 
 America; and the event has shown that greater, perhaps, never 
 was nor never will be decided among men. The great Declaration, 
 with its life-giving principles, has, within that interval, exerted its 
 influence, from the central plains of America to the eternal snows 
 of the Cordilleras, from the Western shores of the Atlantic to the 
 farthest East, crossed the earth and the ocean, and circled the 
 globe. Nor let us fear that its force is exhausted, for its principles 
 are broad as humanity— as eternal as truth. And if the visions 
 of patriotic seers are destined to be fulfilled ; if it is the will of 
 Providence that the lands which now sit in darkness shall see the 
 day ; that the South and East of Europe and the West of Asia shall 
 be regenerated ; and the ancient and mysterious regions of the East, 
 the cradle of mankind, shall receive back in these latter days from 
 the West the rich repayment of the early debt of civilization, and 
 rejoice in the cheerful light of constitutional freedom, that light 
 will go forth from Independence Hall in Philadelphia ; that lesson 
 of constitutional freedom they will learn from this day's declaration. 
 
 
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 Merino Dress 1 
 
 BY MACHINE. BY HAND. 
 Hours. Min's 
 14 26 
 
 Hours. Min's. 
 
 16 
 
 Calico Dress 
 Chemise 
 Moreen Skirt 
 Muslin " 
 Night Dress 
 Drawers - 
 Silk Apron 
 Plafn " - 
 
 BY MACHINE. 
 Hours. Min's. 
 
 BY HAND. 
 Hours. Min's 
 
 Seams of any considerable length ai e stitched ordinarily, at the rate of a yard a minute. 
 
 Sewing Machines Awards by the American Institute, 1ST. Y. 
 
 Sewing Machines, considered in their social, industrial, physiogical bearings upon society, are second in impor 
 tance to no material agentof the day. Economizing nme-tenths of the time required for sewing by hand; eliminat 
 ing most of the evils of needlework ; enlarging the sphere of woman's employment by creating new and profitable 
 branches of industry ; relieving the housekeeper of her most grievous burden, the Sewing Machines rank with 
 the fabled deities as benefactors of humanity. 
 
 Tne committee of the American Institute, N. Y. , appointed at the late exebition at Palace Garden, to 
 examine ( Sewing Machines, have made a long, elaborate, and able report, of much interest to the public. 
 Although the utility of the invention is established beyond all question yet, for the various purposes of its 
 application, ignorance exists as to the particular patent best for a specific purpose. Committees heretofore 
 have not discriminated and classified sufficiently. This report is free from these faults. The Machines are 
 arranged according to the stitch made, and the purpose to which the machine is to be applied, in four classes 
 1st, 2d, 2rd and 4th ; a classification indicating the general order of merit and importance : 
 
 Class 1st, includes the Shuttle or Lock Stitch Macnines for family use, and for manufacturers in the same 
 range of purpose and material. The Commitee has assigned this class the highest rank, on account of the 
 "elasticity, permanence, beautv, and general desirableness of the shtching when done," and the wide range of 
 application. At the head of this class tney piace the Wheeler & Wilson Machine, and award it the highest 
 
 liura. This has been the uniform reward for this Mac hiue. throughout the Country for several years, and 
 irson will dispute its justice au).i propriety 
 
NEW BOOKS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER, 
 
 200 Mulberry-street, New York. 
 
 PRONOUNCING BIBLE. 
 
 Large 8vo. Price $2 50 to $7 00 
 
 We have lately issued the best Bible in 
 print, A Pronouncing Bible, having these 
 
 advantages : 1. The proper names are 
 divided and accented, so that a child can 
 pronounce them correctly. 2. Each book 
 has a short introduction, showing just 
 
 what every reader ought to know about 
 it. 3. It has a much improved class of 
 references. 4. It contains a map of Old 
 Canaan aud its surroundings, and one of_ 
 Palestine, according to the latest dis-"" 
 coveries. 
 
 WHEDON'S COMMENTARY. 
 
 A Commentary on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Intended 
 for popular use. By D. D. Whedon, D. D. 
 12mo. Price $1 00 
 
 The first volume of this long-promised 
 work is now ready. It is a 12mo. of 422 
 closely printed pages, embracing a fine 
 map of Palestine and other valuable illus- 
 trations. If it shall fail to meet with gen- many mon 
 
 eral favor we shall be greatly disappointed. 
 Tens of thousands of copies should be put 
 in immediate circulation. The cheapest 
 book for the price thai we have issued in 
 
 LIFE 0E JACOB GRUBER. 
 
 An interesting biography of one of the most remarkable preachers 
 of his day. By W. P. Strickland. 
 12mo. Price $100 
 
 It is a rare book, full of wit and wisdom. 
 It contains his memorable sermon for 
 which he was indicted by the grand jury 
 of Frederic county, Maryland, and charged 
 with inciting an Insurrection among the 
 slaves. 
 
 It also contains a full account of the 
 trial, and the defense of Roger B. Taney, 
 the present Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. A finely en- 
 graved portrait by Ritchie is in the volume. 
 Send on your orders. 
 
 " It is a perfect photograph of the most 
 
 unique man that ever trod American soil. 
 We advise all who purchase this book to 
 see to it that their vest buttons are ready 
 for severe service. Laugh you must — 
 laugh you will — laugh in spite of your 
 gravity or yourself." — Daily Advocate. 
 
 Yet when the good man was near death 
 he said : " When you think I am going see 
 me safe off, and sing in full chorus : 
 
 ' On Jordan's stormy banks I stand.' " 
 
 " It will be read with peculiar interest." 
 — N. Y. Evangelist. 
 
 " A charming book."— Ziori's Herald. 
 
 THE H0MILIST: 
 
 A series of Sermons for Preachers and Laymen, original and 
 
 selected. By Erwin House, A. M. 
 
 12mo. Price $1 00 
 
 brace the very best contained in the 
 numerous volumes from which it is com- 
 piled, as well as a number of original dis- 
 courses. We hope that it will find fav«* 
 and prove a blessing to many. 
 
 The Ilomilist, just issued, is a compila- 
 tion of sermons, and sketches of sermons, 
 selected from the vast reservoir of such 
 kind of literature published in England 
 under the same title. It is said to em- 
 
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 RETURN TO D ll^ Y USE 
 
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 (J9096 S 10)476-:A-32 
 
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 ...General library