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JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
THE 
 
 JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 DBLIVEBBD AT THE R K ft U B S T OP 
 
 THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIK I \ 
 
 IN TBB CITY OF MEW YORK, 
 
 ON TUESDAY, THE 30th OF APRIL 1839 ; 
 
 BEING THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 or THE 
 
 INAUGURATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 AS 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 ON THURSDAY, THE 30th OF APRIL, 1789. 
 
 Jerit urtorct, quae often MCM/O pronnt - quid spectana, nisi etiam potter* secula 
 A M pertinere 1 Erjo arboreB Beret dtliicens africok, quanim Bdpiclet baccam ipe nuoquam : 
 ir uiafnuB leges, iostituta, rempubiicam ooo Mretl 
 
 Cnmu Tuac. QDABBT 1. 
 
 BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL COLMAN, 
 VIII ASTOR HOUSE. 
 
 M DCCC XXXIX. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, m the year 1839, 
 
 By JOSEPH BLUNT, 
 
 For the New York Historical Society, 
 
 In the District Court of the Southern District of New York 
 
THE 
 
 JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION, 
 
 A DISCOURSE. 
 
 WHEN in the epic fable of the first of Roman Poets, 
 the Goddess mother of yEneas delivers to him the ce- 
 lestial armour, with which he is to triumph over his 
 enemy, and to lay the foundations of Imperial Rome, 
 he is represented as gazing with intense but confused 
 delight on the crested helm that vomits golden fires 
 
 " His hands the fatal sword and corslet hold, 
 One keen with tempered steel one stiff with gold 
 He shakes the pointed spear, and longs to try 
 The plated cuishes on his manly thigh ; 
 But most admires the shield's mysterious mould, 
 And Roman triumphs rising on the gold " 
 
 For on that shield the heavenly smith had wrought the 
 anticipated history of Roman glory, from the days of 
 jEneas down to the reign of Augustus Caesar, cotempo- 
 raneous with the Poet himself. 
 
FELLOW-CITIZENS AND BRETHREN, ASSOCIATES OF 
 THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY : 
 
 Would it be an unlicensed trespass of the imagination 
 to conceive, that on the night preceding the day of which 
 you now commemorate the fiftieth anniversary on the 
 night preceding that thirtieth of April, one thousand seven 
 hundred and eighty-nine, when from the balcony of your 
 city-hall, the chancellor of the state of New York, ad- 
 ministered to George Washington the solemn oath, faith- 
 fully to execute the office of President of the United 
 States, and to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect 
 and defend the Constitution of the United States that in 
 the visions of the night, the guardian angel of the Father 
 of our country had appeared before him, in the venerated 
 form of his mother, and, to cheer and encourage him in 
 the performance of the momentous and solemn duties 
 that he was about to assume, had delivered to him a suit 
 of celestial armour a helmet, consisting of the princi- 
 ples of piety, of justice, of honour, of benevolence, 
 with which from his earliest infancy he had hitherto 
 walked through life, in the presence of all his bieth^ 
 ren a spear, studded with the self-evident truths of 
 the Declaration of Independence a sword, the same 
 with which he had led the armies of his country 
 through the war of freedom, to the summit of the tri- 
 umphal arch of independence a corslet and cuishes 
 of long experience and habitual intercourse in peace 
 and war with the world of mankind, his cotemporaries 
 of the human race, in all their stages of civilization 
 &nd last of all, the Constitution of the United States, 
 

 & SHIELD embossed by heavenly hands, with the 
 future history of his country. 
 
 Yes, gentlemen! on that shield, the CONSTITU- 
 TION OF THE UNITED STATES was sculp- 
 tured,(by forms unseen, and in characters then invisible 
 to mortal eye,) the predestined and prophetic history 
 of the one confederated people of the North American 
 Union. 
 
 They had been the settlers of thirteen separate and 
 distinct English colonies, along the margin of the 
 shore of the North American continent : contiguously 
 situated, but chartered by adventurers of characters 
 variously diversified, including sectarians, religious and 
 political, of all the classes which for the two preceding 
 centuries had agitated and divided the people of the 
 British islands and with them were intermingled 
 the descendants of Hollanders, Swedes, Germans, and 
 French fugitives from the persecution of the revoker of 
 the Edict of Nantes. 
 
 In the bosoms of this people, thus heterogeneously 
 composed, there was burning, kindled at different fur- 
 naces, but all furnaces of affliction, one clear, steady 
 flame of LIBERTY. Bold and daring enterprise, 
 stubborn endurance of privation, unflinching intrepid- 
 ity in facing danger, and inflexible adherence to con- 
 scientious principle, had steeled to energetic and un- 
 yielding hardihood the characters of the primitive set- 
 tlers of all these Colonies. Since that time two or 
 three generations of men had passed away but they 
 had increased and multiplied with unexampled rapid- 
 
8 
 
 ity ; and the land itself had been the recent theatre of 
 a ferocious and bloody seven years' war between the 
 two most powerful and most civilized nations of Eu- 
 rope, contending for the possession of this continent. 
 
 Of that strife the victorious combatant had been 
 Britain. She had conquered the provinces of France. 
 She had expelled her rival totally from the continent 
 over which, bounding herself by the Mississippi, she 
 was thenceforth to hold divided empire only with 
 Spain. She had acquired undisputed control over the 
 Indian tribes, still tenanting the forests unexplored by 
 the European man. She had established an uncon- 
 tested monopoly of the commerce of all her colonies. 
 But forgetting all the warnings of preceding ages for- 
 getting the lessons written in the blood of her own 
 children, through centuries of departed time, she un- 
 dertook to tax the people of the colonies without their 
 consent. 
 
 Resistance, instantaneous, unconcerted, sympathetic, 
 inflexible resistance like an electric shock startled and 
 roused the people of all the English colonies on this 
 continent. 
 
 This was the first signal of the North American 
 Union. The struggle was for chartered rights for 
 English liberties for the cause of Algernon Sidney 
 and John Hampden for trial by jury the Habeas 
 Corpus and Magna Charta. 
 
 But the English lawyers had decided that Parliament 
 was omnipotent and Parliament in their omnipotence, 
 instead of trial by jury and the Habeas Corpus, enact- 
 
ed admiralty courts in England to try Americans for 
 offences charged against them as committed in Amer- 
 ica instead of the privileges of Magna Charfci. 
 lified the charter itself of Massachusetts Bay ; shut up 
 the port of Boston ; sent armies and navies to 
 the peace, and teach the colonies tfeat John I 
 
 s a rebel, and Algernon Sidney a traitor. 
 
 English liberties had failed them. From the omnip- 
 otence of Parliament the colonists appealed to thr 
 rights of man and the omuipotenre of the God of bat- 
 tles. Union ! Union ! was the instinctive and simulta- 
 neous cry throughout the land. Their Congress, as- 
 sembled at Philadelphia, once twice had petitioned the 
 king ; had remonstrated to Parliament ; had iflJrcootd 
 the people of Britain, for the rights of Englishmen 
 in vain. Fleets and armies, the blood of Lexington, 
 and the fires of Charlestown arnl Fahnouth, had been 
 the answer to petition, remonstrance and add rets. 
 
 Independence was declared. The colonies were 
 transformed into States. Their inhabitants were pro- 
 claimed to be one people, renouncing all allegiance to 
 the British crown ; all co-patriotism with the British 
 nation ; all claims to chartered rights as Englishmen. 
 Thenceforth their charter was the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. 
 Their government, such as should be instituted by 
 themselves, under the solemn Ynutnal pledges of perpet- 
 ual union, founded on the self-evi..l?nt truths proclaim- 
 ed in the Declaration. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was issued, in the 
 
10 
 
 excruciating agonies of a civil war, and by that war 
 independence was to be maintained. Six long years it 
 raged with unabated fury, and the Union was yet no 
 more than a mutual pledge of faith, and a mutual par- 
 ticipation of common sufferings and common dangers. 
 
 The omnipotence of the British Parliament was van- 
 quished. The independence of the United States of 
 America, was not granted, but recognised. The na- 
 tion had " assumed among the powers of the earth, the 
 separate and equal station, to which the laws of na- 
 ture, and of nature's God, entitled it" but the one, 
 united people, had yet NO GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In the enthusiasm of their first spontaneous, unstip- 
 ulated, unpremeditated union, they had flattered them- 
 selves that no general government would be required. 
 As separate states they were all agreed that they 
 should constitute and govern themselves. The revolu- 
 tion under which they were gasping for life, the war 
 which was carrying desolation into all their dwellings, 
 and mourning into every family, had been kindled by 
 the abuse of powder the power of government. An 
 invincible repugnance to the delegation of power, had 
 thus been generated, by the very course of events 
 which had rendered it necessary ; and the more indis- 
 pensable it became, the more awakened was the jeal- 
 ousy and the more intense was the distrust by which it 
 was to be circumscribed. 
 
 They relaxed their union into a league of friendship 
 between sovereign and independent states. They con- 
 stituted a Congress, with powers co-extensive with the 
 
11 
 
 nation, but so hedged and hemmed in with restrictions, 
 that the limitation seemed to be the general rule, and 
 the grant the occasional exception. The articles of 
 confederation, subjected to philosophical analysis, seem 
 to be little more than an enumeration of the functions 
 of a national government which the congress constitu- 
 ted by the instrument was not authorized to perform. 
 There was avowedly no executive power. 
 
 The nation fell into an atrophy. The Union lan- 
 guished to the point of death. A torpid numbness 
 seized upon all its faculties. A chilling cold indiffer- 
 ence crept from its extremities to the centre. The sys- 
 tem was about to dissolve in its own imbecility im- 
 potence in negotiation abroad domestic insurrection 
 at home, were on the point of bearing to a dishonour- 
 able grave the proclamation of a government founded 
 on the rights of man, when a convention of delegates 
 from eleven of the thirteen states, with George Wash- 
 ington at theu: head, sent forth to the people, an act to 
 be made their own, speaking in their name and in the 
 first person, thus : " We the people of the United 
 States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish 
 justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the 
 common defence, promote the general welfare, and 
 secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our 
 posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for 
 the United States of America." 
 
 This act was the complement to the Declaration of 
 Independence ; founded upon the same principles, car- 
 rying them out into practical execution, and forming 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
with it, one entire system of national government. The 
 Declaration was a manifesto to the world of mankind, 
 to justify the one confederated people, for the violent 
 and voluntary severance of the ties of their allegiance, 
 for the renunciation of their country, and for assuming a 
 station themselves, among the potentates of the world 
 a self-constituted sovereign a self-constituted country. 
 In the history of the human race this had never been 
 done before. Monarchs had been dethroned for tyranny 
 kingdoms converted into republics, and revolted prov- 
 inces had assumed the attributes of sovereign power. 
 In the history of England itself, within one century and 
 a half before the day of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, one lawful king had been brought to the block, 
 and another expelled, with all his posterity, from his 
 own kingdom, and a collateral dynasty had ascended 
 his throne. But the former of these revolutions had by 
 the deliberate and final sentence of the nation itself, 
 been pronounced a rebellion, and the rightful heir of the 
 executed king had been restored to the crown. In the 
 latter, at the first onset, the royal recreant had fled he 
 was held to have abdicated the crown, and it was placed 
 upon the heads of his daughter and of her husband, the 
 prime leader of the conspiracy against him. In these 
 events there had been much controversy upon the plat- 
 form of English liberties upon the customs of the 
 ancient Britons; the laws of Alfred, the Witena- 
 gamote of the Anglo-Saxons, and the Great Charter of 
 Runnymede with all its numberless confirmations. But 
 the actors of those times had never ascended to the first 
 
13 
 
 foundation of civil society among men, nor had any 
 revolutionary system of government been rested upon 
 them. 
 
 The motive for the Declaration of Independence was on 
 its face avowed to be "a decent respect for the opinions 
 of mankind." Its purpose to declare the causes which 
 impelled the people of the English colonies on the conti- 
 nent of North America, to separate themselves from the 
 political community of the British nation. They declare 
 only the causes of their separation, but they announce 
 at the same time their assumption of the separate and 
 equal station to which the laws of nature and of na- 
 ture's God entitle them, among the powers of the 
 earth. 
 
 Thus their first movement is to recognise and appeal 
 to the laws of nature and to nature's God, for their right 
 to assume the attributes of sovereign power as an inde- 
 pendent nation. 
 
 The causes of their necessary separation, for they 
 begin and end by declaring it necessary, alleged in the 
 Declaration, are all founded on the same laws of nature 
 and of nature's God and hence as preliminary to the 
 enumeration of the causes of separation, they set forth 
 as self-evident truths, the rights of individual man, by the 
 laws of nature and of nature's God, to life, to liberty, to 
 the pursuit of happiness. That all men are created 
 equal That to secure the rights of life, liberty and the 
 pursuits of happiness, governments are instituted among 
 men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed. All this, is by the laws of nature and of na- 
 
14 
 
 tare's God, and of course presupposes the existence of 
 a God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of 
 right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, 
 preceding all institutions of human society and of govern- 
 ment. It avers, also, that governments are instituted to 
 secure these rights of nature and of nature's God, and 
 that whenever any form of government becomes destruc- 
 tive of those ends, it is the right of THE PEOPLE to 
 alter, or to abolish it, and to institute a new government 
 to throw off a government degenerating into despotism, 
 and to provide new guards for their future security. 
 They proceed then to say that such was then the situa- 
 tion of the Colonies, and such the necessity which con- 
 strained them to alter their former systems of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Then follows the enumeration of the acts of tyranny 
 by which the king, parliament, and people of Great 
 Britain, had perverted the powers to the destruction of 
 the ends of government, over the Colonies, and the con- 
 sequent necessity constraining the Colonies to the separ- 
 ation. 
 
 In conclusion, the Representatives of the United 
 States of America, in general Congress assembled, ap 
 pealing to the Supreme judge of the world for the rec- 
 titude of their intentions, do, in the name and by the au- 
 thority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly pub- 
 lish and declare that these United Colonies, are, and of 
 right ought to be, free and independent States ; that they 
 are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; 
 and that all political connexion between them and the 
 
15 
 
 state of Great Britain, is, and ought to be totally dis- 
 solved ; and that as free and independent States, they 
 have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract 
 alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts 
 and things which independent States may of right do. 
 The appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world, and the 
 rule of right and wrong as paramount events to the 
 power of independent States, are here again repeated 
 in the very act of constituting a new sovereign com- 
 munity. 
 
 It is not immaterial to remark, that the Signers of the 
 Declaration, though qualifying themselves as the Rep- 
 resentatives of the United States of America, in general 
 Congress assembled, yet issue the Declaration, in the 
 name and by the authority of the good people of the Col- 
 onies and that they declare, not each of the separate 
 Colonies, but the United Colonies, free and independent 
 States. The whole people declared the Colonies in 
 their united condition, of RIGHT, free and independent 
 States. 
 
 The dissolution of allegiance to the British crown, 
 the severance of the Colonies from the British empire, 
 and their actual existence as Independent States, thus 
 declared of right, were definitively established in fact, 
 by war and peace. The independence of each separate 
 State had never been declared of right. It never existed 
 in fact. Upon the principles of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, the dissolution of the ties of allegiance, 
 the assumption of sovereign power, and the institution 
 of civil government, are all acts of transcendant author- 
 
16 
 
 ity, which the people alone ai;e competent to perform 
 and accordingly, it is in the name and by the authority 
 of the people, that two of these acts the dissolution of 
 allegiance, with the severance from the British empire, 
 and the declaration of the United Colonies, as free and 
 independent States, were performed by that instru- 
 ment. 
 
 But there still remained the last and crowning act, 
 which the People of the Union alone were competent to 
 perform the institution of civil government, for that 
 compound nation, the United States of America. 
 
 At this day it cannot but strike us as extraordinary, 
 that it does not appear to have occurred to any one 
 member of that assembly, which had laid down in terms 
 so clear, so explicit, so unequivocal, the foundation of 
 all just government, in the imprescriptible rights of man, 
 and the transcendant sovereignty of the people, and 
 who in those principles, had set forth their only per- 
 sonal vindication from the charges of rebellion against 
 their king, and of treason to their country, that their last 
 crowning act was still to be performed upon the same 
 principles. That is, the institution, by the people of 
 the United States, of a civil government, to guard and 
 protect and defend them all. On the contrary, that 
 same assembly which issued the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, instead of continuing to act in the name, and 
 by the authority of the good people of the United 
 States, had immediately after the appointment of the 
 committee to prepare the Declaration, appointed another 
 committee, of one member from each Colony, to pre- 
 
pare and digest the form of confederation, to be entered 
 into between the Colonies. 
 
 That committee reported on the 12th of July, eight 
 days after the Declaration of Independence had been 
 issued, a draught of articles of confederation between 
 the Colonies. This draught was prepared by John Dick- 
 inson, then a delegate from Pennsylvania, who voted 
 against the Declaration of Independence, and never 
 signed it having been superseded by a new election 
 of delegates from that State, eight days after his 
 draught was reported. 
 
 There was thus no congeniality of principle betv 
 the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of 
 Confederation. The foundation of the former were a 
 superintending Providence the rights of man, and the 
 constituent revolutionary power of the people. Tl i 
 the latter was the sovereignty of organized power, and the 
 independence of the separate or dis-united States. The 
 fabric of the Declaration and that of the Confederation, 
 were each consistent with its own foundation, but they 
 could not form one consistent symmetrical edifice. 
 They were the productions of different minds and of 
 adverse passions one, ascending for the foundation of 
 human government to the laws of nature and of God, 
 written upon the heart of man the other, resting upon 
 the basis of human institutions, and prescriptive law and 
 colonial charters. The corner stone of the one was 
 right that of the other was power. 
 
 The work of the founders of our Independence was 
 thus but half done. Absorbed in that more than Her- 
 
18 
 
 culean task of maintaining that independence and its 
 principles, by one of the most cruel wars that ever 
 glutted the furies with human wo, they marched un- 
 daunted and steadfast through that fiery ordeal, and 
 consistent in their principles to the end, concluded, as 
 an acknowledged sovereignty of the United States, pro- 
 claimed by their people in 1776, a peace with that same 
 monarch, whose sovereignty over them they had abjured 
 in obedience to the laws of nature and of nature's God. 
 
 But for these United States, they had formed no 
 Constitution. Instead of resorting to the source of all 
 constituted power, they had wasted their time, their 
 talents, and their persevering, untiring toils, in erecting 
 and roofing and buttressing a frail and temporary shed 
 to shelter the nation from the storm, or rather a mere 
 baseless scaffolding on which to stand, when they should 
 raise the marble palace of the people, to stand the test 
 of time. 
 
 Five years were consumed by Congress and the 
 State Legislatures, in debating and altercating and ad- 
 justing these Articles of Confederation. The first of 
 which was : 
 
 " Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and in- 
 dependence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, 
 which is not by this confederation expressly delegated 
 to the United States in Congress assembled." 
 
 Observe the departure from the language, and the 
 consequent contrast of principles, with those of the 
 Declaration of Independence. 
 
 Each state RETAINS its sovereignty, &c. where 
 
19 
 
 did each State get the sovereignty which it retains? 
 In the Declaration of Independence, the delegates of 
 the Colonies in Congress assembled, in the name and by 
 the authority of the good people of tJie Colonies, declare, 
 not each Colony, but the United Colonies, in fact, and 
 of right, not sovereign, but free and independent States. 
 And why did they make this declaration in the name 
 and by the authority of the one people of all the Colo- 
 nies ? Because by the principles before laid down in 
 the Declaration, the people, and the people alone, as the 
 rightful source of all legitimate government, were com- 
 petent to dissolve the bands of subjection of all the Col- 
 onies to the nation of Great Britain, and to constitute 
 them free and independent States. Now the people of 
 the Colonies, speaking by their delegates in Congress, 
 had not declared each Colony a sovereign, free and inde- 
 pendent State nor had the people of each Colony so 
 declared the Colony itself, nor could they so declare it, 
 because each was already bound in union with all the 
 rest; a union formed de facto, by the spontaneous 
 revolutionary movement of the whole people, and or- 
 ganized by the meeting of the first Congress, in 1774, a 
 year and ten months before the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 Where, then, did each State get the sovereignty, 
 freedom and independence, which the articles of con- 
 federation declare it retains ? not from the whole peo- 
 ple of the whole union not from the Declaration of 
 Independence not from the people of the state itself. 
 It was assumed by agreement between the legislatures 
 
20 
 
 of the several States, and their delegates in Congress, 
 without authority from or consultation of the people at all 
 
 In the Declaration of Independence, the enacting and 
 constituent party dispensing arid delegating sovereign 
 power, is the whole people of the United Colonies. The 
 recipient party, invested with power, is the United Col- 
 onies, declared United States. 
 
 In the articles of confederation, this order of agency 
 is inverted. Each state is the constituent and enacting 
 party, and the United States in Congress assembled, 
 the recipient of delegated power and that power, del- 
 gated with such a penurious and carking hand, that it 
 had more the aspect of a revocation of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence than an instrument to carry it into 
 effect. 
 
 It well deserves the judicious inquiry of an American 
 statesman, at this time, how this involuntary and un- 
 conscious usurpation upon the rights of the people of 
 the United States, originated and was pursued to its 
 consummation. 
 
 In July, 1775, soon after the meeting of the second 
 revolutionary Congress, and a year before the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, Dr. Franklin had submitted to 
 their consideration, a sketch of articles of confederation 
 between the colonies, to continue until their reconcilia- 
 tion with Great Britain, and in failure of that event, to 
 be perpetual. 
 
 The third article of that project provided u that each 
 colony shall enjoy and retain as much as it may think fit, 
 of its own present laws, customs, rights, privileges, and 
 
21 
 
 peculiar jurisdictions within its o?v?i limits ; and may 
 amend its own constitution, as shall seem best to its 
 own assembly or convention." Here was and could be 
 no assertion of sovereignty. 
 
 This plan appears to have been never discussed in 
 Congress. But when, on the 7th of June, 1776, the res- 
 olution of independence was offered and postponed, 
 another resolution was submitted and carried for the 
 appointment of a committee of one member from each 
 colony, to prepare and digest a form of a confederation. 
 
 The third article of the draught reported by that 
 committee, was in these words : 
 
 " Each colony shall retain as much of its present laws, 
 rights, and customs, as it may think fit, and reserve to 
 itself the sole and exclusive regulation and government 
 of its internal police, in all matters tJiat shall not inter- 
 fere with the articles of this confederation" 
 
 The first article had declared the name of the confed- 
 eracy to be the United States of America, 
 
 By the second, the colonies "unite themselves, so as 
 never to be divided by any act whatever," and entered 
 into a firm league of friendship with each other. 
 
 From the 12th of July to the 20th of August, 1776, 
 the report of the committee was debated almost daily, 
 in a committee of the whole house, and they reported 
 to Congress a new draught, the first article of which 
 retained the name of the confederacy. 
 
 The second left out the warm-hearted Union, so as 
 never to be divided by any act whatever, and only 
 severally entered into a firm league of friendship for 
 
22 
 
 special purposes. By the third, " Each state reserves 
 to itself the sole and exclusive regulations and govern- 
 ment of its internal police in all matters that shall not 
 interfere with the Articles of this Confederation} 1 
 
 The gradual relaxation of the fervid spirit of union 
 which had quickened every sentence of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, is apparent in these changes of 
 phraseology and omission. # 
 
 The articles reported by the committee of the whole 
 were laid aside on the 20th of August, 1776, and were 
 not resumed till the 7th of April, 1777. 
 
 They were then taken up, and pertinaciously and 
 acrimoniously debated two or three times a w r eek till 
 the 15th of November, 1777, when they were adopted 
 by Congress in a new and revised draught. 
 
 And here the reversal of the fundamental principles 
 of the Declaration of Independence was complete, and 
 the symptoms of disunion proportionally aggravated. 
 The first article instead of the name declared the style 
 of the confederacy to be the United States of America. 
 Even in this change of a single word, there was the 
 spirit of disunion ; a name being appropriately applied 
 to the unity, and a style to the plurality of the aggre- 
 gate body. 
 
 An alteration still more significant was the inversion 
 in the order of the second and third articles. In all 
 the former draughts, in the sketch presented by Dr. 
 Franklin in 1775, in the draught reported by the select 
 committee in July, 1776, and in that reported after full 
 debate by the committee of the whole house to Con- 
 
23 
 
 gress, on the 20th of August, 1776, the union had been 
 constituted in the second article, and the reservation of 
 separate rights not interfering with the articles of the 
 confederation, had been made in the third. 
 
 But now the reservation of separate rights came first 
 in order, appeared as the second article, and instead of 
 being confined to internal police, and all matters that 
 shall not interfere with the articles of this confedera- 
 tion, was transformed into a direct assertion of sover- 
 eignty, not in the people of each state, but in each 
 state. And thus it was that each state had acquired 
 that sovereignty, which the third article, now made the 
 second, declared it retained. It was a power usurped 
 upon the people, by the joint agency of the state legis- 
 latures and of their delegates in Congress, without any 
 authority from the people whatever. And with this 
 assertion of sovereignty, each state retained also every 
 power, jurisdiction and right, not by the confederation 
 expressly delegated to the United States in Congress as- 
 sembled. And then came limping on in the third arti- 
 cle, degraded from its place as the second, the firm 
 league of friendship of these several states with each 
 other, for their common defence, the security of their 
 liberties, and their mutual and general welfare. 
 
 In the debates upon these articles of confederation, 
 between the 7th of October, and the 17th of Novem- 
 ber, the conflict of interests and of principles between 
 the people of the whole Union, and each of the states, 
 was strongly marked. The first question was upon 
 the mode of voting in Congress 
 
24 
 
 It was moved that in determining questions, each 
 state should have one vote for every fifty thousand 
 white inhabitants. 
 
 That each state should have a right to send one del- 
 egate to Congress for every thirty thousand of its in- 
 habitants each delegate to have one vote. 
 
 That the quantum of representation of each state 
 should be computed by numbers proportioned to its 
 contribution of money or tax laid and paid into the 
 public treasury. 
 
 These propositions, all looking to a representation 
 proportional to numbers or to taxation, that is, to per- 
 sons or property, were all rejected, and it was resolved 
 that in determining questions each state should have 
 one vote. 
 
 Then came the question of the common charges and 
 expenses. The first proposition was that they should 
 be proportioned to the number of inhabitants of each 
 state. Then to the value of all property, excepting 
 household goods and wearing apparel, both of which 
 were rejected, and the proposition was fixed according 
 to the quantity of land granted and surveyed, with the 
 estimated improvements thereon. 
 
 But the great and insurmountable difficulty, left alto- 
 gether unadjusted by these articles of confederation, 
 was to ascertain the boundaries of each of these sov- 
 ereign states. It was proposed that these boundaries 
 should be ascertained by them ; for which purpose the 
 state Legislatures should lay before Congress a de- 
 scription of the territorial lands of each of their respect- 
 
25 
 
 ive states, and a summary of the grants, treaties, and 
 proofs, upon which they were claimed or established. 
 
 It was moved that the United States, in Congress 
 assembled, should have the sole and exclusive right 
 and power to ascertain and fix the western boundary of 
 such states as claimed to the South sea ; and to dis- 
 pose of all land beyond the boundary so ascertained, 
 for the benefit of the United States. 
 
 And that the United States in Congress assembled, 
 should have the sole and exclusive right and power to 
 ascertain and fix the western boundary of such states, 
 as claimed to the Mississippi or South sea, and to lay 
 out the land beyond the boundary so ascertained, into 
 separate and independent states, from time to time, as 
 the numbers and circumstances of the people might re- 
 quire. 
 
 All these propositions were rejected, and the articles 
 of confederation were sent forth to the sovereign, free 
 and independent states for ratification, without defining 
 or ascertaining the limits of any one of them ; while 
 some of them claimed to the South sea, and others 
 were cramped up within a surface of less than fifteen 
 hundred square miles. 
 
 It is further remarkable that in the progress of these 
 debates, the institution of an executive council, which 
 in all the previous draughts had been proposed, was 
 struck out, and instead of it was substituted a helpless 
 and imbecile committee of the states, never but once 
 attempted to be carried into execution, and then speed- 
 ily dissolved in its own weakness. 
 
 4 
 
Such was the system, elaborated with great, perse- 
 vering, and anxious deliberation ; animated with the 
 most ardent patriotism; put together with eminent 
 ability and untiring industry, but vitiated by a defect 
 in the general principle in the departure from the self- 
 evident truths of the Declaration of Independence ; the 
 natural rights of man, and the exclusive, sovereign, 
 constituent right of the people. 
 
 The result corresponded with this elementary error. 
 The plan of confederacy was sent forth to the state 
 Legislatures with an eloquent and pathetic letter, 
 pointing out the difficulties and delays which had at- 
 tended its formation, urging them candidly to review 
 the difficulty of combining in one general system the 
 various sentiments and interests of a continent divided 
 into so many sovereign and independent communities. 
 Assuring them that the plan proposed was the best 
 which could be adapted to the circumstances of all, 
 and that alone \vhich afforded any tolerable prospect 
 of general ratification ; and urging its immediate adop- 
 tion in the following deeply affecting and impressive 
 admonition : 
 
 "We have reason to regret the time which has elapsed 
 in preparing this plan for consideration. With addi- 
 tional solicitude we look forward to that which must 
 be necessarily spent before it can be ratified. Every 
 motive loudly calls upon us to hasten its conclusion. 
 
 <4 More than any other consideration, it will confound 
 our foreign enemies, defeat the flagitious practices cl 
 the disaffected, strengthen and confirm our friends, sup 
 
27 
 
 port our public credit, restore the value of our money, 
 enable us to maintain our fleets and armies, and add 
 weight and respect to our councils at home, and to 
 our treaties abroad. 
 
 "In short, this salutary measure can no longer be 
 deferred. It seems essential to our very existence as 
 a free people ; and without it we may soon be con- 
 strained to bid adieu to independence, to liberty and 
 safety blessings which from the justice of our cause, 
 and the favour of our Almighty Creator, visibly mani- 
 fested in our protection, we have reason to expect, if 
 in an humble dependence on his divine providence, we 
 stirnuously exert the means which are placed in our 
 power." 
 
 In this solemn, urgent, and emphatic manner, and 
 with these flattering and sanguine anticipations of the 
 blessings to be showered upon their country by this 
 cumbrous and complicated confederacy of sovereign 
 and independent states, was this instrument transmitted 
 to the state Legislatures; and so anxious were the 
 framers of it for the sanction of the states at the ear- 
 liest possible moment, that it was recommended to the 
 executive of each of the states to whom it was ad- 
 dressed, if the Legislature was not assembled at the 
 time of its reception, to convene them without delay. 
 
 Not such however was the disposition of the several 
 state Legislatures. Each of them was governed as it 
 naturally and necessarily must be by the interests and 
 opinions predominating within the state itself. Not 
 one of them was satisfied with the articles as they had 
 
28 
 
 been prepared in Congress. , Every state Legislature 
 found something objectionable in them. They com- 
 bined the enormous inconsistency of an equal repre- 
 sentation in Congress of states most unequal in extent 
 and population, and an imposition of all charges, and 
 expenses of the whole, proportioned to the extent and 
 value of the settled and cultivated lands in each. A 
 still more vital defect of the instrument was that it left 
 the questions of the limits of the several states and in 
 whom was the property of the unsettled crown-lands, 
 not only unadjusted, but wholly unnoticed. 
 
 The form of ratification proposed by Congress, was 
 that each of the state Legislatures should authorize 
 their delegates in Congress to subscribe the Articles ; 
 and in their impatience for a speedy conclusion, two 
 motions were made to recommend that the states should 
 enjoin upon their delegates invested with this author- 
 ity, to attend Congress for that purpose, on or before 
 the then ensuing first of May or tenth of March. 
 
 These however did not prevail. This extreme 
 anxiety for the prompt and decisive action of the 
 states, upon this organization of the confederacy, was 
 the result of that same ardent and confiding patriotism 
 so unforeseeing, and yet so sincere, which could flatter 
 itself with the belief that this nerveless and rickety 
 league of friendship between sovereign, independent, 
 disunited states, could confound the foreign enemies of 
 the Union, defeat the practices of the disaffected, sup- 
 port the credit of the country, restore the value of 
 their depreciating money, enable them to maintain 
 
29 
 
 fleets and armies, and add weight and respect to their 
 counsels at home, and to their treaties abroad. 
 
 This fervid patriotism, and all these glowing antici- 
 pations were doomed to total disappointment. Seven 
 months passed away, and on the 22d of June, 1??^. 
 Congress proceeded to consider the objections of the 
 states to the articles of confederation. Those of 
 Maryland were first discussed and rejected. Those of 
 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, fol- 
 lowed, and all shared the same fate. No objections 
 were presented by New Hampshire or Virginia. Del- 
 aware and North Carolina had no representation then 
 present, and Georgia only one member in attendance. 
 
 On the 9th of July, 1778, the Articles were signed by 
 the delegates of New Hampshire, Massachusetts bay, 
 Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, 
 Virginia and South Carolina. 
 
 The delegates from New Jersey, Delaware and 
 Maryland, informed Congress that they had not yet re- 
 ceived powers to ratify and sign. North Carolina and 
 Georgia were not represented and the ratification of 
 New York was conditional that all the other states 
 should ratify. 
 
 The delegates from North Carolina signed the Arti- 
 cles on the 21st of July, 1778. Those of Georgia on 
 the 24th of the same month. Those of New Jersey 
 (in the 26th of November, 1778. Those of Delaware 
 on the 22d of February, and 5th of May, 1779 but 
 Maryland held out to the last, and positively refused 
 
30 
 
 the ntifi cation, until the question of the conflicting 
 claims of the Union, and of the separate states to the 
 property of the crown-lands should be adjusted. This 
 was finally accomplished by cessions from the claiming 
 states to the United States, of the unsettled lands, for 
 the benefit of the whole Union. 
 
 Is it not strange again that it appears not to have 
 been perceived by any one at that time that the whole 
 of this controversy arose out of a departure from the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the 
 substitution of state sovereignty instead of the constit- 
 uent sovereignty of the people, as the foundation 
 of the Revolution and of the Union. The war from the 
 beginning had been, and yet was, a revolutionary pop- 
 ular war. The colonial governments never had pos- 
 sessed or pretended to claim sovereign power. Many 
 of them had not even yet constituted themselves as in- 
 dependent States. The Declaration of Independence 
 proclaims the natural rights of man, and the constituent 
 power of the people to be the only sources of legitimate 
 government. State sovereignty is a mere argument of 
 power, without regard to right a mere reproduction of 
 the omnipotence of the British parliament in another 
 form, and therefore not only inconsistent with, but direct- 
 ly in opposition to, the principles of the Declaration of 
 Independence. 
 
 The cessions of the claiming states of the crown lands 
 to the Union, originated the territorial system, and eventu- 
 ated in the ordinance for the government of the North 
 Western Territory. It also removed the insuperable ob- 
 
31 
 
 jection of the State of Maryland to the articles of con- 
 federation, and her delegates signed them on the 1st of 
 March, 1781, four years and four months after they had 
 been submitted by Congress to the sovereign states, 
 with a solemn averment that they could no longer be 
 deferred; that they seemed essential to the very ex- 
 istence of the Union as a free peaple ; and that with- 
 out them they might be constrained to bid adieu to 
 independence, to liberty, and safety. 
 
 But the dispute relating to the jurisdiction and prop- 
 erty of the crown lands, was only one of a multitude of 
 stumbling blocks which were perpetually crossing the 
 path of the new nation, in the collisions between the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence and the 
 sovereignty of the separate states. In the adjustment of 
 that, both the systems were substantially set aside. For 
 the claiming states, by the cessions themselves, aban- 
 doned their pretensions, so far as that interest was con- 
 cerned, to the rights of independent state sovereignty, 
 and the Congress of the confederation by an enactment 
 of the ordinance for the government of the North West- 
 ern Territory, assumed an authority which had not been 
 delegated to them, either by the constituent sovereign 
 people, or by the separate sovereign states. 
 
 The articles of confederation had withheld from Con- 
 gress, the power of regulating the commerce of the 
 Union, and of levying money by taxation upon the peo- 
 ple ; yet they were authorized to make war and con- 
 clude peace to contract debts and bind the nation by 
 treaties of commerce. The war was raging in its 
 
32 
 
 most inveterate fury, and to defray its indispensable 
 charges and expenses, the only power of Congress was 
 to issue requisitions to the states, which their sovereign 
 power complied with, or disregarded, or rejected, ac- 
 cording to their sovereign will and pleasure. 
 
 So seldom had this been to furnish the required sup- 
 plies, that even before the first ratification of the articles 
 of confederation, on the 3d of February, 1781, it had 
 been resolved that it be recommended to the several 
 states, as indispensably necessary, that they vest a pow- 
 er in Congress, to levy for the use of the United States, 
 a duty of five per cent, ad valorem, at the time and 
 place of importation, upon all foreign goods, wares, and 
 merchandise of foreign growth and manufactures, im- 
 ported after the 1st of May, 1781 ; also a like duty upon 
 all prize-goods, to be appropriated to the discharge of the 
 principal and interest of the debts contracted on the 
 faith of the United States, for the support of the war. 
 
 Indispensably necessary ! But according to the prin- 
 ciples of the Declaration of Independence, the state 
 legislatures themselves had no authority to confer this 
 power upon Congress. It was taxation one of the 
 powers which the people alone are competent to bestow, 
 and which their servants, the state legislatures, if they 
 possessed it themselves, had no right to delegate to 
 any other body. 
 
 Upon the principles of state sovereignty power 
 without right, this authority might have been conferred 
 upon Congress by the state legislatures, and several of 
 them did enact laws for bestowing it. But by the arti- 
 
33 
 
 cles of confederation, no alteration of them could be ef- 
 fected without the consent of all the states, and Rhode 
 Island, the smallest state in the Union, inflexibly held 
 out in the refusal to grant the indispensably necessary 
 power. Virginia granted and soon repealed it. Con- 
 gress issued bills of credit as long as they had any 
 credit ; but all the states did the same till their bottom- 
 less paper depreciated to a thousand for one, and then 
 vanished by a universal refusal to receive it. Congress 
 issued four successive requisitions upon the states, for 
 their respective quotas to pay the debts and current ex- 
 penses of the Union. Not one of the states paid one 
 half the amount of its contribution. Congress bor- 
 rowed money in France, in Spain, in Holland, and 
 obtained it there when they could not raise a dollar 
 at home, and they were compelled to resort to new 
 loans to pay the interest upon those that had pre- 
 ceded. 
 
 Under the pressure of all these distresses, the cause 
 of independence was triumphant. Peace came. The 
 United States of America were recognised as free and 
 independent, and as one People took the station to which 
 the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them 
 among the powers of the earth. But their confederacy 
 of sovereign states was as incompetent to govern them 
 in peace as it had been to conduct them in war. The 
 first popular impulse to union had carried them through 
 the war. As that popular impulse died away, the 
 confederation had supplied its place with hope and 
 promise, the total disappointment of which, though dis- 
 
34 
 
 covered before the peace, was providentially not per- 
 mitted to prevent its conclusion. 
 
 Peace came. The heroic leader of the revolutionary 
 armies surrendered his commission. The armies were 
 disbanded, but they were not paid. Mutiny was sup- 
 pressed ; but not until Congress had been surrounded 
 by armed men, demanding justice, and appealed in 
 vain for protection to the sovereign state within whose 
 jurisdiction they were sitting. A single frigate, the 
 remnant of a gallant navy, which had richly shared the 
 glories, and deeply suffered the calamities of the war, 
 was dismantled and sold. The expenses of the nation 
 were reduced to the minimum of a peace establishment, 
 and yet the nation was not relieved. The nation wanted 
 a government founded on the principles of the Declar- 
 ation of Independence a government constituted 
 by the people. 
 
 The commerce, navigation, and fisheries of the na- 
 tion, had been annihilated by the war. But as a civil- 
 ized nation cannot exist without commerce, an illicit 
 trade with the enemy had sprung up towards the close 
 of the war, highly injurious to the common cause, 
 but which Congress had not the power to suppress. 
 The same causes had given rise to another practice not 
 less pernicious and immoral, by which privateersmen 
 ransomed the prizes captured from the enemy at sea 
 that is, by releasing the captured vessel for a contribu- 
 tion taken in bills upon the owner of the prize, which 
 were punctually paid, thereby converting the trade of 
 the privateer into a species of gambling piracy. 
 
These practices ceased with the peace. But the com- 
 merce of the United States, for want of a regulating pow- 
 er, was left at the mercy of foreign and rival traders. 
 Britain immediately took advantage of this weakness, 
 declined entering into any commercial treaty with us, 
 which Congress had proposed, and brought to bear upon 
 the American trade all the weight of her navigation 
 laws. Massachusetts and Virginia made the experi- 
 ment of counteracting laws, the only effect of which 
 was to exclude a little remnant of their trade from their 
 own ports, and to transfer it to the ports of neighbouring 
 states. 
 
 On the 18th of April, 1783, Congress renewed the 
 demand upon the states, for authority to levy an im- 
 post duty, specific on sundry articles of importation, 
 and five per cent ad valorem on others, to raise not quite 
 one million of dollars, or about two fifths of the annual 
 interest accruing upon the public debt; and that the 
 states should themselves establish some system for 
 supplying the public treasury with funds, for the punc- 
 tual payment of the other three fifths of the annual in- 
 terest ; and also, for an alteration in the articles of con- 
 federation, changing the proportional rule of contribu- 
 tion of the states, from the surface of settled land to the 
 numbers of population. 
 
 And on the 30th of April, 1784, Congress recom- 
 mended to the state legislatures to vest the United 
 States in Congress assembled, for the term of fifteen 
 years, with powers to prohibit importations of merchan 
 disc in foreign vessels of nations with whom the United 
 
36 
 
 States had no treaties of comiherce, and to prohibit for- 
 eigners, unless authorized by treaty, from importing into 
 the United States, merchandise, other than the produce 
 or manufacture of their own country. In other words, 
 to enact a navigation law. 
 
 None of these indispensably necessary powers were 
 ever conferred by the state legislatures upon the Con- 
 gress of the confederation ; and well was it that they 
 never were. The system itself was radically defective. 
 Its incurable disease was an apostacy from the principles 
 of the Declaration of Independence. A substitution of 
 separate state sovereignties, in the place of the constit- 
 uent sovereignty of the people, as the basis of the con- 
 federate Union. 
 
 But in this Congress of the confederation, the master 
 minds of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, 
 were constantly engaged through the closing years of 
 the Revolutionary War, and those of peace which im- 
 mediately succeeded. That of John Jay was associa- 
 ted with them shortly after the peace, in the capacity 
 of Secretary to the Congress for Foreign Affairs. The 
 incompetency of the articles of confederation for the 
 management of the affairs of the Union at home and 
 abroad, was demonstrated to them by the painful and 
 mortifying experience of every day. Washington, 
 though in retirement, was brooding over the cruel in- 
 justice suffered by his associates in arms, the warriors 
 of the Revolution ; over the prostration of the public 
 credit and the faith of the nation, in the neglect to pro- 
 vide for the payment even of the interest upon the pub 
 
37 
 
 lie debt ; over the disappointed hopes of the friends 
 of freedom; in the language of the address from Con- 
 gress to the States of the 18th of April, 1783 "the 
 pride and boast of America, that the rights for which 
 $be contended were the rights of human nature." 
 
 At his residence of Mount Vernon, in March, 1785, 
 he ftrst idea was started of a revisal of the articles of 
 * oni f et!eration, by an organization of means differing 
 ficm tbat of a compact between the state Legislatures 
 and their own delegates in Congress. A convention of 
 delegates from the state Legislatures, independent of 
 the Congress itself, was the expedient which presented 
 itself for effecting the purpose, and an augmentation of 
 the powers of Congress for the regulation of com- 
 merce, as the object for which this assembly was to be 
 convened. In January, 1786, the proposal was made 
 and adopted in the Legislature of Virginia, and com- 
 municated to the other state Legislatures. 
 
 The Convention was held at Annapolis, in Septem- 
 ber of that year. It was attended by delegates from 
 only five of the central states, who on comparing their 
 restricted powers, with the glaring and universally ac- 
 knowledged defects of the confederation, reported only 
 a recommendation for the assemblage of another con- 
 vention of delegates to meet at Philadelphia, in May, 
 1787, from all the states and with enlarged powers. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States was the work 
 of this Convention. But in its construction the Con- 
 vention immediately perceived that they must retrace 
 flieir steps, and fall back from a league of friendship 
 
3S 
 
 between sovereign states, to the constituent sovereign- 
 ty of the people ; from power to right from the irre- 
 sponsible despotism of state sovereignty, to the self- 
 evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. In 
 that instrument, the right to institute and to alter gov- 
 ernments among men was ascribed exclusively to the 
 people the ends of government were declared to be 
 to secure the natural rights of man ; and that rvhen the 
 government degenerates from the promotion to the 
 destruction of that end, the right and the duty accrues 
 to the people, to dissolve this degenerate government 
 and to institute another. The Signers of the Declara- 
 tion further averred, that the one people of the United 
 Colonies were then precisely in that situation with a 
 government degenerated into tyranny, and called upon 
 by the laws of nature and of nature's God, to dissolve 
 that government and to institute another. Then in the 
 name and by the authority of the good people of the 
 Colonies, they pronounced the dissolution of their al- 
 legiance to the king, and their eternal separation from 
 the nation of Great Britain and declared the United 
 Colonies independent States. And here as the repre- 
 sentatives of the one people they had stopped. They 
 did not require the confirmation of this Act, for the 
 power to make the Declaration had already been con- 
 ferred upon them by the people ; delegating the power, 
 indeed, separately in the separate colonies, not by colo- 
 nial authority, but by the spontaneous revolutionary 
 movement of the people in them all. 
 From the day of that Declaration, the constituent 
 
39 
 
 power of the people had never been called into action. 
 A confederacy had been substituted in the place of a 
 government; and state sovereignty had usurped the 
 constituent sovereignty of the people. 
 
 The Convention assembled at Philadelphia had 
 themselves no direct authority from the people. Their 
 authority was all derived from the state legislatures. 
 But they had the articles of confederation before them, 
 and they saw and felt the wretched condition into 
 which they had brought the whole people, and that the 
 Union itself was in the agonies of death. They soon 
 perceived that the indispensably needed powers were 
 such as no state government ; no combination of them 
 was by the principles of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence competent to bestow. They could emanate only 
 from the people. A highly respectable portion of the 
 assembly, still clinging to the confederacy of states, 
 proposed as a substitute for the Constitution, a mere 
 revival of the articles of confederation, with a grant 
 of additional powers to the Congress. Their plan was 
 respectfully and thoroughly discussed, but the want of 
 a government and of the sanction of the people to the 
 delegation of powers, happily prevailed. A Constitu- 
 tion for the people, and the distribution of legislative, 
 executive, and judicial powers, was prepared. It an- 
 nounced itself as the work of the people themselves ; 
 and as this was unquestionably a power assumed by 
 the Convention, not delegated to them by the people, 
 they religiously confined it to a simple power to pro- 
 pose, and carefully provided that it should be no more 
 
40 
 
 than a proposal until sanctioned by the confederation 
 Congress, by the state Legislatures, and by the people 
 of the several states, in conventions specially assem- 
 bled, by authority of their Legislatures, for the single 
 purpose of examining and passing upon it. 
 
 And thus was consummated the work, commenced 
 by the Declaration of Independence. A work in which 
 the people of the North American Union, acting under 
 the deepest sense of responsibility to the Supreme Ruler 
 of the universe, had achieved the most transcendent act 
 of power, that social man in his mortal condition can 
 perform. Even that of dissolving the ties of allegiance 
 which he is bound to his country of renouncing that 
 country itself of demolishing its government, of insti- 
 tuting another government, and of making for himself 
 another country in its stead. 
 
 And on that day, of which you now commemorate 
 the fiftieth anniversary on that 30th day of April, one 
 thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, was this 
 mighty revolution, not only in the affairs of our own 
 country, but in the principles of government over civ- 
 ilized man, accomplished. 
 
 The revolution itself was a work of thirteen years 
 and had never been completed until that day. The 
 Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the 
 United States, are parts of one consistent whole, founded 
 upon one and the same theory of government, 
 then new, not as a theory, for it had been working 
 itself into the mind of man for many ages, and been 
 especially expounded in the writings of Locke, but 
 
41 
 
 had never before been adopted by a great nation in 
 practice. 
 
 There are yet, even at this day, many speculative ob- 
 jections to this theory. Even in our own country, there 
 are still philosophers who deny the principles asserted 
 in the Declaration, as self-evident truths who deny 
 the natural equality and inalienable rights of man^- 
 who deny that the people are the only legitimate source 
 of power who deny that all just powers of govern- 
 ment are derived from the consent of the governed. 
 Neither your time, nor perhaps the cheerful nature of this 
 occasion, permit me here to enter upon the examination 
 of this anti-revolutionary theory, which arrays state 
 sovereignty against the constituent sovereignty of the 
 people, and distorts the Constitution of tho United 
 States into a league of friendship between confederate 
 corporations. I speak to matters of fact. There is the 
 Declaration of Independence, and there is the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States let them speak for them- 
 selves. The grossly immoral and dishonest doctrine of 
 despotic state sovereignty, the exclusive judge of its 
 own obligations, and responsible to no power on earth 
 or in heaven, for the violation of them, is not there. 
 The Declaration says it is not in me. The Constitution 
 says it is not in me. 
 
 The confederacy of sovereign states has made itself 
 known by its fruits ; but there is one observation so 
 on ditable to our revolutionary fathers, that it ought 
 never to be overlooked. The defects of the confedera- 
 cy were vices of the institution, and not of the men by 
 
 6 
 
42 
 
 whom it was administered. ^The jealousy of delegated 
 power pervaded every part of the articles of confeder- 
 acy, and indeed, almost all the separate constitutions. 
 The prevailing- principle of every provision made under 
 the influence of this distrusting maxim, was that the 
 same power should not long be intrusted to the same 
 hands but it never extended to the exclusion of any 
 person from office, after a designate term of service in 
 another. One of the articles of confederation had in- 
 terdicted every person from holding the office of a mem- 
 ber of Congress more than three years in six. But any 
 member excluded by the expiration of his limited term 
 of service in Congress, was eligible to any other station 
 in the legislative, executive, or judicial departments of 
 his state, or tp any office, civil or military, within the 
 general jurisdiction of Congress. 
 
 In point of fact, the great measures by which the 
 revolution was commenced, conducted, and concluded, 
 were devised and prosecuted by a very few leading 
 minds, animated by one pervading, predominating spirit 
 The object of the Revolution was the transformation of 
 thirteen dependant and oppressed English colonies, into 
 one nation of thirteen confederated states. It was as 
 the late Mr. Madison remarked to Miss Martineau, an 
 undertaking to do that which had always before been 
 believed impossible. In the progress to its accomplish- 
 ment, obstacles almost numberless, and difficulties appa- 
 rently insurmountable, obstructed every step of the way. 
 That in the dissolution and re-institution of the social 
 compact, by men marching over an untrodden path ta 
 
43 
 
 the very fountains of human government, great and 
 dangerous errors should have been committed, is but an 
 acknowledgment that the builders of the new edifice 
 were fallible men. But at the head of the convention 
 that formed the Constitution, was George Washington, 
 the leader of the armies of the Revolution > among its 
 prominent members were Benjamin Franklin and Roger 
 Sherman, two of the members of that memorable 
 committee who had reported the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence and its other members without exception, 
 were statesmen who had served in the councils of the 
 Union, throughout the Revolutionary struggle, or war- 
 riors who had contended with the enemy upon the 
 field. 
 
 The Signers of the Declaration of Independence 
 themselves, were the persons who had first fallen into 
 the error of believing that a confederacy of indepen- 
 dent states would serve as a substitute for the repudi- 
 ated government of Great Britain. Experience had 
 demonstrated their mistake, and the condition of the 
 country was a shriek of terror at its awful magnitude. 
 They did retrace their steps not to extinguish the 
 federative feature in which their union had been form- 
 ed : nothing could be wider from their intention but 
 to restore the order of things conformably to the prin- 
 ciples of the Declaration of Independence, and as they 
 had been arranged in the first plans for a confederation. 
 To make the people of the Union the constituent body, 
 and the reservation of the rights of the states subordi- 
 nate to the Constitution. Hence the delegation of 
 
44 
 
 power was not from each state retaining it sovereignty, 
 and all rights not expressly delegated by the states, 
 but from the people of each and of all the states, to 
 the United States in Congress assembled, represent- 
 ing at once the whole people and all the states of the 
 Union. 
 
 They retained the federative feature pre-eminently 
 in the constitution of the Senate, and in the complica- 
 tion of its great powers, legislative, executive, and ju- 
 dicial making that body a participant in all the great 
 departments of constituted power. They preserved 
 the federative principle and combined it with the con- 
 stituent power of the people in the mode of electing 
 the President of the United States, whether by the 
 electoral colleges, or by the House of Representatives 
 voting by states. They preserved it even in the con- 
 stitution of the House, the popular branch of the 
 Legislature, by giving separate delegations to the peo- 
 ple of each state. But they expressly made the Con- 
 stitution and constitutional laws of the United States 
 paramount not only to the laws, but to the constitutions 
 of the separate states inconsistent with them. 
 
 I have traced step by step, in minute and tedious de- 
 tail, the departure from the principles of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, in the process of organizing the 
 confederation the disastrous and lamentable conse- 
 quences of that departure, and the admirable temper 
 and spirit, with which the Convention at Philadelphia 
 returned to those principles in the preparation and 
 composition of the Constitution of the United States. 
 
45 
 
 That this work was still imperfect, candour will compel 
 us all to admit, though in specifying its imperfections, 
 the purest minds and the most patriotic hearts diifer 
 widely from each other in their conclusions. Distrust- 
 ful as it becomes me to be of my own judgment, but 
 authorized by the experience of a full half century, 
 during which I have been variously and almost unin- 
 terruptedly engaged in both branches of the Legisla- 
 ture, and in the executive departments of this govern- 
 ment, and released, by my own rapid approach to the 
 closing scene of life, from all possible influence of per- 
 sonal interest or ambition, I may perhaps be permitted 
 to remark, that the omission of a clear and explicit 
 Declaration of Rights, was a great defect in the Con- 
 stitution as presented by the Convention to the people, 
 and that it has been imperfectly remedied by the ten 
 Articles of amendment proposed by the first Congress 
 under the Constitution, and now incorporated with it. 
 A Declaration of Rights would have marked in a more 
 emphatic manner the return from the derivative sover- 
 eignty of the states, to the constituent sovereignty of 
 the people for the basis of the federal Union, than was 
 done by the words, " We the people of the United 
 States," in the preamble to the Constitution. A Decla- 
 ration of Rights, also, systematically drawn up, as a 
 part of the Constitution, and adapted to it with the 
 consummate skill displayed in the consistent adjust- 
 ment of its mighty powers, would have made it more 
 complete in its unity, and in its symmetry, than it now 
 appears, an elegant edifice, but encumbered with 
 
 
46 
 
 superadditions, not always in keeping with the general 
 character of the building itself. 
 
 A Declaration of Rights, reserved by the constituent 
 body, the people, might and probably w r ould have pre- 
 vented many delicate and dangerous questions of con- 
 flicting jurisdictions which have arisen, and may yet 
 arise between the general and the separate state gov- 
 ernments. The rights reserved by the people would 
 have been exclusively their own rights, and they would 
 have been protected from the encroachments not only 
 of the general government, but of the disunited states. 
 
 And this is the day of your commemoration. The 
 day when the Revolution of Independence being com- 
 pleted, and the new confederated Republic announced 
 to the world, as the United States of America, consti- 
 tuted and organized under a government founded on 
 the principles of the Declaration of Independence, was 
 to hold her course along the lapse of time among the 
 civilized potentates of the earth. 
 
 From this point of departure we have looked back 
 to the origin of the Union ; to the conflict of war by 
 which the severance from the mother-country, and the 
 release from the thraldom of a trans- Atlantic monarch, 
 were effected, and to the more arduous and gradual 
 progression by which the new government had been 
 constructed to take the place of that which had been 
 cast off and demolished. 
 
 The first object of the people, declared by the Con- 
 stitution as their motive for its establishment, to form a 
 more perfect Union, had been attained by the establish- 
 
47 
 
 ment of the Constitution itself; but this was yet to be 
 demonstrated by its practical operation in the establish- 
 ment of justice, in the ensurance of domestic tranquility y 
 in the provison for the common defence, in the promo- 
 tion of the general welfare, and in securing the bles- 
 sings of liberty to the people themselves, the authors of 
 the Constitution, and to their posterity. 
 
 These are the great and transcendantal objects of alt 
 legitimate government. The primary purposes of all 
 human association. For these purposes the confedera- 
 tion had been instituted, and had signally failed for 
 their attainment. How far have they been attained 
 under this new national organization ? 
 
 It has abided the trial of time. This day fifty years 
 have passed away since the first impulse was given to the 
 wheels of this political machine. The generation by 
 which it was constructed, has passed away. Not one 
 member of the Convention who gave this Constitution to 
 their country, survives. They have enjoyed its blessings 
 so far as they were secured by their labours. They have 
 been gathered to their fathers. That posterity for whom 
 they toiled, not less anxiously than for themselves, has 
 arisen to occupy their places, and is rapidly passing 
 away in its turn. A third generation, unborn upon 
 the day which you commemorate, forms a vast majority 
 of the assembly who now honour me with their attention, 
 Your city which then numbered scarcely thirty thousand 
 inhabitants, now counts its numbers by hundreds of 
 thousands. Your state, then numbering less than double 
 the population of your city at this day, now tells its. 
 
48 
 
 children by millions. The thirteen primitive states 
 of the revolution, painfully rallied by this constitution 
 to the fold from which the impotence and dis-uniting 
 character of the confederacy, was already leading them 
 astray, now reinforced by an equal number of younger 
 sisters, and all swarming with an active, industrious, 
 and hardy population, have penetrated from the Atlantic 
 to the Rocky Mountains, and opened a paradise upon 
 the wilds watered by the father of the floods. The 
 Union, which at the first census, ordained by this 
 Constitution, returned a people of less than four millions 
 of souls; at the next census, already commanded by 
 law, the semi-centural enumeration since that day, is 
 about to exhibit a return of seventeen millions. Never 
 since the first assemblage of men in social union, has 
 there been such a scene of continued prosperity re- 
 corded upon the annals of time. 
 
 How much of this prosperity is justly attributable to 
 the Constitution, then first put upon its trial, may per* 
 haps be differently estimated by speculative minds. 
 Never was a form of government so obstinately, so perti- 
 naciously contested before its establishment and never 
 was human foresight and sagacity more disconcerted and 
 refuted by the event, than those of the opposers of the 
 Constitution. On the other hand its results have sur- 
 passed the most sanguine anticipations of its friends. 
 Neither Washington, nor Madison, nor Hamilton, dared 
 to hope that this new experiment of government would 
 so triumphantly accomplish the purposes which the con- 
 federation had so utterly failed to effect. Washington 
 
49 
 
 far from anticipating the palm of glory which his admin- 
 istration of this government was to entwine around his 
 brow, transcending the laurel of his then unrivalled mil- 
 itary renown, in the interval between the 4th of March, 
 when the meeting of the first Congress had been sum- 
 moned, and the 14th of April, when he received from 
 them the notification of his election as President of the 
 United States, thus unbosomed to his friend Knox the 
 forebodings of his anxious and agitated mind. " I feel, 7 ' 
 wrote he, " for those members of the new Congress, 
 who hitherto have given an unavailing attendance at 
 the theatre of action. For myself, the delay may be 
 compared to a reprieve ; for in confidence I tell you, 
 (with the world it would obtain little credit,) that my 
 movements to the chair of government will be accom- 
 panied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is 
 going to the place of his execution. So unwilling am 
 I, in the evening of life, nearly consumed in public cares, 
 to quit a peaceful abode for an ocean of difficulties, 
 without that competency of political skill, abilities, and 
 inclination, which are necessary to manage the helm. 
 I am sensible that I am embarking the voice of the peo- 
 ple and a good name of my own, on this voyage, but 
 what returns can be made of them, Heaven alone can 
 foretell. Integrity and firmness are all I can promise : 
 these, be the voyage long or short, shall never forsake 
 me, although I may be deserted by all men : for of the 
 consolations which are to be derived from them, under 
 any circumstances, the world cannot deprive me." 
 
 One of the most indubitable tests of the merit of hu- 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 man institutions for the government of men, is the length 
 of time which they endure ; but so fluctuating is the 
 character of nations and of ages, as well as of individ- 
 uals, that in the history of mankind before our own age, 
 this durability of human governments has been exclu- 
 sively confined to those founded upon conquests and 
 hereditary power. In summing up the character of Wil- 
 liam the Conqueror, the Scottish historian, Hume, re- 
 marks, that " though he rendered himself infinitely odi- 
 ous to his English subjects, he transmitted his power to 
 his posterity, and the throne is still filled by his descend- 
 ants ; a proof," says the historian, " that the foundations 
 which he laid, were firm and solid, and that amidst all 
 his violence, while he seemed only to gratify the present 
 passion, he had still an eye towards futurity." 
 
 The descendant from William the Conqueror, who 
 filled the throne of Britain when the Scottish historian 
 made this remark, was the person whom his American 
 subjects, to whom he had rendered himself odious, unseat- 
 ed from that portion of his throne which ruled over them; 
 and in discarding him they had demolished the throne 
 itself for ever. They had resolved for themselves and 
 their posterity, never again to be ruled by thrones. The 
 Declaration of Independence had promulgated principles 
 of government, subversive of all unlimited sovereignty 
 and all hereditary power. Principles, in consistency with 
 which no conqueror could establish by violence a throne 
 to be trodden by himself and by his posterity, for a space 
 of eight hundred years. The foundations of government 
 laid by those who had burnt by fire and scattered to the 
 
51 
 
 winds of Heaven, the ashes of this conqueror's throne, 
 were human rights, responsibility to God, and the 
 consent of the people. Upon these principles, the Con- 
 stitution of the United States had been formed, was now 
 organized, and about to be carried into execution, to 
 abide the test of time. The first element of its longev- 
 ity was undoubtedly to be found in itself but we 
 may, without superstition or fanaticism, believe that a 
 superintending Providence had adapted to the charac- 
 ter and principles of this institution, those of the man by 
 whom it was to be first administered. To fill a throne v/as 
 neither his ambition nor his vocation. He had no de- 
 scendants to whom a throne could have been transmitted, 
 had it existed. He was placed by the unanimous voice 
 of his country, at the head of that government which they 
 had substituted for a throne, and his eye looking to fu- 
 turity, was intent upon securing to after ages, not a 
 throi_e for a seat to his own descendants, but an immove- 
 able seat upon which the descendants of his country 
 might sit in peace, and freedom, and happiness, if so it 
 please Heaven, to the end of time. 
 
 That to the accomplishment of this task he looked 
 forward with a searching eye, and even an over-anxious 
 heart, will not be surprising to any who understands 
 his character, or is capable of comprehending the mag- 
 nitude and difficulty of the task itself. 
 
 There are incidental to the character of man two 
 qualities, both developed by his intercourse with his fel- 
 low-creatures, and both belonging to the immortal part 
 of his nature ; of elements apparently so opposed and 
 
52 
 
 inconsistent with each other, ,as to be irreconcilable to- 
 gether ; but yet indispensable in their union to consti- 
 tute the highest excellence of the human character. 
 They are the spirit of command, and the spirit of meek- 
 ness. They have been exemplified in the purity of 
 ideal perfection, only once in the history of mankind, 
 and that was in the mortal life of the Saviour of the 
 world. It would seem to have been exhibited on earth 
 by his supernatural character, as a model to teach mor- 
 tal man, to what sublime elevation his nature is capa- 
 ble of ascending. They had been displayed, though not 
 in the same perfection by the preceding legislator of 
 the children of Israel ; 
 
 " That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed 
 In the beginning, how the heavens and earth 
 Rose out of Chaos 5" 
 
 but so little were they known, or conceived of in the an- 
 tiquity of profane history, that in the poems of Homer, 
 that unrivalled delineator of human character in the he- 
 roic ages, there is no attempt to introduce them in the 
 person of any one of his performers, human or divine. 
 In the poem of his Roman imitator and rival, a feeble 
 exemplification of them is shadowed forth in the incon- 
 sistent composition of the pious ^Eneas ; but history, 
 ancient or modern, had never exhibited in the real life 
 of man, an example in which those two properties were 
 so happily blended together, as they were in the person 
 of George Washington. These properties belong rather 
 to the moral than the intellectual nature of man. They 
 
53 
 
 are not unfrequently found in minds little cultivated by 
 science, but they require for the exercise of that mutual 
 control which guards them from degenerating into arro- 
 gance or weakness, the guidance of a sound judg- 
 ment, and the regulation of a profound sense of respon- 
 sibility to a higher Power. It was this adaptation of the 
 character of Washington to that of the institution over 
 the composition of which he had presided, as he was 
 now called to preside over its administration, which 
 constituted one of the most favorable omens of its 
 eventful stability and success. 
 
 But this institution was republican, and even demo- 
 cratic. And here not to be misunderstood, I mean by 
 democratic, a government, the administration of which 
 must always be rendered comfortable to that predomi- 
 nating public opinion, which even in the ages of heathen 
 antiquity, was denominated the queen of the world : and 
 by republican I mean a government reposing, not upon the 
 virtues or the powers of any one man not upon that 
 honour, which Montesquieu lays down as the funda- 
 mental principle of monarchy far less upon that 
 fear which he pronounces the basis of despotism ; but 
 upon that virtue which he, a noble of aristocratic peer- 
 age, and the subject of an absolute monarch, boldly pro- 
 claims as a fundamental principle of republican govern- 
 ment. The Constitution of the United States was re- 
 publican and democratic but the experience of all 
 former ages had shown that of all human governments, 
 democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short* 
 lived; and it was obvious that if virtue the virtue 
 of the people, was the foundation of republican govern- 
 
54 
 
 merit, the stability and duration of the government must 
 depend upon the stability and duration of the virtue by 
 which it is sustained. 
 
 Now the virtue which had been infused into the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, and was to give to its 
 vital existence the stability and duration to which it 
 was destined, was no other than the concretion of those 
 abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the 
 Declaration of Independence namely, the self-evident 
 truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man, of 
 the indefeasible constituent and dissolvent sovereignty 
 of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and 
 wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler 
 of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sov- 
 ereign, constituent, and dissolvent power. 
 
 This was the platform upon which the Constitution 
 of the United States had been erected. Its VIRTUES, 
 its republican character, consisted in its conformity to 
 the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, and as its administration must necessarily 
 be always pliable to the fluctuating varieties of public 
 opinion ; its stability and duration by a like overruling 
 and irresistible necessity, was to depend upon the sta- 
 bility and duration in the hearts and minds of the peo- 
 ple of that virtue, or in other words, of those principles, 
 proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and 
 embodied in the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 With these considerations, we shall be better able to 
 comprehend the feelings of repugnance, of pain, of an- 
 guish, of fearful forebodings, with which Washington 
 had consented to be placed at the head of this new and 
 
55 
 
 untried experiment to consolidate the people of the 
 thirteen then disunited states into one confederated and 
 permanent happy Union. For his own integrity and 
 firmness he could answer ; and these were sufficient to 
 redeem his own personal responsibility but he was 
 embarking on this ocean of difficulty a good name 
 already achieved by toils, and dangers, and services un- 
 paralleled in human history surpassing in actual value 
 the richest diadem upon earth, and more precious in 
 his estimation than the throne of the universal globe, 
 had it been offered as an alternative to his choice. 
 
 He knew the result would not depend upon him. 
 His reliance was upon the good providence of Heaven. 
 He foresaw that he might be deserted by all mankind. 
 The Constitution itself had been extorted from the 
 grinding necessity of a reluctant nation. The people 
 only of eleven of the thirteen primitive states had 
 sanctioned it by their adoption. A stubborn, unyield- 
 ing resistance against its adoption had manifested itself 
 in some of the most powerful states in the Union, and 
 when overpowered by small majorities in their conven- 
 tions, had struggled in some instances successfully, to 
 recover their ascendancy by electing to both Houses of 
 Congress members who had signalized themselves in 
 opposition to the adoption of the Constitution. A sul- 
 len, embittered, exasperated spirit was boiling in the 
 bosoms of the defeated, then styled anti-Federal party, 
 whose rallying cry was state rights state sover- 
 eignty state independence. To this standard no 
 small number even of the ardent and distinguished 
 
56 
 
 patriots of the Revolution had attached themselves 
 \vith partial affection. State sovereignty unlimited 
 state sovereignty, amenable not to the authority of the 
 Union, but only to the people of the disunited state 
 itself, had, with the left-handed wisdom characteristic 
 of faction, assumed the mask of liberty, pranked her- 
 self out in the garb of patriotism, and courted the pop- 
 ular favour in each state by appeals to their separate 
 independence affecting to style themselves exclu- 
 sively Republicans, and stigmatizing the Federalists, 
 and even Washington himself their head, as monarch- 
 ists and tories. 
 
 On the other hand, no small number of the Federal- 
 ists, sickened by the wretched and ignominious failure 
 of the Articles of Confederation to fulfil the promise 
 of the Revolution ; provoked at once and discouraged 
 by the violence and rancour of the opposition against 
 their strenuous and toilsome endeavours to raise their 
 country from her state of prostration ; chafed and 
 goaded by the misrepresentations of their motives, and 
 the reproaches of their adversaries, and imputing to 
 them in turn, deliberate and settled purposes to dis- 
 solve the Union, and resort to anarchy for the repair of 
 ruined fortunes distrusted even the efficacy of the 
 Constitution itself, and with a weakened confidence in 
 the virtue of the people, were inclining to the opinion, 
 that the only practicable substitute for it would be a 
 government of greater energy than that presented by 
 the Convention. There were among them numerous 
 warm and sincere admirers of the British Constitution; 
 
57 
 
 disposed to confide rather to the inherent strength of 
 the government than to the self-evident truths of the 
 Declaration of Independence, for the preservation of 
 the rights of property and perhaps of persons and 
 -with these discordant feelings and antagonizing opin- 
 ions, were intermingled on both sides individual inter- 
 ests and ambitions, counteracting each other as in the 
 conduct and management of human aifairs they always 
 have and always will not without a silent and secret 
 mixture of collateral motives and impulses, from the 
 domestic intercourse of society, for which the legisla- 
 tor is not competent t<j provide, and the effect of which 
 not intuition itself can foresee. 
 
 The same calm, but anxious and even distrusting 
 contemplation of the prospect before him, and of the 
 difficulties and dangers which he was destined to en- 
 counter in his new career, followed him after he re- 
 ceived the annunciation of his election, and the sum- 
 mons to repair to his post. The moment of his depar- 
 ture from the residence of his retirement, was thus 
 recorded in his diary : "About ten o'clock I bade adieu 
 to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic feli- 
 city ; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and 
 painful sensations, than I have words to express, set out 
 for New York with the best disposition to render ser- 
 vice to my country in obedience to its call, but with 
 less hope of answering its expectations." 
 
 His progress from Mount Vernon to New York, was 
 one triumphal procession. At Alexandria, at George- 
 town, at Philadelphia, at Trenton, at Brunswick, at the 
 
 8 
 
58 
 
 borders of the state of New Jersey, at Elizabethtown 
 Point, he was surrounded, addressed, escorted, by 
 crowds of his grateful, confiding-, hoping, affectionate 
 fellow-citizens, of all classes, of both sexes, of every 
 age and condition, showering upon him in every vari- 
 ety of form demonstrations of the most enthusiastic 
 attachment. Corporations of magistrates addressed 
 him in strains of pious, patriotic, and fervid eloquence. 
 The soldiers of their country, in the prime of life, in 
 the pride and pomp of war, but in the circumstance of 
 honourable peace, preceded him as a guard of orna- 
 ment and of glory. At his passage over the Schuylkill 
 bridge, a crown of unfading laurel was unconsciously 
 to himself, dropped by a blooming boy from a thickly 
 laurelled arch upon his head. At Trenton, he was 
 welcomed by a band of aged matrons commemorating his 
 noble defence of them, thirteen years before on that 
 spot, at the turning tide of the War of Independence 
 while their virgin daughters strewed the path before 
 him with flowers, and chanting a song like that of Mir- 
 iam, hailed him as their protector, who had been the 
 defender of their mothers. A committee of Congress 
 met him on his approach to the Point, where a richly 
 ornamented barge of thirteen oars, manned by thirteen 
 branch pilots of your own harbour, prepared by your 
 forefathers, then the inhabitants of your bright-starred 
 city, was in waiting to receive him. In this barge he 
 embarked. But the bosom of the waters around her, 
 as she swept along, was as populous as had been the 
 shores. The garish streamers floated upon the gale 
 
59 
 
 songs of enchantment resounded from boat to boat, in- 
 termingled with the clashing of cymbals, with the echo- 
 ing of horns, with the warbling of the flute, and the 
 mellowing tones of the clarionet, weakened, but soften- 
 ed as if into distance, by the murmur of the breeze and 
 the measured dashing of the waters from the oars, till 
 
 on reaching your city ! but let his own 
 
 diary record the emotions of his soul : " The display of 
 boats," I quote from his biographer, the lamented late 
 Chief Justice Marshall, " which attended and joined on 
 this occasion, some with vocal, and others with instru- 
 mental music on board, the decorations of the ships, the 
 roar of cannon, and the loud acclamations of the 
 people, which rent the sky as I passed along the 
 wharves, filled my mind with sensations as PAINFUL 
 (contemplating the reverse of this scene, which may 
 be the case after all my labours .to do good) as they 
 were pleasing." 
 
 How delightful is it, my beloved countrymen, on this 
 festive day of jubilee, commemorating that day so preg- 
 nant with your weal or wo, and with that of your chil- 
 dren's children, how delightful is it at the distance of 
 fifty years from that day of promised blessings and of 
 anticipated disappointments, to reflect that all the fairest 
 visions of hope were to be more than realized, and all the 
 apprehensions of wary prudence and self-distrusting 
 wisdom more than dissipated and dispelled. 
 
 Yes, my countrymen, we have survived to this day 
 of jubilee, and the only regret which shades the sober 
 certainty of waking bliss, with which he who now ad- 
 
60 
 
 dresses you, turns back the retrospective eye upon the 
 long career between that time and the present, is the 
 imperfection of his power to delineate with a pencil of 
 phosphorus, the contrast between the national condition 
 of your forefathers at that day, as it had been allotted to 
 them by the articles of confederation, and your present 
 state of associated existence, as it has been shaped and 
 modified by the Constitution of the United States, ad- 
 ministered by twenty-five biennial Congresses, and eight 
 Presidents of the United States. 
 
 By the adoption and organization of the Constitution 
 of the United States, these principles had been settled : 
 
 1. That the affairs of the people of the United States 
 were thenceforth to be administered, not by a confeder- 
 acy, or mere league of friendship between the sovereign 
 states, but by a government, distributed into the three 
 great departments legislative, judicial, and executive. 
 
 2. That the powers of government should be limited 
 to concerns interesting to the whole people, leaving the 
 internal administration of each state, in peace, to its own 
 constitution and laws, provided that they should be 
 republican, and interfering with them as little as should 
 be necessary in war. 
 
 3. That the legislative power of this government 
 should be divided between two assemblies, one repre- 
 senting directly the people of the separate states ; and 
 the other their legislatures. 
 
 4. That the executive power of this government 
 should be vested in one person chosen for four years, with 
 certain qualifications of age and nativity, re-eligible 
 
61 
 
 without limitation, and invested with a qualified nega- 
 tive upon the enactment of. the laws. 
 
 5. That the judicial power should consist of tribunals 
 inferior and supreme, to be instituted and organized by 
 Congress, but to be composed of persons holding their 
 offices during good behaviour, that is, removable only 
 by impeachment. 
 
 The organization and constitution of the subordi- 
 nate executive departments, were also left to the discre- 
 tionary power of Congress. 
 
 But the exact limits of legislative, judicial, and exec- 
 utive power, have never been denned, and the distinc- 
 tion between them is so little understood without refer- 
 ence to certain theories of government, or to specific 
 institutions, that a very intelligent, well-informed and 
 learned foreigner, with whom I once conversed, upon 
 my using the words executive power, said to me, " I sup- 
 pose by the executive power, you mean the power that 
 MAKES the laws." . ; ^1 ' . Nor is this mistake 
 altogether unexampled, even among ourselves ; exam- 
 ples might be adduced in our history, national and con- 
 federate, in which the incumbents both of judicial and 
 executive offices have mistaken themselves for the power 
 that makes the laws as on the other hand examples 
 yet more frequent might be cited of legislators, and 
 even legislatures, who have mistaken themselves to be 
 judges, or executives supreme. 
 
 The legislative, judicial, and executive powers, like 
 the prismatic colours of the rainbow, are entirely sep- 
 arate and distinct ; but they melt so imperceptibly into 
 
62 
 
 each other that no human eye can discern the exact 
 boundary line between them. The broad features of 
 distinction between them are perceptible to all; but per- 
 haps neither of them can be practically exercised 
 without occasional encroachment upon the borders of its 
 neighbour. The Constitution of the United States has 
 not pretended to confine either of the great departments 
 of its government exclusively within its own limits. 
 Both the senate and the house of representatives possess, 
 and occasionally exercise, both judicial and executive 
 powers, and the president has at all times a qualified nega- 
 tive upon legislation, and a judicial power of remission. 
 To complete the organization of the government by 
 the institution of the chief executive departments and 
 the establishment of judicial courts, was among the first 
 duties of Congress. The constitution had provided that 
 all the public functionaries of the Union, not only of the 
 general but of all the state governments, should be un- 
 der oath or affirmation for its support. The homage of 
 religious faith was thus superadded to all the obligations 
 of temporal law, to give it strength ; and this confirma- 
 tion of an appeal to the responsibilities of a future om- 
 nipotent judge, was in exact conformity with the whole 
 tenor of the Declaration of Independence guarded 
 against abusive extension by a further provision, 
 that no religious test should ever be required as a quali- 
 fication to any office or public trust under the United 
 States. The first act of the Congress, therefore, was to 
 regulate and administer the oaths thus required by the 
 Constitution. 
 
63 
 
 The Constitution had already " formed a more perfect 
 union " of the people of the United States ; but it was 
 not yet consummated or completed. The people of 
 Rhode Island had taken no part in the formation of the 
 Constitution, and refused their sanction to it. They had 
 virtually seceded from the Union. North Carolina had 
 been represented in the Convention at Philadelphia, but 
 her people had refused to ratify their constitutional act. 
 
 Recent events in our history, to which I wish to make 
 no unnecessary allusion, but to which the rising gen- 
 eration of our country cannot and ought not to close 
 their eyes, have brought again into discussion questions, 
 which, at the period to which we are now reverting, 
 were of the deepest and most vital interest to the con- 
 tinued existence of the Union itself. The question 
 whether any one state of the Union had the right to 
 secede from the confederacy at her pleasure, was then 
 practically solved. The question of the right of the 
 people of any one state, to nullify within her borders 
 any legislative act of the general government, was in- 
 volved in that of the right of secession, without, how- 
 ever, that most obnoxious feature of the modern doc- 
 trine of nullification and secession the violation of 
 the plighted faith of the nullifying or seceding state. 
 
 Rhode Island had not only neglected to comply with 
 the requisitions of the confederation-Congress to sup- 
 ply the funds necessary to fulfil the public engagements ; 
 but she alone had refused to invest the Congress with 
 powers indispensable for raising such supplies. She 
 had refused to join in the united effort to revivify the sus- 
 
64 
 
 pended animation of the confederacy, and she still defied 
 the warning of her sister states, that if she persevered 
 in this exercise of her sovereignty and independence, 
 they would leave her alone in her glory, and take up 
 their march in united column without her. North 
 Carolina, not more remiss than her sister states in 
 the fulfilment of her obligations, after joining them 
 in the attempt to draw the bonds of union closer to- 
 gether by a new compact, still refused to ratify it, 
 though recommended by the signature of her own del- 
 egates and under a similar admonition. Rhode Island 
 and North Carolina still held back. The Union and 
 Washington marched without them. Their right to 
 secede was not contested. No unfriendly step to in- 
 jure was taken ; no irritating measure to provoke them 
 was proposed. The door was left open for them to 
 return, whenever the proud and wayward spirit of state 
 sovereignty should give way to the attractions of clear- 
 er-sighted self-interest and kindred sympathies. In the 
 first acts of Congress they were treated as foreigners, 
 but with reservations to them of the power to resume 
 the national privileges with the national character, and 
 when within two years they did return, without invita- 
 tion or repulsion, they were received with open arms. 
 
 The questions of secession, or of resistance under 
 state authority, against the execution of the laws of the 
 Union within any state, can never again be presented 
 under circumstances so favourable to the pretensions 
 of the separate state, as they were at the organization 
 of the Constitution of the United States. At that time 
 
65 
 
 Rhode Island and North Carolina might justly have 
 pleaded, that their sister states were bound to them by 
 a compact into which they had voluntarily entered, with 
 stipulations that it should undergo no alteration but by 
 unanimous consent. That the Constitution was a con- 
 federate Union founded upon principles totally differ- 
 ent, and to which not only they were at liberty to refuse 
 their assent, but which all the other states combined, 
 could not without a breach of their own faith establish 
 among themselves, without the free consent of all the 
 partners to the prior contract. That the confederation 
 could not otherwise be dissolved, and that by adhering 
 to it, they were only performing their own engage- 
 ments with good faith, and claiming their own unques- 
 tionable rights. 
 
 The justification of the people of the eleven states, 
 which had adopted the Constitution of the United 
 States, and of that provision of the Constitution itself, 
 which had prescribed that the ratification of nine states 
 should suffice to absolve them from the bonds of the 
 old confederation, and to establish the new Govern- 
 ment as between themselves, was found in the princi- 
 ples of the Declaration of Independence. The confed- 
 eration had failed to answer the purposes for which 
 governments are instituted among men. Its powers 
 or its impotence operated to the destruction of those 
 ends, which it is the object of government to promote. 
 The people, therefore who h ad made it their own only by 
 their acquiescence acting under their responsibility 
 to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, absolved them- 
 
 9 
 
66 
 
 selves from the bonds of the old confederation, and 
 bound themselves by the new and closer ties of the 
 Constitution. In performing that act, they had felt the 
 duty of obtaining the co-operation to it, of a majority of 
 the whole people, by requiring the concurrence of ma- 
 jorities in nine out of the thirteen states, and they had 
 neither prepared nor proposed any measure of com- 
 pulsion, to draw the people of any of the possibly dis- 
 senting states into the new partnership, against their 
 will. They passed upon the old confederation the 
 same sentence, which they had pronounced in dissolv- 
 ing their connexion with the British nation, and they 
 pledged their faith to each other anew, to a far closer 
 and more intimate connexion. 
 
 It is admitted, it was admitted then, that the people 
 of Rhode Island, and of North Carolina, were free to 
 reject the new Constitution; but not that they could 
 justly claim the continuance of the old Confederation. 
 The law of political necessity, expounded by the judg- 
 ment of the sovereign constituent people, responsible 
 only to God, had abolished that. The people of Rhode 
 Island, and of North Carolina, might dissent from the 
 more perfect union, but they must acquiesce in the ne- 
 cessity of the separation. 
 
 Of that separation they soon felt the inconvenience 
 to themselves, and rejoined the company from which 
 they had strayed. The number of the primitive States 
 has since doubled, by voluntary and earnest applica- 
 tions for admission. It has often been granted as a 
 privilege and a favour. Sometimes delayed beyond 
 
67 
 
 the time when it was justly due and never declined 
 by any one State entitled to demand it. 
 
 Yet the boundary line between the constitutional au- 
 thority of the General Government, and that of the 
 separate States, was not drawn in colours so distinct 
 and clear, as to have escaped diversities of opinion, and 
 grave and protracted controversy. While the people 
 of distant lands, of foreign races, and of other tongues, 
 have solicited admittance to the North American Union, 
 and have been denied, more than once have serious 
 and alarming collisions of conflicting jurisdiction arisen 
 between the General Government, and those of the 
 separate states, threatening the dissolution of the Uni- 
 on itself. The right of a single state, or of several of 
 the states in combination together, to secede from the 
 Union, the right of a single state, without seceding from 
 the Union, to declare an act of the General Congress, 
 a law of the United States, null and void, within the 
 borders of that state, have both been at various times, 
 and in different sections of the Union, directly asserted, 
 fervently controverted, and attempted to be carried into 
 execution. It once accomplished a change of the ad- 
 ministration of the General Government, and then was 
 laid aside. It has occasionally wasted itself in abortive 
 projects of new confederacies, and has recently proceed- 
 ed to the extremity of assembling a Convention of the 
 people of one state in the Union, to declare a law of the 
 United States unconstitutional, null, and void. But the 
 law was nevertheless executed ; and in this, as in other 
 instances, a temporary turbulent resistance against the 
 
68 
 
 lawful powers of Congress, Tinder the banners of State 
 sovereignty, and State rights, is now terminating in a 
 more devoted adherence and willing subserviency to 
 the authority of the Union. 
 
 This has been the result of the working of the Insti- 
 tution, and although now, as heretofore, it has been ef- 
 fected by means and in a manner so unforeseen and 
 unexpected, as to baffle all human penetration, and to 
 take reflection itself by surprise ; yet the uniformity of 
 the result often repeated by the experience of half a 
 century, has demonstrated the vast superiority of the 
 Constitution of the United States over the Confedera- 
 tion, as a system of Government to control the tem- 
 porary passions of the people, by the permanent curb of 
 their own interest. 
 
 In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a 
 State to nullify an act of Congress, is too absurd for 
 argument, and too odious for discussion. The right of 
 a staje to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by 
 the principles of the Declaration of Independence. 
 Nations acknowledge no judge between them upon 
 earth, and their Governments from necessity, must in 
 their intercourse with each other decide when the fail- 
 ure of one party to a contract to perform its obliga- 
 tions, absolves the other from the reciprocal fulfilment 
 of his own. But this last of earthly powers is not ne- 
 cessary to the freedom or independence of states, con- 
 nected together by the immediate action of the people, 
 of whom they consist. To the people alone is there 
 reserved, as well the dissolving, as the constituent pow- 
 
69 
 
 er, and that power can be exercised by them only un- 
 der the tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive 
 justice of Heaven. 
 
 With these qualifications, we may admit the same 
 right as vested in the people of every state in the Union, 
 with reference to the General Government, which was 
 exercised by the people of the United Colonies, with 
 reference to the Supreme head of the British empire, 
 of which they formed a part and under these limita- 
 tions, have the people of each state in the Union a 
 right to secede from the confederated Union itself. 
 
 Thus stands the RIGHT. But the indissoluble 
 link of union between the people of the several states 
 of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, 
 but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may 
 Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of 
 these states shall be alienated from each other ; when 
 the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, 
 or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the 
 bands of political association will not long hold togeth- 
 er parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of con- 
 ciliated interests and kindly sympathies ; and far better 
 will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part 
 in friendship from each other, than to be held together 
 by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to 
 the precedents which occurred at the formation and 
 adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more per- 
 fect union, by dissolving that which could no longer 
 bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by 
 the law of political gravitation to the centre. 
 
70 
 
 While the Constitution was thus accomplishing the 
 first object declared by the people as their motive for 
 ordaining it, by forming a more perfect union, it be- 
 came the joint and co-ordinate duty of the legislative 
 and executive departments, to provide for the second 
 of those objects, which involved within itself all the 
 rest, and indeed all the purposes of government. For 
 justice, defined by the Institutes of Justinian, as the 
 constant and perpetual will of securing to every one 
 his right, includes the whole duty of man in the social 
 institutions of society, toward his neighbour. 
 
 To the establishment of this JUSTICE, the joint and 
 harmonious co-operation of the legislative and execu- 
 tive departments was required, and it was one of the 
 providential incidents of the time, that this zealous and 
 hearty co-operation had been secured, by that over-ru- 
 ling and universal popularity with which the Chief 
 Magistrate was inducted into his most arduous and 
 responsible office. 
 
 It has perhaps never been duly remarked, that under 
 the Constitution of the United States the powers of the 
 executive department explicitly and emphatica]ly con- 
 centrated in one person, are vastly more extensive 
 and complicated than those of the legislative. The 
 language of the instrument, in conferring legislative 
 authority is, "^legislative powers herein granted, shall 
 be vested in a Congress of the United States, which 
 shall consist of a Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives." But the executive trust it committed in unre- 
 stricted terms : " THE executive power shall be vested 
 
71 
 
 in a President of the United States of America.'' The 
 legislative powers of Congress are, therefore, limited 
 to specific grants contained in the Constitution itself, 
 all restricted on one side by the power of internal le- 
 gislation within the separate States, and on the other, 
 by the laws of nations, otherwise and more properly 
 called the rights of war and peace, consisting of all the 
 rules of intercourse between independent nations. 
 These are not subject to the legislative authority of 
 any one nation, and they are, therefore, not included 
 within the powers of Congress. But the executive 
 power vested in the President of the United States, 
 confers upon him the power, and enjoins upon him 
 the duty, of fulfilling all the duties and of exacting all 
 the rights of the nation in her intercourse with all the 
 other nations of the earth. The powers of declaring 
 war, of regulating commerce, of defining and punishing 
 piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and 
 offences AGAINST THE LAW OF NATIONS, 
 are among the special grants to Congress, but over that 
 law itself, thus expressly recognised, and all-compre- 
 hensive as it is, Congress has no alterative power. 
 While the power of executing it, is conferred in unlim- 
 ited terms upon the President of the United States. 
 
 The exercise of this more than dictatorial power is 
 indeed controlled, first, by the participation of the Sen- 
 ate in the conclusion of treaties and appointments to 
 office. Secondly, by the reservation of the discretion- 
 ary power of the House of Representatives, to refuse 
 the supplies necessary for the executive action. And 
 
72 
 
 thirdly, by the power reserved to the house to impeach 
 the President for mal-administration, and to the senate 
 to try that impeachment, and sentence him to removal 
 and to disqualification for official station for ever. 
 These are great and salutary checks upon the abusive 
 application of the granted power. But the power is not 
 the less granted. 
 
 And herein was the greatest and most pernicious de- 
 ficiency of the articles of confederation, most effect- 
 ively supplied. The Congress of the confederation had 
 no executive power. They could contract, but they could 
 not perform. Hence it was impossible for them to es- 
 tablish justice in the intercourse of the nation with for- 
 eign states. They could neither exact the justice due 
 to the country, nor fulfil the duties of justice to others, 
 and this was the reason assigned by the British govern- 
 ment for declining to regulate the commerce between 
 the two countries by treaty. 
 
 The establishment of justice in the intercourse be- 
 tween the nation and foreign powers, was thus pre-em- 
 inently committed to the custody of one man, but that 
 man was George Washington. 
 
 How far the establishment of justice, by the adminis- 
 tration of the affairs of the nation, abroad and at home, 
 was accomplished by the Constitution of the United 
 States, can be estimated only by a review of the history 
 of fifty years. For this, neither the time nor the limits 
 within which this discourse must be circumscribed, will 
 permit more than a rapid and imperfect summary. 
 
 The relations of the United States with the other pow- 
 
73 
 
 ers of the world, were then slight and of trifling impor- 
 tance, in comparison with what they were destined to be- 
 come. In their colonial state their commercial inter- 
 course had been restricted almost exclusively to the 
 mother-country.s Their political relations were only 
 those of a subordinate dependance of a great empire. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence recognised the Eu- 
 ropean law of nations, as practised among Christian na- 
 tions, to be that by which they considered themselves 
 bound, and of which they claimed the rights. This sys- 
 tem is founded upon the principle, that the state of na- 
 ture between men and between nations, is a state of 
 peace. But there was a Mahometan law of nations, 
 which considered the state of nature as a state of war 
 an Asiatic law of nations, which excluded all foreign- 
 ers from admission within the territories of the state 
 a colonial law of nations, which excluded all foreigners 
 from admission within the colonies and a savage 
 Indian law of nations, by which the Indian tribes within 
 the bounds of the United States, were under their protec- 
 tion, though in a condition of tindefined dependance upon 
 the governments of the separate states. With all these 
 different communities, the relations of the United States 
 were from the time when they had become an independ- 
 ent nation, variously modified according to the opera- 
 tion of those various laws. It was the purpose of the 
 Constitution of the United States to establish justice over 
 them all. 
 
 The commercial and political relations of the Union 
 
 with the Christian European nations, were principally 
 
 10 
 
74 
 
 with Great Britain, France, and Spain, and considera 
 bly with the Netherlands and Portugal. With all these 
 there was peace ; but with Britain and Spain, contro- 
 versies involving the deepest interests and the very ex- 
 istence of the nation, were fermenting, and negociations 
 of the most humiliating character were pending, from 
 which the helpless imbecility of the confederation 
 afforded no prospect of relief. With the other Euro- 
 pean states there was scarcely any intercourse. The 
 Baltic was an unknown sea to our navigators, and all the 
 rich and classical regions of the Mediterranean were 
 interdicted to the commercial enterprise of our mer- 
 chants, and the dauntless skill of our mariners, by the 
 Mahometan merciless warfare of the Barbary powers. 
 Scarcely had the peace of our independence been con- 
 cluded, when three of our merchant-vessels had been 
 captured by the corsairs of Algiers, and their crews, 
 citizens of the Union, had been pining for years in 
 slavery, appealing to their country for redemption, in 
 vain. Nor was this all. By the operation of this state of 
 things, all the shores of the Black sea, of the whole Med- 
 iterranean, of the islands on the African coast, of the 
 southern ports of France, of all Spain and of Portugal, 
 were closed against our commerce, as if they had been 
 hermetically sealed; while Britain, every where our rival 
 and competitor was counteracting by every stimulant 
 within her power every attempt on our part to com- 
 pound by tribute with the Barbarian for peace. 
 
 Great Britain had also excluded us from all com- 
 Daeree in our own vessels with her colonies, and France, 
 
76 
 
 notwithstanding- her alliance with us during the war, 
 had after the conclusion of the peace adopted the same 
 policy. She was jealous of our aggrandizement, fearful 
 of our principles, linked with Spain in the project of de- 
 barring us from the navigation of the Mississippi, and 
 settled in the determination to shackle us in the devel- 
 opment of the gigantic powers which, with insidious 
 sagacity, she foresaw might be abused. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these discouragements, the inex- 
 tinguishable spirit of freedom, which had carried your 
 forefathers through the exterminating war of the Revo- 
 lution, was yet unsuppressed. At the very time when 
 the nerveless confederacy could neither protect nor re- 
 deem their sailors from Algcrine captivity, the floating 
 city of the Taho beheld the stripes and stars of the Union, 
 openingtothe breeze from a schooner of thirty tons, and 
 inquired where was the ship of which that frail fabric 
 was doubtless the tender. The Southern ocean was 
 still vexed with the harpoons of their whalemen ; but 
 Britain excluded their oil, by prohibitory duties and the 
 navigation act, from her markets, and the more indulgent 
 liberality of France would consent to the illumination 
 of her cities by the quakers of Nantucket, only upon 
 condition that they should forsake their native island, 
 and become the naturalized denizens of Dunkirk. 
 
 In the same year, when the Convention at Philadel- 
 phia was occupied in preparing the Constitution of the 
 United States for the consideration of the people, two 
 vessels, called the Columbia and the Washington, fitted 
 out by a company of merchants at Boston, sailed upon 
 
76 
 
 a voyage combining the circumnavigation of the globe, 
 discovery upon the shores of the Pacific ocean, and 
 the trade with the savages of the Sandwich Islands, 
 and with the celestial empire of China, all in one under- 
 taking. The result of this voyage was the discovery 
 of the Columbia river, so named from the ship which 
 first entered within her capes, since unjustly confound- 
 ed with the fabulous Oregon or river of the West, but 
 really securing to the United States the right of prior 
 discovery, and laying the foundation of the right of 
 extension of our territory from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific ocean. 
 
 All this however was but the development of na- 
 tional character in the form of private enterprise. The 
 foreign affairs of the Union when President Washing- 
 ton assumed the administration of the executive power, 
 were in a state of chaos, out of which an orderly and 
 harmonious world was to be educed. 
 
 In conferring the executive power upon the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, the Constitution had left its 
 subordinate organization partly to the discretion of 
 Congress. It had spoken of heads and chief officers 
 of the executive departments, but without defining their 
 offices, or prescribing their functions. Under the Rev- 
 olutionary Congress, the executive power, such as it 
 was, had been exercised by committees of their own 
 body. Under the confederation Congress, by Secreta- 
 ries of Foreign Affairs and of War, and successively 
 by a single financier, and by a board of Commissioners 
 of the Treasury. 
 
77 
 
 The first Constitutional Congress, in the true spirit 
 of the Constitution itself, instituted three executive de- 
 partments, each with a single head, under the denom- 
 ination of Secretaries of Foreign Affairs, of the Treas- 
 ury, and of War. There was no Home Department, 
 a deficiency w r hich has not yet been supplied but on 
 reconsideration, the first Congress at their first session, 
 combined the duties of the Home Department with 
 those of Foreign Affairs, by substituting a Department 
 and Secretary of State in the place of a Department 
 and Secretary of Foreign Affairs. There was no 
 navy not so much as a barge and of course 
 no Navy Department, or Secretary of the Navy. 
 That was to be created, and the Department was in- 
 stituted in the second year of the succeeding adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 In the interval, until the organization of the new de- 
 partments, the Secretaries of Foreign Affairs and of 
 War, of the confederation Congress, continued by 
 order of President Washington to execute the duties 
 of their respective offices. 
 
 During the first Congress also, the Judiciary Depart- 
 ment was organized by the establishment of a Supreme 
 Circuit, and District Courts. The Ordinance for the 
 government of the Northwestern Territory was adapt- 
 ed to the newly constituted Government, as was the 
 establishment of the Post Office. 
 
 In the erection of the Executive Departments a 
 question arose, and was debated with great earnestness 
 and pertinacity, in both houses of Congress, the de- 
 
78 
 
 cision upon which, in perfect* conformity with the spirit 
 of the Constitution, settled the character of that instru- 
 ment as it has continued to this day. The Constitution 
 had prescribed that the President should nominate, and 
 hy and with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
 should appoint, all the officers of the United States, 
 with the exception that Congress might by law vest 
 the appointment of such inferior officers as they should 
 think proper in the President alone, in the courts of 
 law, or in the heads of departments. The Constitu- 
 tion had also provided, that the President should com- 
 mission all the officers of the United States and that 
 the judges both of the supreme and inferior courts 
 should hold their offices during good behaviour. But 
 it had prescribed no term of duration to executive 
 offices, civil or military, nor how, nor by whom, nor for 
 what, they should be removable from office. The in- 
 stitution of the first Executive Department gave rise to 
 that question. After a long and able discussion, it was 
 ultimately settled, that by the investment of the exec- 
 utive power in the President, and the duty imposed 
 upon him to take care that the laws should be faithful- 
 ly executed, the discretionary power of removing all 
 subordinate executive offices must necessarily be vest- 
 ed in him ; and the law was accordingly so expressed. 
 It must be admitted that this, like all other discretion- 
 ary powers, is susceptible of great abuse but while 
 exercised as it always must be, under the powerful in- 
 fluence of public opinion, its abuse cannot be so per- 
 nicious to the welfare of the community, as would be 
 
79 
 
 a tenure of ministerial office, independent of the supe- 
 rior, responsible for its faithful execution. 
 
 Another, and perhaps a still more important charac- 
 ter was given by President Washington to the govern- 
 ment of the United States, in all their relations with 
 foreign powers, by the principle which he assumed, 
 and the example which he set to his successors, of re- 
 ferring the ministers from foreign powers, to the head 
 of the Department of State, for all direct negotiations 
 with which they might be charged by their govern- 
 ments. 
 
 The Count de Moustier happened at that time to be 
 the Minister of France to the United States. He had 
 been appointed by the unfortunate Louis XVI., in the 
 last days of his absolute power. A spark, emitted 
 from the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, had fallen into the powder-magazine of mon- 
 archy, and inexpressibly terrible was the explosion 
 about to ensue. Among the last evidences of the anti- 
 republican spirit of the Bourbon dynasty, was an effort 
 of this plenipotentiary minister to degrade the Chief 
 Magistrate of the newly constituted Republic to an 
 official level with himself, a minister of the second 
 rank, commissioned by an European king. Imme- 
 diately after the inauguration of President Washing- 
 ton, the Count de Moustier addressed a note directly to 
 him, requesting a personal interview. On receiving 
 for answer that the Secretary for Foreign Affairs was 
 the officer with whom his official communications 
 should still be held, he persisted in his application for 
 
80 
 
 a personal conference with .Jthe President, who uniting 
 firmness of purpose with undeviating courtesy of forms, 
 indulgently granted his request. He received the Count 
 in a private interview, and listened for an hour to 
 'an argument, fortified by a confidential private letter 
 which the royal envoy had the assurance to deliver to 
 him, in which, under the base pretension of a supposed 
 unfriendly disposition of the Secretary of Foreign Af- 
 fairs towards France, he urged the adoption of a prac- 
 tice of direct inter-communication between the Presi- 
 dent of the United States and himself, in all his diplo- 
 matic negotiations, without the intervention of any third 
 person whomsoever. 
 
 With a perfect preservation of patience and of good 
 humour, the President answered his reasoning and re- 
 ferred him again for his future official transactions to the 
 Secretary of Foreign Affairs, who, he assured him, en- 
 tertained no feelings towards France but such as would 
 render entire justice to her rights and her representative. 
 The Count de Moustier fell back into his proper station, 
 and very soon after was recalled by his master, and had 
 his place supplied by the representative of another 
 shade in the transition of France from an arbitrary 
 monarchy to a portentious and short-lived nominal de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 The pretension that the President of the United 
 States was to be considered by the ministers of foreign 
 nations, not as the chief magistrate of the country, but 
 as ranking as a minister of state, subordinate to the sov- 
 ereign in European governments, was not confined to the 
 
81 
 
 Count de Moustier. It was afterward reproduced in 
 still more offensive form, by the first minister from 
 France in her republican transformation. It was then 
 again repelled and finally withdrawn. Since then the 
 President of the United States, in their intercourse with 
 foreign nations represents them as their chief, and the 
 ministers of foreign powers negotiate with the Secreta- 
 ry of State under his direction, and instructions. 
 
 At the same time, President Washington fully under- 
 stood that by the investment of the executive power, he 
 was authorized to enter directly into negociation with 
 foreign nations, formally or informally, through the de- 
 partment of State, or by agents privately accredited by 
 himself at his discretion. The state of the public relations 
 of Great Britain was then such as rendered it proper for 
 him to resume the political intercourse with her govern- 
 ment, in the direct, personal, and informal, rather than 
 the regular official manner. Shortly after the conclu- 
 sion of the peace of independence, the confederation- 
 Congress had appointed a minister plenipotentiary to 
 Great Britain, and had authorized a treaty of commerce 
 on the most liberal terms, to be negotiated with her. 
 The minister had been graciously received ; but mutu- 
 al reproaches, too well founded on both sides, of a 
 failure to fulfil the stipulations of the treaty of peace, 
 had left a rankling of animosity on both sides. The 
 British government had declined to conclude a com 
 mercial treaty, while the engagements of the treaty of 
 peace remained unfulfilled ; and the impotence of the 
 
 confederation-Congress disabled them from the fulfil- 
 
 11 
 
82 
 
 mentof the stipulations on our part _ particularly with 
 regard to debts, the payment of which had been sus- 
 pended by the Revolutionary war. After a fruitless 
 m,ssion of three years, the minister of the United States 
 had returned home, and no minister from Great Britain 
 had been accredited to the Congress in return. Imme- 
 diately after the close of the first session of the first 
 constitutional Congress, during which the judicial depart- 
 ment of the government had been organized, and John 
 Jay, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to the preceding 
 Congress, appointed Chief Justice o f the United States* 
 and before Thomas Jefferson, appointed Secretary of' 
 State m his absence, had repaired to his post, President 
 Washzngton, on the 13th of October, 1789, wrote two 
 ters to Gouverneur Morris, then in France, but re- 
 cently before, a member of the Philadelphia Conven- 
 tion which had formed the Constitution, and at an earlier 
 ate, a member of the confederation-Conors One 
 of these letters was to serve him as a credential to hold 
 conferences with the cabinet ministry of Great Britain 
 and the other a letter of instructions upon the topics to 
 be discussed with them. 
 
 The glance of a moment at the relative position of 
 the two countries at that time, will disclose to an atten- 
 ive observer the peculiar propriety of the mode adopt- 
 ed by President Washington, and of the selection of 
 the agent for entering upon this negotiation. It will 
 >rve also to illustrate the wisdom of the extensive 
 grant of the executive power in the Constitution of the 
 Uwted States, to a single hand. The self-respect of 
 
the nation would have been humiliated in the eyes of 
 the world, by the public and formal appointment of a 
 second minister, after the return home of the first, with- 
 out the reciprocation of courtesy by the appointment of 
 a minister from Great Britain to the United States. 
 There was no diplomatic intercourse between the two 
 countries ; yet there were great interests involving the 
 peace between them, and urgently calling for adjust- 
 ment. The commercial intercourse between them was 
 very considerable ; but for want of a countervailing 
 power of regulation on our part, it was left at the mercy 
 of the orders of the British king in council, the predom- 
 inating spirit of which influenced by the loyalist refu- 
 gees of the Revolution, was envious, acrimonious, and 
 vindictive. The forts on the Canadian lakes, the keys 
 to our western territories, and the stimulants to savage 
 warfare, were withheld, in violation of the treaty of 
 peace ; while by the institution of the judicial courts of 
 the Union, the door was open for the recovery of British 
 debts, and the pretext for the detention of the posts was 
 removed. It was necessary to advise the British gov- 
 ernment of the change which had been effected in our na- 
 tional institutions, and of the duty of the newgovernment 
 to exact justice from foreign nations, while ready to dis- 
 pense it on the part of the nation to them. Yet, as peace 
 was of all external blessings, that of which our country at 
 that juncture most needed the continuance, it was a dic- 
 tate of prudence to take no hasty public step which 
 might commit the honour of the country and complicate 
 the entanglement from which she was to be extricated, 
 
84 
 
 Mr. Morris was a distinguished citizen of the United 
 States, already in Europe 'well known in England, 
 where he had relatives in the. royal service. He had 
 been an active member of the Convention which had 
 formed the Constitution a secret mission committed 
 to him would attract no premature public notice by any 
 personal movement on his part, and whatever the re- 
 sult of it might be, the government of the United 
 States itself would be uncommitted in the eyes of the 
 world, and free to pursue such further course, as jus- 
 tice might require, and policy might recommend. 
 
 Mr. Morris executed his trust with faithfulness and 
 ability. In personal conference with the Duke of 
 Leeds, then the British Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, and with William Pitt, first Lord of the Treas- 
 ury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by corres- 
 pondence with the former, he made known to the 
 British government the feelings, purposes, and expec- 
 tations of the newly organized government of the 
 United States with regard to Great Britain and he 
 ascertained the dispositions, the doubts and the reluc- 
 tances of the British cabinet toward the United States. 
 They still declined the negotiation of a treaty of com- 
 merce. They parried, by counter-complaint of the 
 non-execution of the treaty of peace, the demand for 
 the surrender of the western posts but they prom- 
 ised, with no small hesitation, some supercilious cour- 
 tesy and awkward apologies for delay, the appoint- 
 ment of a Minister to the United States,. 
 
 This negotiation occupied more than one yejir of 
 
83 
 
 time and in February, 1791, just before the expira- 
 tion of the first Constitutional Congress, President 
 Washington communicated to the Senate in secret ses- 
 sion the fact of its existence, and the correspondence 
 by which it had been conducted. In the Message 
 transmitting these documents to the Senate, he said : 
 "I have thought it proper to give you this information, 
 as it might at some time have influence on matters 
 under your consideration." 
 
 While the negotiation was in progress, a controversy 
 respecting the northeastern boundary of the United 
 States bordering upon the British provinces, then con- 
 fined to the question of what river had been intended 
 in the treaty of peace, by the name of the St. Croix, 
 was kindling a border war, and complicating the dif- 
 ficulties to be adjusted by negotiation. 
 
 In the summer of 1791, the promised Minister Plen- 
 ipotentiary from Great Britain to the United States, 
 was sent in the person of Mr. George Hammond, who 
 had been the secretary to David Hartley, in the nego- 
 tiation of the definitive treaty of peace in 1783. Mr. 
 Hammond however had only powers to negotiate, but 
 not to conclude to complain, but not to adjust to 
 receive propositions, but not to accept them. With 
 him a full discussion was had of all the causes of com- 
 plaint subsisting between the parties. In the mean- 
 time a change had come over the whole political sys- 
 tem of Europe. The principles proclaimed in the 
 Declaration of Independence, as at the foundation of 
 *U lawful government, bad been sapping the founda- 
 
tions of all the governments founded on the unlimited 
 sovereignty of force the absolute monarchy of France 
 was crumbling into ruin ; a wild and ferocious anarchy, 
 under the banners of unbridled Democracy was taking 
 its place, and between the furies of this frantic multi- 
 tude, and the agonies of immemorial despotism, a war 
 of desolation and destruction was sweeping over the 
 whole continent of Europe. In this war all the sym- 
 pathies of the American people were on the side of 
 France and of freedom, but the freedom of France 
 w T as not of the genuine breed. A phantom of more 
 than gigantic form had assumed the mask and the garb 
 of freedom, and substituted for the principles of the 
 Declaration of Independence, anarchy within and con- 
 quest without. The revolution of the whole world 
 was her war-cry, and the overthow of all established 
 governments her avowed purpose. 
 
 Under the impulses of this fiend, France had plunged 
 into w r ar with all Europe, and murdered her king, his 
 queen, his sister, and numberless of his subjects and 
 partisans, with or without the fonns of law, by the 
 butchery of mock tribunals, or the daggers of a blood- 
 thirsty rabble. In this death-struggle between invet- 
 erate abuse and hurly-burly innovation, it is perhaps 
 impossible even now to say which party had been the 
 first aggressor ; but France had been first invaded by 
 the combined forces of Austria and Prussia, and under 
 banners of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, had become 
 an armed nation to expel them from her borders. The 
 partialities of the American people still sympathized 
 
87 
 
 with France. They saw that her cause was the cause 
 of national independence. They believed her profes- 
 sions of liberty, equality, and fraternity ; and when the 
 same Convention which had declared France a repub- 
 lic, and deposed and put to death her king, declared 
 war against the kings of Great Britain and Spain, shock- 
 ed as they were at the merciless extermination of their 
 ancient great arid good ally, they still favoured at heart 
 the cause of France, especially when in conflict under 
 the three-coloured banners of liberty, equality, fra- 
 ternity, with their ancient common enemy of the Rev- 
 olutionary war, the British king, and with their more 
 recent, but scarcely less obnoxious foe, the king of Spain. 
 At the breaking out of this war, Washington and his 
 administration, and with them, the Constitution, and peace 
 and existence of the Union, were brought into a new, 
 critical, and most perilous position. From the very 
 day of his inauguration, notwithstanding his unparallel- 
 ed personal popularity, a great, active, and powerful 
 opposition to his ad ministration had arisen, consisting at 
 i Jmost universally of the party which had opposed 
 tin adoption of the Constitution itself then known by 
 the name of anti-federalists. The most plausible and 
 the most popular of all the objections to the Constitution, 
 had been the accumulation of power in the office of the 
 President. His exercise of those powers was watched 
 with a jealous and suspicious eye trifles lighter than 
 air in his personal deportment and his domestic estab- 
 lishment, were treasured up, and doled out in whispers 
 and surmises, that he was affecting the state, and adopt- 
 
 I 
 
83 
 
 ing the forms of a monarchy, and when this war be- 
 tween the new-born republic of France, and our old ty- 
 rant, George the Third, blazed out, the party opposed 
 to Washington's administration, seized upon it, to em- 
 barrass and counteract his policy, by arraying the pas- 
 sions of the people, their ardent love of liberty, the 
 generous feeling of their national gratitude, their still 
 rankling resentments against the beldame step-mother 
 Britain, and their soreness under the prevaricating 
 chicanery of Spain, at once in favour of France and 
 against Washington. 
 
 The treaty of alliance with France, of 6th February, 
 1778, had stipulated, on the part of the United States, 
 a guarantee to the king of France of the possessions of 
 the crown of France in America and one of the first in- 
 cidents of the war of republican France with Britain, 
 was a British expedition against the French colonies in 
 the West Indies. 
 
 By the laws of nations, the duty of the United States 
 in this war was neutrality and their rights were those 
 of neutrality. Their unquestionable policy and their 
 vital interest was also neutrality. But the maintenance 
 of the rights, depended upon the strict performance of 
 the duties of neutrality. 
 
 A grave question immediately presented itself, 
 whether the guarantee of the French possessions in 
 America to the king and crown of France in 1778, w r as 
 so binding upon the United States, as to require them 
 to make good that guarantee to the French republic 
 by joining her in the war against Great Britain. 
 
89 
 
 The neutrality of the United States was in the most 
 imminent danger. The war between France and Brit- 
 ain, and Spain and the Netherlands, was a maritime 
 war. In the spasms of the Revolutionary convulsion, the 
 new republic had sent to the United States an incendia- 
 ry minister, with a formal declaration, that they did not 
 claim the execution of the guarantee in the treaty of 
 1778, but stocked with commissions for a military 
 expedition against the Spanish territories on our west- 
 ern borders, and for privateers to be fitted out in our 
 ports, and to cruize against all the nations with which 
 France was at war. 
 
 All the daring enterprise, the unscrupulous ambition, 
 the rapacious avarice floating in the atmosphere of this 
 Union, were gathering to a head, and enlisting in this 
 cause of republican France. The commissions for the 
 military expedition against Louisiana, were distributed 
 with so little secresy, that the whole conspiracy was 
 soon detected, exposed, and defeated. But the priva- 
 teering commissions were accepted in many of our sea- 
 ports, and citizens of the United States sallied forth 
 from their harbours, under the shelter of neutrality, in 
 vessels, built, armed, equipped, and owned there, against 
 the defenceless commerce of friendly nations, and re- 
 turned in three days, laden with their spoils, under the 
 uniform of the French republic, her three-coloured 
 cockade, and her watchwords of liberty, equality, and fra- 
 ternity transformed into French citizens, by the plen- 
 ipotentiary diploma, and disposing of their plunder under 
 
 the usurped jurisdiction of a French republican consul. 
 
 12 
 
90 
 
 At this crisis Washington submitted to his confiden- 
 tial advisers, the heads of the Executive Departments, 
 a series of questions involving the permanent system 
 of policy, to be pursued for the preservation of the 
 peace, and the fulfilment of the duties of the nation in 
 this new and difficult position. The measure imme- 
 diately contemplated by him as urgently required, was 
 the issuing a proclamation declaring the neutrality of 
 the United States in the war, just kindled in Europe ; 
 but the obligation of the treaties with France, and par- 
 ticularly that of the guarantee, were specially involved 
 in the propriety and the particular purport of the proc- 
 lamation. On this occasion, a radical difference of opin- 
 ion equally dividing the four members of the adminis- 
 tration, not upon the expediency of the proclamation, 
 but upon the contingent obligation of the guarantee, 
 aggravated intensely the embarrassments and difficul- 
 ties which the temperance, the fortitude, and the good 
 fortune of Washington were destined to encounter and 
 to surmount. 
 
 The conduct of Great Britain, the leading party to 
 the war with republican France, served only to multi- 
 ply and to sharpen the obstructions with which his path 
 was beset, and the perplexities of his situation. In the 
 origin of the war, the first fountains of human society- 
 had been disturbed and poisoned. The French Con- 
 vention had issued a decree, stimulating the people of 
 all the countries around her to rebellion against their 
 own governments, with a promise of the support of 
 France. Thev had threatened an invasion of En- 
 
91 
 
 gland, in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity, 
 to fraternize with the people of the British Islands in 
 a revolt against their king ; and strange and incredible 
 as it may sound in your ears, there were elements 
 within the bosoms of the British islands, of no incon- 
 siderable magnitude, prepared to join and assist the thre at- 
 ened invader in this unhallowed purpose. A decree of 
 the National Convention had forbidden their armies to 
 make any prisoners in battle with their foes, or in other 
 words to give quarters to the vanquished in arms. 
 The mass of the British nation was exasperated to 
 madness ; and their government deliberately determined, 
 that such an enemy was not entitled to the ordinary 
 mitigations of war : that France had put herself out 
 of the pale of civilized nations, and that no commerce 
 of neutral nations with her was to be tolerated. Be- 
 sides and yet more unjustifiable than this, from the 
 very commencement of the war, the British govern- 
 ment had indulged their naval officers in the out- 
 rageous and atrocious practice of impressing men from 
 the vessels of the United States upon the high seas 
 claiming it against the principles of her own Constitu- 
 tion no less than against the principles of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, as a right with regard to her 
 own subjects, and leaving the question of fact, whether 
 the impressed seaman was or was not a British sub- 
 ject, to the irresponsible discretion or caprice of every 
 midshipman in her navy. The practice was not less 
 provoking, than the pretension was insolent and unjust. 
 The capture by a naval armament from Great Britain, 
 
92 
 
 of several French islands in 'the West Indies, gave oc- 
 casion to another conflict of belligerent pretensions and 
 neutral rights. During the peace that followed the 
 war of the American Revolution, France under the 
 usual maxims of European Colonial policy, had con- 
 fined the commerce of her American possessions to 
 herself. When the war came, her own merchant-ves- 
 sels were excluded by the British maritime supremacy 
 from the navigation of the ocean. The French is- 
 lands were then opened to the neutral commerce, and 
 hence it was that the French Executive Council for- 
 bore to claim the guarantee stipulated by the treaty of 
 1778 aware that the neutral commerce of the United 
 States would be more useful to the islands, than any 
 assistance that we could give for their defence against 
 Great Britain by war. Upon the opening of the is- 
 lands, numerous vessels of the United States crowded 
 into their ports, for the enjoyment not only of a profita- 
 ble direct trade, but to be freighted for the direct com- 
 merce between the Colonies and France herself. The 
 commanders of the British maritime expedition broke 
 up this trade, and captured every vessel engaged in it 
 upon which they could lay their hands, whether in 
 ports which surrendered to their arms, or upon the high 
 seas. 
 
 The temperature of the public mind in calm and 
 quiet times, is like the climate of the lofty table-lands 
 of the equator, a perpetual spring. Such are the 
 times in which we live, and were it not for the distant 
 vision of a Chimborazo with eternal sunshine over its 
 
93 
 
 head, and eternal frost upon its brow, or of a neigh- 
 bouring jEtna or Vesuvius bursting from time to time 
 with subterranean fires, and pouring down from their 
 summits floods of liquid lava, to spread ruin and de- 
 struction* over the vales below, elementary snows and 
 boiling water-courses would be objects scarcely within 
 the limits of human conception. At such times, ima- 
 gination in her wildest vagaries can scarcely conceive 
 the transformations of temper, the obliquities of intel- 
 lect, the perversions of moral principle effected by 
 junctures of high and general excitement. Many of 
 you, gentlemen, have known the Republican plenipo- 
 tentiary of whom I have here spoken, settled down 
 into a plain Republican fanner of your own state, of 
 placid humour, of peaceable demeanour, addicted to 
 profound contemplation, passing a long life in philo- 
 sophical retirement, devising ingenious mechanical in- 
 ventions, far from all the successive convulsions of his 
 native land, and closing a useful career as a citizen of 
 this his adopted country. Who of you could imagine, 
 that this was the same man, who at the period which I 
 am recalling to your memory, was a Phaeton, grasping 
 at the reins of the chariot of the Sun to set the world 
 on fire. Who could imagine, that coming with words 
 of liberty, equality, fraternity, of generous friendship 
 and disinterested benevolence upon his lips, he had 
 brought with him like Albaroni, a torch to set fire to 
 all the mines. His correspondence with the govern- 
 ment of Washington, is recorded upon the annals of 
 our country. Our time will admit but of a transient 
 
94 
 
 allusion to it. You remember the frank and dignified 
 candour with which he was received by Washington 
 himself; the warm-hearted enthusiasm with which, 
 as the representative of the new sister Republic, he 
 was welcomed by the people ; and the wanton, las- 
 civious courtship of the faction opposed to Washing- 
 ton congenial spirits to the cannibals, then in the name 
 of Democracy ruling in France blistering him up into 
 open defiance, and an appeal against Washington him- 
 self, TO THE PEOPLE. 
 
 His- recall was at length demanded. His violence 
 was turning the current of popular opinion here against 
 his country. The party which had despatched him 
 from France was annihilated. The heads of his pa- 
 trons had passed under the edge of the guillotine. 
 Their successors disavowed his conduct and recalled 
 him. In self-vindication he published his instructions, 
 disclosing the secrets both of monarchical and repub- 
 lican France, dampers to the affectionate gratitude of 
 the American people, and he renounced his country for 
 ever. 
 
 The party opposed to the administration of Wash- 
 ington, saw nothing in France but the republic of lib- 
 erty, equality, and fraternity. Like the mass of the 
 French people themselves, they followed with obse- 
 quious approbation every resolution by which an 
 armed detachment of Democracy from the Fauxbourg 
 Saint Antoine, swept away one set of rulers after 
 another, and smothered them in their own blood. The 
 Brissotine, the Dantonian, the Robespierrian factions 
 
95 
 
 crowded each other to the guillotine with the fury of 
 uncaged tigers, and the accession of a popular chief- 
 tain to the summit of power was the signal of his pro- 
 scription and murder by that national razor. At every 
 exhibition of this horrid scene, the Parisian rabble 
 shouted applause, and clapped their hands for joy and 
 every shout and every clapping of hands was re-echoed 
 from these western shores of the Atlantic, by the opposi- 
 tion to the administration of Washington. With this 
 wilfully blind devotion to France, was necessarily asso- 
 ciated, a bitter and malignant hatred of Britain; in- 
 flamed by the wrongs which she was inflicting upon 
 our commerce and seamen, and ulcerated by the tone 
 of her negotiator here in the discussion of the long 
 standing mutual complaints, which he had yet not been 
 authorized by his government to compromise or to 
 settle. 
 
 In the spring of the year 1794, the sixth year of 
 Washington's administration, this congregating mass of 
 evil humours was drawing to a head. The national 
 feeling against Britain was irritated to the highest 
 pitch of excitement. Resolutions looking and tending 
 directly to war, were introduced and pending in the 
 House of Representatives of the United States, and 
 that war in all human probability would have been 
 fatal to the fame of Washington, and to the indepen- 
 dence of the Union and the freedom of his country. 
 At that moment he fixed his eyes, with calm and con- 
 siderate firmness at once upon James M.mroe, as a 
 messenger of peace, of conciliation, and of friendship 
 
96 
 
 to the Republic of France ; and upon John Jay, as an 
 envoy extraordinary, bearer of the same disposition, 
 and interpreter of the same spirit to Great Britain. 
 They were despatched at the same time with in- 
 structions concerted in one system, and diversified to 
 meet the exigencies of the two respective missions. 
 
 Mr. Monroe was at that time a member of the Sen- 
 ate of the United States, from Virginia a soldier of 
 the Revolution, in the service of which he had passed 
 from youth to manhood with distinguished honour. 
 Personally attached to Washington, he had been a 
 moderate opponent to the adoption of the Constitution, 
 and although adverse to some of the leading measures 
 of the administration, and partially favourable to the 
 cause of France, the confidence of Washington in his 
 abilities and in his personal integrity made his political 
 propensities rather a recommendation, than an objection 
 to his appointment. 
 
 Mr. Jay was then Chief Justice of the United States. 
 And how shall I dare to speak to YOU of a native of 
 your own state, and one of the brightest ornaments not 
 only of your state, but of his country, and of human 
 nature. At the dawn of manhood he had been one of 
 the delegates from the people of New York, at the first 
 continental Congress of 1774. In the course of the 
 Revolutionary War, he had been successively Presi- 
 dent of Congress, one of their ministers in Europe 
 one of the negotiators of the preliminary and definitive 
 treaties of peace, and Secretary of Foreign Affairs to 
 the Confederation Congress, till the transition to the 
 
97 
 
 constitutional government, and at the organization of the 
 judicial tribunals of the Union, was placed with the unan- 
 imous sanction of the public voice, at their head. With 
 this thickening crowd of honours gathering around him 
 as he trod the path of life, he possessed with a perfectly 
 self-controlled ambition, a fervently pious, meek and qui- 
 et, but firm and determined spirit. As one of the authors 
 of the Federalist, and by official and personal influence as 
 Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and as a most respected citi- 
 zen of New York, he had contributed essentially to the 
 adoption of the Constitution : and his administration of 
 the highly responsible office of chief justice, had given 
 universal satisfaction to the friends of Washington's ad- 
 ministration, and to all who desired the practical opera- 
 tion of the Constitution conformably to the spirit in 
 which it had been ordained by the people. He had no 
 European partialities, and least of all for England ; but 
 he was for dispensing equal justice to all mankind, and 
 he felt the necessity of peace for the stability of the Con- 
 stitution, and the preservation of the Union. 
 
 His negotiation terminated in a treaty, the ratification 
 of which brought on the severest trial, which the char- 
 acter of Washington and the fortunes of our nation 
 have ever passed through. No period of the war of 
 independence, no other emergency of our history since 
 its close, not even the ordeal of establishing the Consti- 
 tution of the United States itself, has convulsed to its 
 inmost fibres, the political association of the North 
 American people, with such excruciating agonies as 
 
 the consummation and fulfilment of this great national 
 
 13 
 
98 
 
 composition of the conflicting rights, interests and pre- 
 tensions of our country and of Great Britain. The par- 
 ty strife in which it originated and to which it gave 
 birth is not yet appeased. From this trial, Washington 
 himself, his fame, the peace, union and prosperity of 
 his country, have issued triumphant and secure. But 
 it prepared the way for the reversal of some of the prin- 
 ciples of his administration, and for the introduction of 
 another and widely different system six years after, in 
 the person of Thomas Jefferson, 
 
 The treaty concluded by Mr. Jay, with the exception 
 of one article, which the British government readily con- 
 sented to relinquish, was ratified. The peace, the 
 union, the prosperity, the freedom of the nation, were 
 secured; but revolutionary France, and the opposition 
 to Washington's administration, were defeated, discon- 
 certed, disabled, but not subdued. The rabble govern- 
 ment of the fauxbourg St. Antoine was passing away. 
 The atheism of the strumpet goddess of reason, had al- 
 ready yielded to a solemn decree of the national Con- 
 vention, proposed by Robespierre himself, in the name 
 of the people of France, acknowledging the existence 
 of a God ! a worm of the dust, recognising as a co-ordi- 
 nate power the Creator of all worlds. The counter 
 revolution had advanced a step further. A constitu 
 tional republic, with a legislature in two branches, and t 
 plural executive, had succeeded to the despotism of a 
 single assembly, with a jacobin club executive. France 
 had now a five-headed executive Directory, and a new 
 union of church and state, with a new theo-philanthropic 
 
99 
 
 religion, halfway between simple Deism and Chris- 
 tianity. And republican France had now another ele- 
 ment in her composition. A youthful soldier by the 
 name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who by the election of 
 the whole people of France, with the help of his holi- 
 ness the Pope, and the iron crown of Lombardy, was 
 destined at no distant day to restore the Christian cal- 
 endar and Sabbath for the godless decimal division of 
 time of Fabre d'Eglantine, and to ascend a double 
 carpeted throne of emperor and king. Through all 
 these varying phases of the French Revolution, the 
 party opposed to Washington's administration still clung 
 in affection and in policy to France, and when by the 
 election of Mr. Jefferson as President of the United 
 States, that party came into power, it was precisely the 
 moment when Napoleon at the head of his brave gren- 
 adiers had expelled the two legislative councils from 
 their halls, had turned out the theo-philanthropic Direc- 
 tory from their palace ; and under the very republican 
 name of first of three consuls, was marching with fixed 
 eye and steady step to the consulate for life, to the he~ 
 reditary imperial throne, and to the kingdom of the iron 
 crown. To all those transmutations the pure republi- 
 canism of Jefferson was to accommodate itself without 
 blench and without discarding his partiality for France.. 
 Nor was it to fail of its reward, in the acquisition of 
 Louisiana a measure, not embraced or foreseen by the 
 administration of Washington, accomplished by a fla- 
 grant violation of the Constitution, but sanctioned by 
 the acquiescence of the people, and if not eventually 
 
100 
 
 leading to the dissolution of the Union, shaped by the 
 healing and beneficent hand of Providence from a 
 portentous evil into a national blessing. 
 
 The consequences of that revolution in our Union 
 (for it was nothing less) are not yet fully developed 
 far otherwise. But whether for weal or wo for the 
 permanent aggrandizement, or the final ruin of our con- 
 federated nation, it belongs to the memory of Jefferson, 
 and not to that of Washington or his administration. 
 Hitherto it has exhibited its fairest side. It has enlar- 
 ged our borders and given us the whole valley of the 
 Mississippi. The pernicious and corrupting example 
 of an undissembled admitted prostration of the Con- 
 stitution the more concealed, but not less real dis- 
 placement of the internal sectional balance of power 
 have not yet borne their fruits. Upon the open- 
 ing of Pandora's box, Hope was left behind. Hith- 
 erto no seed of deadly aconite has generated into 
 pestilential poison. Let us rejoice at the past and hope 
 for the future. But in leaving to the judgment of after- 
 time, the ultimate decision of that which we see as yet 
 but in part, and through a glass darkly, let us look back 
 to the principles of Washington and his administration, 
 and to the unbroken faith of the Constitution, for the 
 source of that prosperity which no variation of seasons 
 can wither, and that happiness which no reverse of for- 
 tune can turn into bitter disappointment. 
 
 The ratification of Mr. Jay's treaty was the establish- 
 ment of justice in our national intercourse with Great 
 Britain. But it was deeply resented by all the parties 
 

 101 
 
 which successively wielded the power of France. Vic- 
 torious in the midst of all their internal convulsions 
 over all the continent of Europe, they were unable 
 to cope with the naval power of Britain upon the sea. 
 Although Mr. Jay's treaty had expressly reserved 
 all the obligations of the United States in previ- 
 ously existing treaties with " other nations ; France 
 complained, that it had conceded the long-contested 
 principle of protecting the cargo of an enemy with 
 the flag of the friend that it had enlarged the list of 
 articles of contraband ; and even while claiming the ex- 
 emption of provisions from that list, had by stipulating 
 the payment for them when taken, admitted by impli- 
 cation the right of taking them. A long and irritating 
 discussion of these complaints ensued between the 
 American Secretary of State, and the successive Plen- 
 ipotentiaries of France, and between the French Min- 
 isters of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Monroe. The oppo- 
 sition to Washington's administration, strengthened by 
 the unpopularity of Mr. Jay's treaty, had acquired an 
 ascendancy in the House of Representatives ; counte- 
 nanced and justified every reproach of France ; and 
 made a persevering and desperate effort to refuse the 
 means and the supplies for carrying the treaty into ex- 
 ecution, even after it had been ratified. 
 
 After a long and doubtful struggle, in the course of 
 which the documents of the negotiation, called for by 
 the House of Representatives, were refused by Wash- 
 ington, the House by a bare majority voted the sup- 
 plies. The treaty was carried faithfully into execu- 
 
102 
 
 tion, and justice was established in the relations be- 
 tween the United States and Great Britain. 
 
 The last act of the confederation Congress had been 
 to refer over to the new government the negotiations 
 with Spain, especially for the free navigation of the 
 Mississippi. These were immediately taken up, and 
 transferred from the seat of government of the United 
 States to Spain. Two commissioners were appointed 
 to negotiate with the Spanish government at Madrid, 
 who prepared the way for the treaty of San Lorenzo, 
 concluded on the 27th of October, 1795, by Thomas 
 Pinckney, Minister Plenipotentiary from the United 
 States, and the Prince of the Peace, then the Minister 
 of Spain for Foreign Affairs. This treaty secured to 
 the people of the United States, the free navigation of 
 the Mississippi, and a port of deposite at New Orleans 
 and politically considered as a part of the comprehen- 
 sive system of Washington's policy, was at once a se- 
 quel to the treaty of 19th November, with Great Brit- 
 ain, and a precursor to the treaty for the acquisition of 
 Louisiana with France. 
 
 In the accomplishment of these objects, the princi- 
 pal agent of the nation had been the Executive power, 
 vested in Washington as President of the United 
 States. But the justice for the establishment of which 
 the Constitution of the United States had been ordain- 
 ed, was required at home as well as abroad, and for 
 this it was the peculiar province of the Legislature to 
 provide. 
 
 The first attention due from that body was to the 
 
103 
 
 public creditors of the country, and the first measure 
 to be adopted was the raising of a revenue to satisfy 
 their righteous claims. On the 8th of April, imme- 
 diately after the organization of the two Houses, and 
 before the President of the United States had been 
 notified of his election, Mr. Madison introduced into 
 the committee of the whole House of Representatives a 
 proposition for levying duties of impost. The re- 
 marks with which he submitted this proposal, so ex- 
 plicitly indicative of this purpose of establishing jus- 
 tice, that I cannot forbear to repeat the first sentences 
 of them in his own words : 
 
 " I take the liberty, Mr. Chairman," said he, " at this 
 early stage of the business, to introduce to the com- 
 mittee a subject which appears to me to be of the great- 
 est magnitude ; a subject, Sir, that requires our first at- 
 tention, and our united exertions. 
 
 " No gentleman here can be unacquainted with the 
 numerous claims upon our justice; nor with the impo- 
 tency which prevented the late Congress of the United 
 States, from carrying into effect the dictates of grati- 
 tude and policy. 
 
 " The Union by the establishment of a more effect- 
 ive government, having recovered from the state of im- 
 becility that heretofore prevented a performance of its 
 duty, ought in its first act to revive those principles of 
 honour and honesty, that have too long lain dormant. 
 
 "The deficiency in our treasury has been too notorious 
 to make it necessary for me to animadvert upon that 
 subject. Let us content ourselves with endeavouring 
 
104 
 
 to remedy the evil. To do this, a national revenue 
 must be obtained ; but the system must be such a one, 
 that, while it secures the object of revenue, it shall not 
 be oppressive to our constituents. Happy it is for us 
 that such a system is within our power ; for I appre- 
 hend, that both these objects may be obtained from an 
 impost on articles imported into the United States." 
 
 And thus was laid the foundation of the revenues of 
 the Union ; and with them the means of paying their 
 debts and of providing for their common defence and 
 general welfare. The act of Congress framed upon 
 this proposal, received the sanction of Washington on 
 the 4th of July, in the first year of his administration. 
 It stands the second on the statute book of the United 
 States, immediately after that which binds all the officers 
 of the Union to the support of the Constitution, by the 
 solemnities of an appeal to God, and declares in a brief 
 preamble, the necessity of its enactment, " for the sup- 
 port of government, for the discharge of the debts of 
 the United States, and the encouragement and protec- 
 tion of manufactures." 
 
 With the act for laying duties of impost, there was 
 associated another, imposing duties of tonnage on 
 ships, in which to encourage the shipping and ship- 
 building interest, a double discrimination was made be- 
 tween ships built in the United States and belonging 
 to their citizens, ships built in the United States, be- 
 longing to foreigners, and ships foreign built and 
 owned. The duty upon the first of these classes being 
 six, on the second thirty, and on the third fifty cents a 
 
105 
 
 ton. The same discriminating principle favourable to 
 the navigation of the United States, was observed in 
 every part of the Act for levying duties of impost. 
 
 An Act for regulating the collection of these duties, 
 with the establishment of ports of entry and delivery, 
 and for the appointment of officers of the customs through- 
 out the United States : an Act for the establishment 
 and support of light-houses, beacons, buoys, and pub- 
 lic piers ; and an Act for regulating the coasting-trade, 
 completed the system for raising a revenue. 
 
 Thus the organization of the government, conforma- 
 bly to the new constitution, and to give it practical 
 operation, was effected at the first session of the first 
 Constitutional Congress, between the 4th of March, 
 and the 29th of September, 1789. A comprehensive 
 and efficient system of revenue a graduation of judi- 
 cial tribunals, inferior and supreme the Departments 
 of State, of the Treasury, and of War a temporary 
 establishment of the Post Office, provisions for the ne- 
 gotiation of treaties with the Indian tribes ; for the 
 adaptation to the new order of things, of the ordinance 
 for the government of the northwestern Territory, and 
 of the shadow of a military establishment then exist- 
 ing ; for fixing the compensation of the President and 
 Vice President, the members of Congress, and of all 
 the officers of the United States, judicial and execu- 
 tive and for the payment of invalid pensions, were 
 all effected within that time. Twelve Amendments to 
 the Constitution, to serve as a substitute for the omis- 
 sion of a Declaration of Rights, were agreed to by a 
 14 
 
106 
 
 majority of two thirds of tbe members present of both 
 Houses, and transmitted to the Legislatures of the sev- 
 eral states ten of those Amendments were adopted 
 by three fourths of the state Legislatures, and became 
 parts of the Constitution only two other Amendments 
 have since obtained the same sanction. An Act of ap- 
 propriation for the service of the year 1789, amounting 
 to six hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars, with 
 twenty thousand more for negotiating Indian treaties, 
 defrayed all the expenses of the year; and if com- 
 pared with the thirty-six millions and upward, appro- 
 priated at the session of Congress recently expired, for 
 the service of the year 1839, may give a pregnant ex- 
 emplification in the science of political economy, of the 
 contrast between the day of small things, and the pres- 
 ent : an inversion of the microscope might present a 
 comparison between the results of the former and the 
 latter appropriations, not so much to the advantage of 
 the present day. 
 
 But at the close of the first session, there was yet 
 much to be done for the establishment of justice at 
 home and abroad. On the 29th of September, 1789, 
 Congress adjourned, to meet again on the 4th of Jan- 
 uary, 1790. That second session continued until the 
 12th of August of that year. The institution of the 
 Departments of State and of the Treasury, were 
 among the latest acts of the first session, and on the 
 llth of September, Alexander Hamilton had been ap- 
 pointed Secretary of the Treasury ; and on the 26th of 
 the same month, Thomas Jefferson was appointed Sec- 
 
107 
 
 retary of State. Henry Knox, the Secretary of War 
 to the confederation Congress when it expired, was re- 
 appointed to the same office, adapted to the new Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 The Secretaries of State and of the Treasury, both 
 possessing minds of the highest order of intellect ; 
 both animated with a lofty spirit of patriotism, both 
 distinguished for pre-eminent services in the Revolu- 
 tion Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence Hamilton, almost entitled to be called 
 jointly with Madison, the author of the Constitution 
 itself, both spurred to the rowels by rival and antag- 
 onist ambition, were the representatives and leading 
 champions of two widely different theories of govern- 
 ment. The Constitution itself was not altogether sat- 
 isfactory to either of those theories. Jefferson, bred 
 from childhood to the search and contemplation of ab- 
 stract rights, dwelling with a sort of parental partiality 
 upon the self-evident truths of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, and heated by recent communion with the 
 popular leaders and doctrines of revolutionary France, 
 in the convulsive struggles to demolish her monarchy, 
 had disapproved the Constitution for its supposed ten- 
 dency to monarchy, and for its omission of a Declara- 
 tion of Rights, and finally acquiesced in its adoption 
 upon a promise of amendments. Hamilton, prompted 
 by a natural temper aspiring to military renown nur- 
 tured to a spirit of subordination by distinguished mil- 
 itary service in the Revolutionary War, and disgusted 
 with the dishonest imbecility of the confederacy of 
 
108 
 
 sovereign states, of which he, had suffered the mortify- 
 ing experience, had inclined to a government higher 
 toned than that of the Constitution, to which he had 
 however cheerfully acceded and which he had most ably 
 advocated as the principal author of the Federalist, and 
 in the state Convention of New York. But the whole 
 drift and scope of his papers in the Federalist was direct- 
 ed to sustain the position, that a government at least as 
 energetic as that provided by the Constitution, was indis- 
 pensable to the salvation of the Union the inference 
 is clearly deducible from this form of expression, and 
 from the tenor of all his argument, that he believed a 
 still stronger government necessary. His opinions 
 thus inclined to the doctrine of implied powers ; and 
 to a liberal construction of all the grants of power in 
 the Constitution. These prepossessions, so discordant 
 in themselves, and fortified on both sides with so much 
 genius and talent, soon manifested themselves in the 
 cabinet councils, with so much vehemence and perti- 
 nacity, as made it impossible for Washington, as he 
 designed, to hold an even balance between them. 
 
 On the 21st of September, 1789, upon the report of 
 a committee on a memorial and petition of certain of 
 the public creditors in the state of Pennsylvania, two 
 Resolutions were adopted by the House of Representa- 
 tives, without debate or opposition. 
 
 1. That this house consider an adequate provision for 
 the support of public credit, as a matter of high im- 
 portance to the national honour and prosperity. 
 
 2. That the Secretary of the Treasury be directed to 
 
109 
 
 prepare a plan for that purpose, and to report the 
 
 same to the House at its next meeting. 
 
 Accordingly on the 14th of January, 1790, a plan 
 for the support of public credit was reported by Mr. 
 Hamilton to the House, and was followed by others 
 proposing the establishment of a national bank and a 
 mint ; and upon manufactures, with a review of the 
 operation of the revenue, and collection and navigation 
 Acts of the preceding session all reports of consum- 
 mate ability, and proposing measures for the restoration 
 of the public credit, the funding of the public debt, and 
 the management of the revenue, which were adopted 
 by Congress almost without alteration, and constituted 
 altogether a system for the fulfilment of the nation's 
 obligations, and the final discharge of the debt of the 
 Revolution, which has been carried into complete ex- 
 ecution, and immortalized the name of Hamilton, as a 
 statesman of high and permanent reputation, and 
 among the first financiers of his age. 
 
 But in the consummation of these plans, questions 
 of great difficulty, not only in politics but in morals, 
 and questions not less controvertible of constitutional 
 power, were necessarily involved. It is deeply to be 
 lamented that the complete success of Mr. Hamilton's 
 plans ; the restoration through them of the honour of 
 the country, and the discharge to the last dollar of her 
 debt, have not to this day definitively settled all these 
 questions. In the long- protracted controversies which 
 grew out of Mr. Hamilton's funding system, the efforts 
 to discriminate between the public creditors of differ- 
 
110 
 
 ent classes, the violent opposition to the assumption of 
 the state debts, and the strain of strict construction, 
 denying the power of Congress to establish a national 
 bank, by the same party which afterward by Acts of 
 Congress, purchased a foreign realm, with its people, 
 governed them for years with the rod of Spanish colo- 
 nial despotism, parcelled the land out in states, and 
 admitted them all to the Union, were all as I believed 
 morally and politically wrong. The discrimination be- 
 tween the public creditors, and the assumption of the 
 state debts, were questions which once settled could 
 not again recur ; but the power of Congress to estab- 
 lish a bank as a regulation of commerce, and append- 
 age to the power of borrowing money and regulating its 
 value, an instrument for the management of the re- 
 verses and for effecting the receipts and expenditures 
 of the nation, has unfortunately become a foot-ball of 
 contention between parties, and mingling itself with the 
 baneful spirit of unlimited separate state sovereignty ^ 
 even now hangs as a dark cloud over the future destiny 
 of the Union. That cloud will pass away. The advice 
 of empirics, administering the bane for the antidote, will 
 give way to the surgery of sober reason; and exemption 
 from debt, and superfluity of revenue, shall no longer 
 by the financiering economy of the executive head, 
 be felt as a public calamity. 
 
 The establishment of the funding system of Mr. Ham- 
 ilton, and especially the incorporation of the bank, oper- 
 ated like enchantment for the restoration of the public 
 credit ; repaired the ruined fortunes of the public cred- 
 
Ill 
 
 itors, and was equivalent to the creation of many mil- 
 lions of capital, available for the encouragement of in- 
 dustry and the active exertions of enterprise. His repu- 
 tation rose proportionally in the public estimation. But 
 his principles thus developed brought him in the cabi- 
 net of Washington, immediately into conflict with those 
 of the Secretary of State, and in the house of represent- 
 atives, with those of Mr. Madison,his late friend and as- 
 sociate in the composition of the Federalist, and in framing 
 and erecting the admirable fabric of the Constitution. 
 Mr. Madison was the intimate, confidential, and devoted 
 friend of Mr. Jefferson, and the mutual influence of 
 these two mighty minds upon each other, is a phenom- 
 enon, like the invisible and mysterious movements of 
 the magnet in the physical world, and in which the sa- 
 gacity of the future historian may discover the solution 
 of much of our national history not otherwise easily ac- 
 countable. 
 
 The system of strict construction of state rights, and 
 of federative preponderance in the councils of the na- 
 tion, become thus substitutes for the opposition to the 
 Constitution itself, and elements of vehement opposition 
 to the administration of Washington, of which the fund- 
 ing system thenceforward formed a vital part. At the 
 head of this opposition Mr. Jefferson was in the cabinet, 
 and Mr. Madison in the house of representatives. 
 
 This opposition soon assumed the shape of a rival 
 system of administration, preparing for the advancement 
 of Mr. Jefferson to the succession of the Presidency, and 
 thoroughly organized to the accomplishment of that 
 
112 
 
 purpose. It was conducted with more address, with 
 more constant watchfulness of the fluctuations of public 
 opinion, and more pliable self-accommodation to them 
 than the administration itself. It began with a studious 
 and cautious preservation of deference to the character 
 and reputation of Washington himself, never wholly aban- 
 doned by Mr. Jefferson, always retained by Mr. Madison, 
 but soon exchanged by some of their partisans in Congress 
 for hostility ill-disguised, and by many of the public jour- 
 nals and popular meetings, for the most furious assaults 
 upon his reputation, and the most violent denuncia- 
 tions, not only of his policy, but of his personal char- 
 acter. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson was in the meantime fortifying his own 
 reputation, and raising himself in the estimation of his 
 countrymen, by a series of reports to the President, and 
 to both houses of Congress, upon weights and meas- 
 ures, upon the fisheries, upon the commerce of the 
 Mediterranean sea, upon the commercial intercourse 
 with the European nations, and afterward by a corres- 
 pondence with the ministers of Britain, and of France and 
 of Spain, with an exhibition of genius, of learning, and 
 of transcendant talent, certainly not inferior, perhaps 
 surpassing that of Hamilton himself. The two sys- 
 tems, however, were so radically incompatible with 
 each other, that Washington was, after many painful 
 efforts to reconcile them together, compelled reluctantly 
 to choose between them. He decided in the main for 
 that of Hamilton, and soon after the unanimous re-elec- 
 tion of Washington to the Presidency, Mr. Jefferson re- 
 
113 
 
 tired from the administration, to Monticello, and osten- 
 sibly to private life. 
 
 Within a year afterward, Hamilton also retired, as did 
 Washington himself at the close of his presidential term. 
 He declined a second re-election. The opposition to 
 his administration, under the auspices of Mr. Jefferson, 
 had acquired a head, which in the course of four years 
 more, might have broken it down, as it was broken 
 down in the hands of his successor. 
 
 When Solon, by the appointment of the people of 
 Athens, had formed, and prevailed upon them to adopt 
 a code of fundamental laws, the best that they would 
 bear, he went into voluntary banishment for ten years, 
 to save his system from the batteries of rival statesmen 
 working upon popular passions and prejudices excited 
 against his person. In eight years of a turbulent and 
 tempestuous administration, Washington had settled up- 
 on firm foundations the practical execution of the Con- 
 stitution of the United States. In the midst of the most 
 appalling obstacles, through the bitterest internal dissen- 
 sions, and the most formidable combinations of foreign 
 antipathies and cabals, he had subdued all opposition to 
 the Constitution itself; had averted all dangers of 
 European war; had redeemed the captive children of 
 his country from Algiers; had reduced by chastisement 
 and conciliated by kindness, the most hostile of the In- 
 dian tribes ; had restored the credit of the nation, and 
 redeemed their reputation of fidelity to the performance 
 of their obligations ; had provided for the total extin- 
 guishment of the public debt ; had settled the Union 
 
 15 
 
114 
 
 upon the immovable foundation of principle, and had 
 drawn around his head for the admiration and emula- 
 tion of after times, a brighter blaze of glory than had 
 ever encircled the brows of hero or statesman, patriot 
 
 or sage. 
 
 The administration of Washington fixed the charac- 
 ter of the Constitution of the United States, as a prac- 
 tical system of government, which it retains to this 
 day. Upon his retirement, its great antagonist, Mr. 
 Jefferson, came into the government again, as Vice 
 President of the United States, and four years after, 
 succeeded to the Presidency itself. But the funding 
 system and the bank were established. The peace 
 with both the great belligerant powers of Europe was 
 secured. The disuniting doctrines of unlimited sep- 
 arate state sovereignty were laid aside. Louisiana, by 
 a stretch of power in Congress, far beyond the highest 
 tone of Hamilton, was annexed to the Union and 
 although dry-docks, and gun-boats, and embargoes, and 
 commercial restrictions, still refused the protection of 
 the national arm to commerce, and although an over- 
 weening love of peace, and a reliance upon reason as 
 a weapon of defence against foreign aggression, even- 
 tuated in a disastrous though glorious war with the 
 gigantic power of Britain, the Constitution as construed 
 by Washington, still proved an effective government 
 for the country. 
 
 And such it has still proved, through every succes- 
 sive change of administration it has undergone. Of 
 these, it becomes not me to speak in detail. Nor were 
 
f!5 
 
 it possible, without too great a trespass upon your time. 
 The example of Washington, of retiring from the 
 Presidency after a double term of four years, was fol- 
 lowed by Mr. Jefferson, against the urgent solicitations 
 of several state Legislatures. This second example of 
 voluntary self-chastened ambition, by the decided ap- 
 probation of public opinion, has been held obligatory 
 upon their successors, and has become a tacit subsi 
 diary Constitutional law. If not entirely satisfactory 
 to the nation, it is rather by its admitting one re-elec- 
 tion, than by its interdicting a second. Every change 
 of a President of the United States, has exhibited 
 some variety of policy from that of his predecessor. 
 In more than one case, the change has extended to po- 
 litical and even to moral principle ; but the policy of 
 the country has been fashioned far more by the in- 
 fluences of public opinion, and the prevailing humours 
 in the two Houses of Congress, than by the judgment, 
 the will, or the principles of the President of the 
 United States. The President himself is no more than 
 a representative of public opinion at the time of his 
 election ; and as public opinion is subject to great and 
 frequent fluctuations, he must accommodate his policy 
 to them ; or the people will speedily give him a succes- 
 sor ; or either House of Congress will effectually con- 
 trol his power. It is thus, and in no other sense that 
 the Constitution of the United States is democratic 
 for the government of our country, instead of a Dem- 
 ocracy the most simple, is the most complicated gov- 
 ernment on the face of the globe. From the immense 
 
116 
 
 extent of our territory, the difference of manners, hab- 
 its, opinions, and above all, the clashing interests of the 
 North, South, East, and West, public opinion formed by 
 the combination of numerous aggregates, becomes it- 
 self a problem of compound arithmetic, which nothing 
 but the result of the popular elections can solve. 
 
 It has been my purpose, Fellow-Citizens, in this dis- 
 course to show : 
 
 1. That this Union was formed by a spontaneous 
 movement of the people of thirteen English Colonies ; 
 all subjects of the King of Great Britain bound to 
 him in allegiance, and to the British empire as their 
 country. That the first object of this Union, was 
 united resistance against oppression, and to obtain 
 from the government of their country redress of their 
 wrongs. 
 
 2. That failing in this object, their petitions having 
 been spurned, and the oppressions of which they com- 
 plained, aggravated beyond endurance, their Delegates 
 in Congress, in their name and by their authority, issued 
 the Declaration of Independence proclaiming them 
 to the world as one people, absolving them from their 
 ties and oaths of allegiance to their king and country 
 renouncing that country ; declaring the UNITED Col- 
 onies, Independent States, and announcing that this 
 ONE PEOPLE of thirteen united independent states, 
 by that act, assumed among the powers of the earth, 
 that separate and equal station to which the laws of 
 nature and of nature's God entitled them. 
 
 3. That in Justification of themselves for this act of 
 
117 
 
 transcendent power, they proclaimed the principles upon 
 which they held all lawful government upon earth to be 
 founded which principles were, the natural, unaliena- 
 ble, imprescriptible rights of man, specifying among 
 them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that 
 the institution of government is to secure to men in so- 
 ciety the possession of those rights : that the institution, 
 dissolution, and reinstitution of government, belong 
 exclusively to THE PEOPLE under amoral respon- 
 sibility to the Supreme Ruler of the universe ; and that 
 all the just powers of government are derived from the 
 consent of the governed. 
 
 4. That under this proclamation of principles, the dis- 
 solution of allegiance to the British king, and the com- 
 patriot connection with the people of the British empire, 
 were accomplished ; and the one people of the United 
 States of America, became one separate sovereign inde- 
 pendent power, assuming an equal station among the 
 nations of the earth. 
 
 5. That this one people did not immediately institute 
 a government for themselves. But instead of it, their 
 delegates in Congress, by authority from their separate 
 state legislatures, without voice or consultation of the 
 people, instituted a mere confederacy. 
 
 6. That this confederacy totally departed from the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence, and sub- 
 stituted instead of the constituent power of the people, 
 an assumed sovereignty of each separate state, as the 
 source of all its authority. 
 
 7. That as a primitive source of power, this separate 
 
118 
 
 state sovereignty, was not only a departure from the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence, but di- 
 rectly contrary to, and utterly incompatible with them. 
 
 8. That the tree was made known by its fruits. That 
 after five years wasted in its preparation, the confed- 
 eracy dragged out a miserable existence of eight years 
 more, and expired like a candle in the socket, having 
 brought the union itself to the verge of dissolution. 
 
 9. That the Constitution of the United States was a 
 return to the principles of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, and the exclusive constituent power of the people. 
 That it was the work of the ONE PEOPLE of the 
 United States ; and that those United States, though 
 doubled in numbers, still constitute as a nation, but ONE 
 PEOPLE. 
 
 10. That this Constitution, making due allowance for 
 the imperfections and errors incident to all human 
 affairs, has under all the vicissitudes and changes of 
 war and peace, been administered upon those same 
 principles, during a career of fifty years. 
 
 11. That its fruits have been, still making allowance 
 for human imperfection, a more perfect union, establish- 
 ed justice, domestic tranquility, provision for the com- 
 mon defence, promotion of the general welfare, and the 
 enjoyment of the blessings of liberty by the constituent 
 people, and their posterity to the present day. 
 
 And now the future is all before us, and Providence 
 our guide. 
 
 When the children of Israel, after forty years of wan- 
 derings in the wilderness, were about to enter upon 
 
119 
 
 the promised land, their leader, Moses, who was not per- 
 mitted to cross the Jordan with them, just before his re- 
 moval from among them, commanded that when the 
 Lord their God should have brought them into the land, 
 they should put the curse upon Mount Ebal, and the 
 blessing upon Mount Gerizim. This injunction was 
 faithfully fulfilled by his successor Joshua. Immedi- 
 ately after they had taken possession of the land, Joshua 
 built an altar to the Lord, of whole stones, upon Mount 
 Ebal. And there he wrote upon the stones a copy of 
 the law of Moses, which he had written in the presence 
 of the children of Israel : and all Israel, and their 
 elders and officers, and their judges, stood on the two 
 sides of the ark of the covenant, borne by the priests 
 and Levites, six tribes over against Mount Gerizim, and 
 six over against Mount Ebal. And he read all the 
 words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according 
 to all that was written in the book of the law. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Dec- 
 laration of Independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the 
 confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your 
 Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. 
 In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity, narra- 
 ted in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronoun- 
 ced against the people, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing 
 promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your pos- 
 terity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their ad- 
 herence to, or departure from, the principles of the 
 Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven in 
 the Constitution of the United States. Lay up these prin- 
 
120 
 
 ciples, then, in your hearts, ^ and in your souls bind 
 them for signs upon your hands, that they maybe as front- 
 lets between your eyes teach them to your children, 
 speaking of them when sitting in your houses, when 
 walking by the way, when lying down and when rising 
 up write them upon the doorplates of your houses, 
 and upon your gates cling to them as to the issues 
 of life adhere to them as to the cords of your eternal 
 salvation. So may your children's children at the next 
 return of this day of jubilee, after a full century of ex- 
 perience under your national Constitution, celebrate 
 it again in the full enjoyment of all the blessings recog- 
 nised by you in the commemoration of this day, and of 
 all the blessings promised to the children of Israel upon 
 Mount Gerizim, as the reward of obedience to the law 
 of God. 
 
THE CELEBRATION. 
 
THE CELEBRATION. 
 
 THE semi-centennial anniversary of the first inauguration of GKORGE 
 WASHINGTON, as President of the United States, and the organi/ation of 
 the general government under the Federal Constitution, was celebrated 
 in the city of New York, on Tuesday, April 30th, 1839, by a public Ora- 
 tion and Dinner, under the direction of a committee of the New York 
 Historical Society. 
 
 The Honorable JOHN QJTINCY ADAMS, the sixth President of the Uni- 
 ted States, was selected as the Orator on this interesting occasion ; and 
 letters of invitation were addressed to distinguished survivors of the Rev- 
 olutionary period, to the Historical Societies of other states, and to vari- 
 ous public functionaries, requesting their attendance. 
 
 MK. ADAMS, having accented the appointment, arrived in town from 
 Washington on Monday, April 29th, and in the evening met a large 
 number of the members of the Society at their rooms in the Stuy vesant 
 Institute. From thence the company repaired by invitation to the house 
 of Mr. Stuy vesant, the President of the Society, where a sumptuous en- 
 tertainment was provided for the occasion. 
 
 On Tuesday, at eleven o'clock, A. M., the Society with their guests as- 
 sembled at the City Hotel, where a large number of citizens joined them 
 in paying their personal respects to the venerable Orator of the day, and 
 to the Revolutionary veterans, who, disregarding the infirmities of age, 
 had once more rallied in honour of their beloved Chief. Among the guests 
 were Colonel John Trumbull, General M >rgan Lewis, Mr. Justice 
 Thompson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, His Excellency 
 William Pennington, Governor of New Jersey, Hon. Samuel L. South- 
 ard, of the United States Senate, Major-General Winfield Scott, and 
 Suite, of the U. S. Army, Commodore Alexander Claxton, of the U. S. 
 Navy, Hon. John Davis, Judge of the U. S. District Court for Massa- 
 chusetts, Baron de Roeaue, late Charge d'Affaires for Prussia, Hon. 
 William A. Duer, President of Columbia College, Messrs. Albert Smith, 
 Member of Congress, of Maine, Nathan Appleton, late M. C., of Boston, 
 William S. Hastings, M. C., of Massachusetts, Daniel D. Barnard, M. 
 C., of Albany, Rlisha Whittlesey, M. C., of Ohio, John Howland, Esq., 
 President of the Rhode Island Historical Society, William Willis, Esq., 
 of the Maine Histoiical Society, Jacob B. Moore, Esq., of the New 
 Hampshire Historical Society, and others. 
 
 At twelve o'clock, the company moved in procession to the Middle 
 Dutch church, in Cedar street, where an immense concourse of people 
 were assembled, comprising much of the beauty and fashion of the city, 
 besides many di>tinguishcd strangers. Tickets having been issued for 
 admission to the church, to prevent the confusion of a crowd greater than 
 could be provided with seats, many hundreds of persons were neces-atily 
 excluded who sought to be present. A temporary stage was erected in 
 front of the pulpit for the convenience of the guests, on which was placi-d 
 the identical chair which had been occupied by General Washington at 
 the time of his inauguration. This chair was now taken bv the distin- 
 guished Orator of the day, who was supported on his riorht by Peter Gerard 
 Sluyvesant, Esq., the President of the New York Historical Society, 
 and on his left by Philip Hone, Esq., one of the Vice Presidents. The 
 
124 
 
 members of the Society, and the delegates from the Historical Societies 
 of other state*, occupied the central seats in the body of house, which 
 were reserved for their use. 
 
 The delivery of the Oration was preceded by a fervent and appropri- 
 ate prayer from the Rev. John Knox. D. D., one of the associate pastors 
 of the Dutch Collegiate church. The following Ode, written for the oc- 
 casion by William Cullen Bryant, Esq., was then sung : 
 
 GREAT were the hearts, and strong the minds, 
 
 Of those who framed, in high debate, 
 The immortal league of love that binds 
 
 Our fair broad empire, state with state. 
 
 And ever hallowed he the hour, 
 
 When, as the auspicious task was done, 
 A nation's gift, the sword of power, 
 
 Was triven to glory's unspoiled son. 
 
 That noble race is gone; the suns 
 
 Of fifty years have risen and set ; 
 Thf holy links those mighty ones 
 
 Had forged and knit, are brighter yet. 
 
 Wide as our own free race increase 
 
 Wide shall it stretch the elastic chain, 
 And bind, in everlasting peace, 
 
 State after state, a mighty train. 
 
 The Oration occupied about two hours in the delivery, and, by the ex- 
 traordinary ability, learning and eloquence which it displayed, fully sus- 
 tained the most sanguine anticipations of the friends of the distinguish- 
 ed Orator. The exercises were concluded with a prayer and benedic- 
 tion from the Rev. J. M. Wainwright, D. D., one of the Ministers of 
 Trinity church. 
 
 At six o'clock, P. M., the company re-assembled at the City Hotel, and 
 about two hundred persons sat down to a dinner prepared 'in the best 
 style of that well-known establishment. Peter G. Stuyvesant, Esq., pre- 
 sided on the occasion, assisted by Philip Hone, Esq., Hon. Judge Betts, 
 of the U. S. District Court, and Charles King, Esq. The arrangements 
 which were made under the efficient direction of the committee for that 
 purpose, were happily carried into effect, and the whole evening exhibit- 
 ed a continued scene of festive enjoyment, enlivened by music from a 
 band in the orchestra, and a select corps of professional vocal performers, 
 accompanied by the piano forte, and led by the celebrated Mr. Sinclair, 
 of the Theatre. 
 
 After the removal of the cloth, the following toasts were proposed by 
 the President : 
 
 1. George Washington His example was perfect : severe will be the condemna- 
 tion of him, who seeks his place and disregards the authority of that example. 
 
 Mr. Stuyvesant accompanied this toast with some remarks, containing 
 interesting allusions to the private habits and character of General Wash- 
 ington, in substance as follows : 
 
 In cannot be expected, at this time and place, any allusion should be 
 made to the public character of Washington ; we are all in possession 
 of his history from the dawn of life to the day that Mount Vernon was 
 wrapped in sable; and after the exercises of this morning, if any attempt 
 to portray his political or military life was made, it would only be the 
 glimmering light of a feeble star succeeding the rays of a meridian sun. 
 
 But the occasion afford.-* an opportunity of congratulating the small 
 number of sentlemen present, who enjoyed the privilege of participating 
 in the ceremonies of the thirtieth of April, 17S9 ; they will recall to their 
 
125 
 
 memories the spontaneous effusions of joy that pervaded the breasts of 
 the people, who, on that occasion, witnessed the organization of a consti- 
 tutional government formed by intelligent freemen, and consummated by 
 placing at its head the man in whom their affections were concentrated 
 AS tlie father of their country. 
 
 Washington's residence in this city after his inauguration waa limited to 
 about two years. His deportment in life was not plain, nor was it at all 
 pompous, for no man was more devoid of ostentation than himself; his 
 style, however, gave universal satisfaction to all classes in the communi- 
 ty ; and, his historian has informed us, was not adopted for personal grat- 
 ification, but from a devotion to his country's welfare. Possessing a de 
 arable stature, au erect frame, and, superadded. a lofty and sublime conn 
 reliance, he never appeared in public without arresting the reverence and 
 admiration of the beholder; and the stranger who had never before seen 
 iiim, was at the first impression convinced it was tne President who de- 
 lighted him. 
 
 He seldom walked in the street his public recreation was in riding 
 When accompanied by Mrs. Washington, he rode in a carriage drawn b\ 
 six horses, with two outriders who wore rich liverv, cocked hats, with 
 cockades and powder. When he rode on horse bac*, h>- >ined by 
 
 one or more of the gentlemen of his family, and altende I -ulers. 
 
 He always attended divine service on Sundays; his c n (hose 
 
 occasions contained Mrs. Washington and himself, with o. 
 their grand-children, and was drawn by two horses, with tu 
 behind; it was succeeded by a post-chaise, accoma o'iating two geu 
 of his household. On bis arrival in the city, i;. :>nly resident-- 
 could be procured was a house in Cherry street, k . <>vn as the man- 
 sion of the Franklin family, but in a short time afterward 1.- /moved to 
 and occupied the house in Broadway, now Bunker's hotel. 
 
 Washington held a levee once a week, and from what is now r<- 
 ed they were generally well attended, hut confined to men in public ,. 
 and gentlemen of leisure, for at that day it would have been thought 
 a breach of decorum to visit the President of the United States in dis- 
 habille. 
 
 The arrival of Washington in 1789, to assume the reins of government, 
 was not his first entry into this city, accompanied with honour to himself 
 and glory to this country. This was on the twenty-fourth of November. 
 1773; and here again I must observe, the number present who witnessed 
 the ceremonies of that day, must, indeed, be very limited ; on that day 
 he made his triumphal entry, not to sway the sceptre, but to lay down 
 his sword ; not for personal aggrandizement, but to secure the happiness 
 of his countrymen. He early in the morning left Harlem and entered 
 the city through what is now called the Bowery ; he was escorted by 
 cavalry and infantry, and a large concourse of citizens on horseback and 
 on foot in plain dress ; the latter must have been an interesting sight to 
 those of mature age wno were capable of comprehending their merit. In 
 their ranks were seen men with patched elbows, odd buttons on their 
 coats, and unmatched Vickies in their shoes ; they were not indeed Fal- 
 staflPs company of scare-crows, but the most respectable citizens, who 
 had been in exile and endured privations we know not of, for seven long 
 and tedious years. 
 
 On that occasion, and on nis arrival in 1789, Washington was received 
 as is well known, by the elder Clinton, who was at both periods Govern- 
 or of the state. 
 
 i The Day wt ecl'braU It witnessed the commencement of our government. 
 May the day be far removed which dawns upon its dissolution. 
 
 The next toa-t \vas preceded by the following observations from the 
 President : 
 
126 
 
 In calling your attention to the toast next in order, I have a duty to 
 perform, highly gratifying to my inclination ; bui I cannot conceal "the 
 embarrassment I feel from my inability to do justice to the subject. I 
 have to propose the health of a gentleman of extraordinary merit and 
 fame One of America's most distinguished sons. The Civilian, the 
 Legislator, the Statesman, and the Scholar. A gentleman unexcelled in 
 general attainments exercising a mind in every department of science to 
 advance the comfort and happiness of mankind. Possessing and advoca- 
 ting morals of the highest order. A gentleman who has this day so sig- 
 nally honoured us, and honoured our city ; and in the various legislative, 
 executive, and diplomatic stations he has filled for nearly fifty years, has 
 honoured our country at home and abroad. 
 
 He then gave 
 
 3. The Orator of the Day 
 
 Justuin et tenacem propositi viruin 
 Non civium ardor prova iubentium, 
 IVon vultus instanris tyranni 
 Mente quatit solid a. 
 
 Mr. Adams then said : 
 MR. PRESIDENT 
 
 After the large draughts which I have already been this day permitted 
 to make upon the patience and indulgence of the company here present, 
 and others of my fellow-citizens, inhabitants of this city, were I not oth- 
 erwise at a loss for words to express emotions excited by this fresh testi- 
 monial of their kindness, it would best become me perhaps to receive it 
 in silence [go on ! go on ! from several voices at the table] especially 
 as, by consuming any portion of the time of this company, I am con- 
 scious of withholding from them some part of the rich treat of entertain- 
 ment, which they are justly expecting from others whom I see at this 
 table, far better qualified to discourse to them upon any topic than myself. 
 I cannot, however, forbear from the utterance of the grateful sentiment 
 swelling in my bosom for your kindness at this moment, as well as that 
 with which I have been honoured this morning ; and with deep sensibil- 
 ity to the friendly regard manifested in the personal reference of the sen- 
 timent just given from the chair, I submit a few remarks upon a period 
 intimately connected with, but preceding that of your commemoration. 
 
 The day of this celebration is that upon which the people of the Uni- 
 ted States began their career of history under a constitution of gov- 
 ernment, 
 
 They have had fifty years of experience of that government, and the 
 review which you have proposed to take as appropriate on this day, has 
 been chiefly confined to the character of the Constitution and government, 
 as it has proved upon trial by experience. 
 
 What it was in theory, properly belongs to the consideration of a pre- 
 ceding period of time, of which, in the discourse pronounced at your in- 
 vitation, only incidental notice could be taken, as in the historical chain 
 of events leading to that which it was your special purpose to commem- 
 orate. 
 
 That preceding period, however, of our national history, from the ori- 
 gin, formation, and progress of our Union to its consummation, in the es- 
 tablishment of a national government, is full of a deep and abiding inter- 
 est ; nor can it be forgotten in the estimate of the blessings which we 
 have enjoyed under the practical operation of the Constitution. It has 
 been enjoined upon us not to say what is the cause that the former days 
 were better than these ; and, thanks to this Constitution, we have abun- 
 dant reason, with grateful acknowledgments, to allow that these days, 
 with regard at least to our condition and prospects, are better far better 
 than the former days, whether of colonial dependance, of revolutionary 
 
127 
 
 conflict, or of disunited and disuniting confederation. With reference to 
 benefits and comforts enjoyed, these are the halcyon days of our exist- 
 ence ; as we or our children will soon in sharp and bitter contrast feel, it 
 we or they should ever betray, renounce, or abandon the self-evident prin- 
 ciples upon which our Union Was formed, our Independence declared, and 
 our Constitution established, by our forefathers of lormer days. 
 
 Our days of enjoyment are better than theirs. But our days of enjoy- 
 ment are the fruits of their days of toil of danger of suffering^ of lofly 
 and generous exertion; and can I choose but be reminded of them, when 
 I see at your side [General Morgan Lewis was seated next to the Presi- 
 dent,] and at mine, [Colonel John Trumbull,] relics of those trying times, 
 conspicuous as actors in the drama of those days, and still worthy repre- 
 sentatives of them ? And must we not confess, that if these are the bet- 
 ter days for enjoyment, those were the better days for illustrious action ? 
 
 There were periods, Mr. President, in the history of ancient Greece, 
 with which we may trace a closely corresponding analogy in our own. 
 We must make allowances for the difference of times and circumstances, 
 manners, opinions, and passions, between ages so remote, and our own, 
 and for the necessary varieties of fabulous and authentic history. But in 
 the ancient history of Greece, there were two classes of events, and of 
 human actors in the transactions of their respective times. The first of 
 these periods was in later times usually denominated the heroic age, 
 and it acquired that appellation by 'lie supposed superiority of the men 
 who, during that stage of human civilization, made themselves conspic- 
 uous among their contemporaries by qualities or achievements superior 
 to those possessed or accomplished by the rest. Those qualities and 
 achievements were themselves of two very different kinds; one charac- 
 terized by the exercise of physical force upon external nature and upon 
 men the other by the development of moral and intellectual powers. 
 The renown of the hero was sometimes acquired by the extermination of 
 monsters, such as the Neniean lion, or the Minotaur, and the destruction 
 of tyrants and other wild beasts in human form, and sometimes by al- 
 luring mankind to congregate together in civil associations, and by found- 
 ing institutions of government to last through long successions of time. 
 The fame of heroism was very rarely attained by the same person for 
 successful energy in both these courses of action; yet was it not entirely 
 without example, and Plutarch has recorded, in the life of Theseus, one 
 personage equally celebrated for both kinds of heroism, by ridding the 
 earth of monsters, and by laying the foundations of the political consti- 
 tution of Athens. 
 
 May we not award the same meed of glory to our own Washington 7 
 As the commander-in-chief of our armies from the beginning to the 
 close of the War of Independence, he sustained the cause of his country 
 in the rough encounter or physical force exterminated the monster he 
 destroyed not the person, but the power of the tyrant, and then retiring 
 from the ardent gaze of an admiring world to the obscurity of rural sol- 
 itude and domestic privacy, reissued from it again at the call of his coun- 
 try in her utmost need, to preside at the formation of the people's Con- 
 stitution, and to breathe into it the breath of life, by an administration 
 shaping its character for the duration of ages, as the man of mature life 
 is formed by the education of the child. 
 
 It was a common opinion of the ancient Greeks of the later times, that 
 they had degenerated from the physical powers of their forefathers in the 
 heroic age. One of the heroes of the Iliad is represented in that poem, 
 while engaged in mortal combat with his enemy, as lifting and hurling 
 at him a rock of such weight, that the poet declares, twelve men of his 
 own time would not be able to raise it from the ground. In his second 
 qualification of heroism, that which properly belongs to the cultivation of 
 
123 
 
 the mind, and the formation of government, hare we not too much reason 
 to inquire whether the parallel of diminished power is not applicable to 
 the progress of our own history ? If it he so, we have at least the con- 
 solation that we diminish only in one of the scales of heroism; for when 
 I reflect upon the achievements of our most recent conflict with the 
 British Lion ; and when I see at this table the representatives of our 
 present army and navy [General Scott and Captain Claxton were at the 
 table] I am sure every heart in this hall will respond to the declaration 
 which rises from the heart to the lips. No! in the prowess of the arm, 
 and the valour of the soul, we have not degenerated from the energy of 
 our forefathers. 
 
 But it was also an opinion of antiquity that heroic achievement was 
 not of itself sufficient for the attainment of glory, but that it required the 
 assistance of literature and the fine arts for its illustration. There was, 
 says the Roman master of the lyre, Horace, many a hero before the days 
 of Agamemnon : but they and their mighty deeds have all perished, be- 
 cause they had no poet to immortalize them in song. 
 
 But if the heroic age of our revolutionary history has not yet been cel- 
 ebrated in poetry with a dignity suitable to the grandeur of the subject, 
 the sister art of painting has not been equally neglectful of her duty. 
 My old and venerable friend at my side, [Col. Trumbull,] as you have 
 all seen, has given a second life to the most affecting and grandest scenes 
 of the Revolutionary war, in which he was himself in the prime of life 
 a distinguished actor. In traversing the seas, his soul was still untravel- 
 led, and the enthusiasm for his art never quenched the fire of his patriot- 
 ism, even when it consigned him to a British prison. The merit of his 
 paintings has stood and will stand the test of time. But the conception 
 of the design, the choice of the subjects, the perseverance of purpose, 
 and the fidelity of execution, exhibiting to posterity striking resemblances 
 from the life of the principal actors in those scenes which will expand 
 m the memory of mankind, as the wheels of time roll round, all these 
 will be better appreciated in another hundred years than they have been, 
 or yet are. And yet, even now, who is there with an American heart in 
 his bosom, who can cast his eye upon tnese martyrs to their country's 
 cause, upon that self-devotion sanctified by the sacrifices of life, of War- 
 ren at Bunker's Hill, and of Montgomery before the walls of Quebec 
 who can pass through the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, and 
 not find his eyes involuntarily drawn upon the living triumphs of Sara- 
 toga, and of Yorktown? upon that Declaration of Independence which 
 forms an epoch in the history of the human race ? upon that scene of 
 still loftier sublimity, if possible, the surrender by Washington of his 
 commission to the Congress of Annapolis ? who can now turn his eye 
 upon these visions of his country's glory, without feeling that the artist 
 has spread a fresh blaze of splendour over those scenes ? for every eye 
 that beholds them identifies the immortality of his own name with the 
 imperishable honours of his country. 
 
 Sir, I will detain the company no longer, but conclude with asking 
 your permission to give in return for the toast with which they have been 
 pleased to honour me, 
 
 11 The heroic age of American history." 
 
 4. The Fourth of July, 1776, and the Thirtieth of April, 1789 The corner-stone 
 and coping of a glorious edifice, which it is the duty of the present and future gener- 
 ations to preserve free from desecration. 
 
 5. The Union of the States The cement of national independence : its ingredients 
 patriotism, justice, and liberality. 
 
 6. "The Unity of Gorernment" As Washington understood it: "The support of 
 tranauility at home, and of peace abroad of our safety of our prosperity of that 
 very liberty which we so highly prize." 
 
129 
 
 T. The President of the United States. 
 
 8. The Constitution The country has flourished under its protection : May it with 
 filial gratitude cherish and sustain it in all its original strength and purity. 
 
 9. The Congress of 1789 It gave the first practical construction to the Constitu- 
 tion : May its Successors emulate its profound sagacity and devoted patriotism. 
 
 10. The Federal Judiciary May its members always bear in mind that they ar 
 uccessors to Jay, Ellsworth, aii<* Marshall. 
 
 The Vice President. Mr. Philip Hone, expressed his thanks to the 
 President for having called upon him to perform the agreeable duty of an- 
 nouncing the eleventh regular toast. 
 
 1 am satisfied, (he said,) in paying my humble tribute of respect to the 
 brave man, on whose patriotic devotion to the services of the country re- 
 liance can at all times be placed, and whose duties have been so faithfully 
 performed, under the disadvantages of an extended sphere of action, with 
 frequently incompetent means ; but I am warmed into admiration of the 
 gallant band, and feel sensible of the obligation, which as citizens we owe 
 them for the defence of our political rights, and the protection of our per- 
 sonal privileges, when I see before me the noble relics of the army of the 
 Revolution, mingling in pleasant communion with the gallant spirits of 
 more recent warfare ; when I perceive you, sir, supported on one the side by 
 a veteran, the former aide of the father of the country, to whose patriotic 
 services allusion has been made by the eloquent orator of the day, ( him- 
 self deeply imbued with the spirit of the Revolution,) and the venerable 
 gentleman, who, fifty years ago, in the prime of his life, admired then, as 
 he is respected now. commanded the escort of Washington on the memor- 
 able occasion which we are now employed in celebrating; and on the, 
 other, by the gallant officer to whose more recent services the country 
 stands deeply indebted, and is willing to make grateful acknowledgment, 
 Two generations of patriots, touching, as it were, upon each other, and 
 rejoicing together. Sires, who sat a noble example in the arduous strug- 
 gle for national independence, and a worthy son, who has faithfully fol- 
 lowed their example, and emulated their virtue. 
 
 In alluding to the distinguished officer who now commands the military 
 section of which the state of New York forms a part, I avail myself with 
 pleasure of the opportunity on the present occasion, ( which his recent 
 refusal to accept the hospitality of our city denied to myself, or some other 
 more competent of my fellow-citizens,) to pay a willing tribute of applause 
 to his unwearied exertion in defending the honour, and preserving the 
 peace of the country. 
 
 In performing this duty, however, I fear I may be led, notwithstanding 
 the protestations which have been so frequently made in the course of this 
 day's proceedings, of attachment to the federal principle of inviolable 
 union amongst the several states, to dispute the claim of the patriotic 
 state of Virginia to the honour of his paternity, or at least to insist upon 
 an equal participation. A Virginian by birth, he has been brought up 411 
 the slate of New York. It was here that his maiden sword was first 
 drawn in the defence of his country, here the laurels were gathered which 
 first graced his youthful brow, and here his military character was formed, 
 and his tactics brought into successful operation. 
 
 General Scott's sphere of action has been singularly extensive. Called 
 upon at an early period of the late war with Great Britain, when from un- 
 toward oircum>tances, (of which perhaps a want of proper preparation 
 was one of the most prevailing,) darkness overspread our beloved land, and 
 patriots began to tremble, he was one of those noble spirit*, whose glorious 
 privilege it was to " pluck up drowning honour by the lock-." Young, ar- 
 dent, and chivalric, he rushed at the head of his untried battalions into the 
 fearful contest with the chivalry of England ; fearless of danger himself, 
 he taught his countrymen that the conquerors of Europe might be success- 
 
 17 
 
130 
 
 fully opposed by American valour. The circumstances of the time com- 
 ing in aid of his own prowess, gained tor him a military reputation which, 
 in most cases, it is the labour of a whole life to acquire. And on the Ni* 
 agara frontier, his 'good sword ' carved out for him a title to the conspicu- 
 ous place which we are all willing to award him in the proud array of 
 American heroes. 
 
 Subsequently to the peace with England, he has been steadily and ac- 
 tively engaged in the duties of his profession, combining the fruits of his 
 experience with the results of his studies in the art of war, into a system 
 of tactics for the government of the army, and applying his knowledge to 
 the defence of the exposed points within the compass of his command, the 
 government has on all occasions acknowledged the value of his services. 
 
 When the hostile movements of the Indian tribes on the North 
 Western frontier, demanded prompt and efficient action, General Scott 
 was appointed to the command of the army sent against them. And on 
 this occasion his bravery and skill are not more entitled to praise, than the 
 humanity he displayed toward his dispirited soldiers suffering under 
 the dreadful effects of the pestilence which raged in their ranks. 
 
 At a later period he has been engaged with eminent success in impor- 
 tant duties of a nature somewhat foreign to his profession ; by skilful and 
 judicious measures he succeeded m carrying out the design of the govern- 
 ment in the peaceful removal of the Cherokees to the place of their allot- 
 ted abode, and there is reason to believe that the sudden termination of 
 his command in Florida, alone prevented a more favorable result of the 
 disastrous warfare which has so long desolated that fair portion of our 
 national domain. 
 
 On the return of General Scott from the south, the reprehensible inter- 
 ference of some of our citizens on the northern frontier in the unnappy re- 
 volt of the adjoining province of Canada, calling for the interposition of the 
 government, he was sent to enforce obedience to the laws, and by the 
 weight of his character, in the neighbourhood of his early achievements, he 
 soon succeeded, with the aid of his gallant coadjutor Colonel Worth, in 
 preserving the neutrality of the country. 
 
 Hardly had this important duty been accomplished, when, on the ap- 
 pearance of the late alarming collision between the authorities of the state 
 of Maine, and the British province of New Brunswick, this warrior, trans- 
 formed into the more benignant charactcrof a peace-maker, was employed 
 once more to allay the strife of offended pride, and avert the consequences of 
 irresponsible hostility. Here again a judicious course of dignified firmness, 
 tempered by courteous forbearance, produced a result calculated to quiet the 
 apprehensions of the timid, and satisfy the demands of the aggrieved. 
 
 In the discharge of all these multifarious services, General Scott has 
 been unremittingly and laboriously engaged, in season and out of season, 
 and is well entitled to count upon the approbation of his government, and 
 the gratitude of his fellow-citizens. 
 
 I have to apologize, Mr. President, to the distinguished individual, the 
 subject of these imperfect remarks, but to the company no apology will be 
 thought necessary, for I am persuaded the sentiments I have ventured to 
 express are those of all who hear me. As an American, proud of the well- 
 earned fame of one of her favorite sons, and as a citizen of the state which 
 was so deeply interested in some of his latest negociations, I could not 
 have said less, and as an old friend, exrited by the recollection of many 
 pleasant instances of social intercourse, I dared not trust myself to say more. 
 
 I proceed to discharge the agreeable duty assigned to me by announ- 
 cing the llth toast. 
 
 11. The Army Our ancestors owed to its valour the establishment of their inde- 
 pendence : the present generation is indebted to its pawouc esertious for the 
 
131 
 
 Major General Scott responded to this toast in the following terms: 
 Touched with the high compliment paid by this distinguished company 
 to that arm of tne national defence to which I have the honour to belong, 
 I offer you, gentlemen, the return of its grateful acknowledgments. If 
 
 "In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man, 
 
 Aa modest stillness and humility ; 
 
 But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
 
 Then lend the eye a terrible aspect 
 
 Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 
 To his full height" 
 
 the army fulfils all the conditions of good citizens and good soldiers. 
 The school-master has been abroad in its ranks, and thanks to the 
 West Point academy, our younger officers, when in the bosom of society, 
 are besi known by their modest bearing their ready obedience to law, to 
 the habits and feelings of their country. 
 
 Undei the other circumstance that of active service, I need but to allude 
 to the triumphs of what has partially been termed the second War of In- 
 dependents. History has occupied herself with those deeds, and in one 
 stream of eloquent praise, has mingled the glories of the navy and army. 
 
 More recently, our twelve or fourteen regiments have not been idle, and 
 if they have won but few bloody victories, they at least have marched in 
 triumph through every forest, hammock, swamp, and prairie of the fron- 
 tiers 
 
 11 Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 
 And the brown Indian inaik with murderous aim." 
 
 In the Black Hawk campaign, none of those difficulties, nor the dread 
 cholera, long delayed the coward course, and the enemy, overcome by 
 perseverance and valour, were in the end taught the high Christian lesson 
 of justice blended with mercy. 
 
 At Charleston, when the gallant but too sensitive Carolinians had, by 
 evils imaginary or real, or both, been brought almost to disunion, the offi- 
 cers and men of the navy and army on duty in that harbour, laboured by 
 meekness and kind offices in one instance, saving that beautiful city 
 from general conflagration to assuage the angry feelings which had been 
 excited, and thus kept the way open for that masterly movement in Con- 
 gress which restored the noble state to the eager embraces of her sisters 
 of the Union. 
 
 The Flotida war ensued and continues. This has been a deep afflic- 
 tion to the country, and yet a greater one to the regiments employed-^ 
 which, throughout, have displayed every effort of heroic perseverance and 
 hardy endurance. It was my fortune to witness many of the difficulties 
 and distresses of that war, during the twenty-three days in the field 
 which were allowed me. We then only succeeded in removing about 
 four hundred Seminoles, and suffered, for a time, the censures of the 
 kasty. But as applause had never spoiled our gallant troops, so neither 
 did condemnation change their noble character, and all remained, to 
 country and government 
 
 " As true as the dial to the sun, 
 Although it be not snone upon." 
 
 For the last six months a handful of tne army has been incessantly 
 employed on the Canadian frontiers, in maintaining the supremacy of the 
 laws and the national faith, pledged by treaty to a friendly power. Here 
 aijain our officers and men have, without exception, done their duty. 
 \V herever they have been able to appear, success has attended their ef- 
 forts, and under Providence, but for those efforts, the United States, in all 
 
132 
 
 probability, would, ere this, have been at war with a great and kindred 
 people. 
 
 I will but briefly allude to one other service recently performed by our 
 army the removal, a distance of nine hundred miles, of the numerous 
 and interesting tribe of Cherokee Indians. This service, in which the 
 militia of North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama bore a mer- 
 itorious part, was accomplished, not alone by collecting the persons of 
 the Indians, but by the conquest of the will, up to that time indomitable 
 and adverse. The means were persevering kindness, exerted by all, and 
 extended to all. I offer this bloodless triumph, obtained by the clemency 
 of the sword, as in some degree worthy of the example of the illustrious 
 William Penn, and I am happy to add, from a personal knowledge of 
 their late and present countries, that the emigrants have every prospect 
 of being greatly and permanently benefited by the change. 
 
 I beg leave, gentlemen, to offer this toast: 
 
 The surviving Heroes and Worthies of the Revolution They are dearer and dearer 
 to the hearts of their countrymen, as their numbers diminish. 
 
 12. The Navy Created by the Federal Government: its past achievements are 
 pledges that it will not be wanting in the hour of national danger. 
 
 Commodore Claxton responded to this toast, but we are unable to re- 
 port his remarks. 
 
 13. Women The best teachers and guardians of sound principles. 
 
 A toast having been offered complimentary to General Morgan Lewis, 
 who was Marshal of the day at the inauguration on the 30ih April. 1789, 
 and was now present, after'filling in the intermediate period important 
 offices, among which was that of Governour of the state of New York. 
 
 General Lewis made a handsome acknowledgment, and gave the fol- 
 lowing sentiment: 
 
 Our Country Her progressive prosperity from the epoch we this day celebrate, af- 
 fords the best comment on her form of government and its general administration. 
 
 By President Duer: 
 
 Massachusetts The nursing mother of the Hampdens and Sidneys of the heroic 
 age of America : This day has proved that she had not lost her fecundity in the sec- 
 ond generation. 
 
 The Hon. Judge Davis, of Boston, responded in an animated manner, 
 and concluded by offering the following sentiment : 
 
 The spirit of American social polity Onward, ever onward, more majorum, in 
 the march of improvement, and advancement of human happiness. 
 
 Mr Hone, alluding to the enthusiasm with which Washington was 
 received in New Jersey, when on his journey from Mount Vernon to 
 this city, to assume the office of President, and especially complimenting 
 the patriotic matrons of that slate, called up Governour Pennington, 
 who spoke as follows : 
 
 He said that he took the occasion, in behalf of the people of his State, 
 not only to thank the gentleman for his complimentary remarks respect- 
 ing New Jersey and the part she had taken in the great cause of achiev- 
 ing the independence of the country, but to thank also this company for 
 the hearty manner in which those sentiments had been received. Hav- 
 ing been on the spot on which many of the most interesting and trying 
 scenes took place, her citizens had been peculiarly exposed to the hard- 
 ships and privations of the war. We boast, that it was upon our soil the 
 tide of war was changed. After retreating through the state with his 
 patriot band, borne down by every calamity, in the face of a numerous 
 and well-appointed British soldiery, Washington, at Trenton, by a single 
 battle, gave victory to our arms, recruited the spirits and courage of his 
 troops, and revived the hopes of the country. It was no wonder, as had 
 been alluded to in the course of the day by the venerable gentleman, 
 [Mr. Adams,] that General Washington was deeply affected at the in- 
 
133 
 
 scription on the triumphal arch erected to receive him when, on his way 
 to take upon himself the office of first President of the United States : 
 " The defender of the mothers will he the protector of their daughters." 
 That was the very ground on which the faie of our mothers was decided. 
 These mothers were indeed defended by Washington, but ii should be 
 said aUo that they defended themselves. Many are the instances of 
 their devotion to the sacred cause. 
 
 Governor P. here alluded to several instances of individual heroism 
 and determination in that state, and closed with a firm persuasion that 
 the same spirit which burned there in 1776, had been transmitted to their 
 children, and would always promptly respond to the call of their com- 
 mon country. Alluding to the recent difficulties which threatened to dis- 
 turb the quiet of the nation, he said he spoke the common sentiment of 
 the people in declaring that they desired peace with all the world, and 
 that they fell under peculiar obligations to a gentleman now present, 
 [General Scott.] for the vigorous and important services he had rendered 
 his country on mat occasion. After adverting to the pleasure all had de- 
 rived from the review of the scenes of the revolution which they had 
 heard that day, ho offered the following sentiment : 
 
 The Recollection of former time* Every day they become dearer to all true- 
 hearted Americans. 
 
 The Hon. Samuel L. Southard, of New Jersey, being called upon, 
 spoke at considerable length, with great eloquence and effect, and con- 
 cluded by giving the following toast: 
 
 The Judiciary of the United State* The honest offspring of the Constitution : aha 
 baa nourished her mother wuh all a daugh ler's lo ve.and more than a daugh ter's devotion. 
 
 By Thomaa Fecsendtn, Raq. : 
 
 Connecticut a. ahe now is : true to the principles, the feelings, and the blood of Con- 
 necticut of the Revolution. 
 
 By Hon. Thomas Day, of Hartford : 
 
 The study of Jurisprudence as a subject and a tource of history. 
 
 George Folsom, Esq., of this city, being called upon by the President, 
 remarked that this was a proud day lor the New York Historical Society, 
 on which so many respected citizens from our sister states, had assembled 
 to unite with us in the commemoration of this great anniversary. 
 
 Among them he was glad to see an able representation from the most 
 northern member of the Union, whose geographical position caused her to 
 lead, like the star that adorned her escutcheon, in the constellation of 
 states. Mr. F. then alluded to the recent border difficulties, and said that 
 Maine had not only proved true to herself, but to the great principles of 
 our government which had been so happily illustrated to-day. Maine had 
 ever been jealous of her political rights, and her citizens never hesitated 
 to assert and vindicate them at whatever hazard. At a very early period 
 of he. aistory, the people of that remote colony manifested the same spirit 
 of resistance to usurpation and aggression, that had of late animated as one 
 >ulatk 
 
 man her entire population. He alluded to the attempts that were made by 
 the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1652, to extend her jurisdiction over 
 the inhabitants of Maine, which met an open and manly resistance from 
 the civil authorities and the people of the province. 
 
 But, said Mr. F., there is a gentleman present whose labours in explor- 
 ing and illustrating her annals have given him a high character among 
 the historical writers of our country, [Mr. Willis, of Portland,] who can 
 belter speak for his own state; and he would conclude by offering the fol- 
 lowing sentiment: 
 
 The State of Maine Ever prompt to resent the slightest infringement upon the 
 honour of her government, and to vindicate the integrity of her territory, yet acknowl- 
 edging with equal promptitude the sacred character of her obligations to the American 
 Ui 
 
134 
 
 William Willis, Esq., of Portland, a.delegate from the Maine Histori- 
 cal Society, rose to tender to the Society his sincere thanks for the com- 
 plimentary manner in which they had just noticed the state to which he 
 had the honour to belong. He was aware, he said, that Maine, at this 
 particular period, did not stand in very good odour, from the excitement 
 which recent events upon ics border "had produced; but he begged to 
 assure the gentlemen present, thai Maine was as unwilling to disturb the 
 peace of the Union as any of her sister states ; that she had been forced 
 into the position in which she stood, not from any desire of bringing her- 
 self into notice, or setting herself up against the interest and welfare of 
 the Union, but from a solemn sense of duty she owed to her own charac- 
 ter and rights. She was not contending for a few acres of territory, but 
 for a great principle. She was resisting an encroachment upon her soil 
 and jurisdiction, and it mattered not whether it was for one acre or one 
 million acres she would not yield it upon compulsion, or for any threat 
 of any power. 
 
 He believed that the claim of Maine to the whole territory in dispute 
 was as clearly established by argument as any case was ever done, and 
 that if any man would impartially examine it, he would he satisfied as to 
 the perfect demonstration of that side of the question. No impartial jury, 
 in a court of justice, would hesitate, on the same state of facts, to return 
 a verdict in favour of Maine. 
 
 He asked gentlemen of New York to consider what their feelings 
 would be if a border nation should set up a claim to a portion of their 
 frontier county of Niagara, or of Oswego, for the purpose of giving ad- 
 ditional value to the foreign territory, by public improvements; would 
 they stop to consider the value of the land thus claimed to go into tne 
 valuation of dollars and cents on the subject? No, their public spirit 
 would spurn such a consideration, and the Union would shake to its 
 centre with their indignant rebuke. The claim to the disputed territory 
 in Maine is no better founded than would be such a one as he supposed. 
 He therefore invoked the patriotism and public spirit of the people of 
 New York to sustain the great principle for which Maine was contend- 
 ing, and not censure her, as if rashly wishing to disturb the peace of the 
 country. 
 
 Mr. W. then compared the situation of Maine now with that of fifty 
 years ago ; having then no place in the Union as an independent state, but 
 one member of Congress, as a district of Massachusetts, and a population 
 of only 90.000. Now she has eight members in the lower house of Con- 
 gress, a population of half a million, is next to New York in coasting 
 tonnage, and the third in aggregate tonnage. 
 
 He then adverted to some resemblances in the early history of New 
 York and Maine. The same year, he observed, just two hundred and 
 thirty years ago the present year, which beheld the adventurous Hudson 
 sailing up thi? beautiful bay, in the little bark the Half Moon, under the 
 Dutch flag, likewise witnessed the first attempt to colonize Maine, by a 
 spirited company, who formed a settlement on the Kennebec river. 
 Both attempts then failed, but were afterward renewed, with what 
 success we all may see. When he considered what two hundred and 
 thirty years had produced, and especially the very rapid progress of 
 the last fifty years, his mind could set no limit to the future greatness 
 of this country. The prophetic visions of the most sanguine would fail of 
 the reality. Much, however, depended upon the preservation of the 
 Union and the liberal institutions of our land; and in this connexion he 
 wou.'d propose as a sentiment 
 
 The next Fifty Years 1 Jubilee of the New York Historioal Society May it find 
 our national banner continuing to float over an undivided republic, and our motto 
 still be, " One country, one constitution, one destiny." 
 
135 
 
 By George Gibbs, Esq. 
 
 The State qf mode Island One of the last to adopt the constitution, she will b 
 the last to desert its principles. 
 
 John Rowland, Esq., President of the R. I. Historical Society, res- 
 ponded in the following terms: 
 
 The citizens of our several states are united by stronger bonds than 
 those engrossed on parchment. The place of present residence, in many 
 instances, may not describe the home of the individual; yet, in a larger 
 view, we cannot be said to be separate from our friends and connexions 
 while we are within the limits of the union. 
 
 The first instance in history in which Rhode Island and New York 
 became connected, took place in 1665, when Thomas Willett was ap- 
 pointed mayor of this city. He afterward returned to Rhode Island, 
 where his monument now exists. 
 
 To thousands of other ties of union, the Antiquarian and Historical 
 Societies will necessarily add, in promoting the common object rn which 
 they are engaged, and which this day's celebration points to as the 
 brightest page in American history. 
 
 In connecting the past with the present, I offer this sentiment : 
 
 The Memory of Thomas Willett, the first Mayor of New York. 
 
 By Rev. Dr. Wainwright : 
 
 History, which record*, inspires also to noble deeds. 
 
 Mr. Grenville Mellen, being called upon, recited the following ode, composed for th 
 occasion. 
 
 THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA. 
 
 BY GRENVILLE MELLEN. 
 
 The light that time pour* round a land 
 
 A sacred tight may be, 
 But leads not to a great command 
 
 Like that which crowns the Free I 
 And holy (hat unfaded light, 
 
 Winch linger* with the dead; 
 But then the beams, how ptttinf bright 
 
 That Are the path we tread! 
 Then tell me nut or years of old, 
 
 Of ancient heart and clime ; 
 Ourai* the land and age of gold, 
 
 And ours the hallowed lime ! 
 The jewelled crown and sceptre 
 
 Of Greece have passed away, 
 And none of all who wept her 
 
 Could hid her splendour stay. 
 The world has shaken with the tread 
 
 Of iron-sandaled crime 
 And fast, o'ervhadowing all the dead, 
 
 The conqueror stalked sublime . 
 Then ask I not for crown and plume 
 
 To nod above my land : 
 The victor'* footsteps point to doom 
 
 Graves open round his hand ! 
 The memory of the monarch Man 
 
 We gather now to sing. 
 Who, when Coin nbias years began 
 
 Their Iujht on time to fling, 
 To Freedom'* altar-place came up 
 
 Before his land to bow, 
 And lift to Goo her golden cup, 
 
 With sacnfii-e and vow- 
 Is not that meaner memory 
 
 Which lingers with a crown ! 
 'Tis (he liffht that links man with the sky ; 
 
 The light he lays not down ! 
 Rome ! with thy pillared palap es 
 
 Ami sculptured heroes, all 
 Snatched in their warm triumphal days 
 
 To Art's hwrh festival- 
 Rome ! with thy giant sons of power, 
 
 \Vh<>e pathway wan on thrones, 
 Who built their kingdoms of an hour 
 
 Oa jec uubuTMXl bw**- 
 
 I would not have my land like thee, 
 
 80 lofty yet *o told ! 
 Be her'a a lowlier majesty, 
 
 lu yet a nobler mould. 
 Thy marbles works of wonder I 
 
 In thy victorious day*, 
 Whose white lips seemed to sunder 
 
 Before the astonished gaze I 
 When statue glared on statue there, 
 
 The living on the dead, 
 And were a* silent pilgrims were 
 
 Before some sainted head 
 O, not for faultless marbles yet 
 
 Would 1 the light for ego, 
 That beams when other lights have set. 
 
 And art herself lies low ! 
 I ask not for the chisel's boast 
 
 A Pantheon's cloud of glory 
 Bathing in Heaven's noon-tide the host 
 
 Of those who swell her story ! 
 Though these proud works of magic hamt, 
 
 Fame's rolling trump shall fill, 
 The best of all those peerless band* 
 
 Is puUeless marble still. 
 And though no classic madness hero 
 
 With quick transforming eye, 
 Bid beauty from the block appear 
 
 Till love stand doubting by 
 I care not for a brighter wreath 
 
 Than round the Parian brows 
 Of those whose sculpture seemed to breathe, 
 
 Shall wait our holier vows. 
 And ours a holier hope shall be 
 
 Than consecrated oust, 
 Some loitier mean of memory 
 
 To snatch us from the dust. 
 And ours a sterner art than this 
 
 Shall fix our image here 
 The spirit's mould of loveliness 
 
 A nobler Belvidere ! 
 His spirit that in th jnd-r spake 
 
 In beautiful command 
 To lis"ning world>. like snn shall break 
 
 VpduubueU UD every law! : 
 
136 
 
 af this ocean shout g o when p >*t 
 
 Kails with its hol morn ? d S down 
 
 Then let them bind with bloomless flower* Anrj when the sculptured marble falls. 
 
 The busts and urns of old; And art goes in to die 
 
 A fairer heritage be ours Our forms shall live in holier halls 
 
 A sacrifice less cold ! The Pantheon of the sky ! 
 
 By Hickson W. Field, Esq. : 
 
 Washington Who never accepted office but for the welfare of his country and 
 never appointed an officer but from a belief in his worth. 
 
 By Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements : 
 
 or &*&"<&" the charapion of nationai tad " ndence < * * 
 
 By John Jay. Esq. : 
 
 nn7I :C phil ' hr P i * t * f fa ^e-Who, true to the spirit of their fathers, inculcate, 
 not as an aba ract trueisrn, but as a rule of duty, the principles of universal liberty ; 
 and who, while they battle for the rights of others, will manfully maintain their own 
 By William L. Stone, Esq 
 
 ..Ka^fe^^^ 
 By George B. Rapelye, Esq. : 
 
 SF" "-"'* of ^inthe firs, Con- 
 By Jotham Smith, Esq. : 
 
 %^&2 or modern ' " w M m re p* 
 
 By Dr. John W. Francis : 
 
 only added to their number and their 
 
 By Samuel Ward, Jr. Esq. : 
 
 The, State of New YorkEver faithful to the Union. 
 
 By David Colden, Esq. : 
 
 The memory of Philip Schuyler, the soldier and the patriot. 
 
 By Dr. Henry M. Francis : 
 
 The Constitution of the United States, in the full tide of successful experiment. 
 
 ODE.- By WILLAM CUTTER. 
 S^^ Mount Eba^ the Article. 
 
 Is our eternal creed. Round Genzim's fair hill, 
 
 Drawn f rom the liturgy of heaven where first our Union rose, 
 
 In Freedom's hour of need. to P/ ace and ? lojr y clustered still, 
 
 
 inaHunrat.on was disclosed by the withdrawal of a curtain at the upper end of the 
 ,and produced a bnllant effect The figures of Washington and Chancellor Liv? 
 m% s ^n in the balcony, the one laying his hand u'pon the b.. k, while the 
 other administered the oath of office, in the presence of a v*st concourse of people 
 fnr.W" 1 "^^, 83 j xtremely wdl exe cu'ed, and taking the company bv surprise, drew 
 WrtJ^? 1 !!^ 1111 ^ 1 "^ ?' he hal! W8S also decorated w '.h copies of Stuart 
 .*?' first . five ' Presidents of the United States-copies pained by S.uart 
 The festivities were continued to a hue hour, and brought to a brilliant close 
 il^ 10Dg W be rewenibered iu lhe annals of our country's 
 
 
O33