action of mind upon mind, which is essential to all human improvement, could no more exist among a numerous and scattered population, than the commerce of disconnected continents could traverse the ocean without the art of navigation. Here, then, is the source of our superiority, and our just pride as a nation. The statesmen of the remotest extremes of the Union can converse together, like the philosophers of Athens in the same portico, or the politicians of Rome in the same forum. Distance is overcome, and the citizens of Georgia and of Maine can be brought to coöperate in the same great object, with as perfect a community of views and feelings as actuated the tribes of Rome in the assemblies of the people. It is obvious that liberty has a more extensive and durable foundation in the United States than it ever has had in any other age or country. By the representative principle, -a principle unknown and impracticable among the ancients, the whole mass of society is brought to operate in constraining the action of power and in the conservation of public liberty.

THE EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.-E. Everett.

We are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in Providence to make, and the grandeur of the theatre on which it is to be performed. When the Old World afforded no longer any hope, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun, and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant auspices; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society, to settle, and that forever, the momentous question, whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system. One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good of all places and times are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us; that they, who lavished their treasures and their blood of old, who labored and suffered, who spake and wrote, who fought and perished, in the one great cause of freedom

and truth, are now hanging from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity. As I have wandered over the spots once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate-houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages, from the sepulchres of the nations which died before the sight. They exhort us, they adjure us to be faithful to our trust. They implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity; by the blessed memory of the departed; by the dear faith which has been. plighted by pure hands to the holy cause of truth and man; by the awful secrets of the prison-houses where the sons of freedom have been immured; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block; by the wrecks of time; by the eloquent ruins of nations, — they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us, by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.

In that high romance, if romance it be, in which the great minds of antiquity sketched the fortunes of the ages to come, they pictured to themselves a favored region beyond the ocean, a land of equal laws and happy men. The primitive poets beheld it in the islands of the blest; the Doric bards surveyed it in the hyperborean regions; the sage of the academy placed it in the lost Atlantis; and even the sterner spirit of Seneca could discern a fairer abode of humanity in distant regions then unknown. We look back upon these uninspired predictions, and almost recoil from the obligations they imply. By us must these fair visions be realized; by us must be fulfilled these high promises, which burst in trying hours from the longing hearts of the champions of truth. There are no more continents or worlds to be revealed; Atlantis hath arisen from the ocean; the farthest Thule is reached; there are no more retreats beyond the sea, no more discoveries, no more hopes. Here, then, a mighty work is to be fulfilled, or never, by the race of mortals. The man, who looks with tenderness on the sufferings of good men in other times; the descendant of the Pilgrims, who cherishes the memory of his fathers; the patriot, who

feels an honest glow at the majesty of the system of which he is a member; the scholar, who beholds with rapture the long-sealed book of unprejudiced truth expanded to all to read ; these are they by whom these auspices are to be accomplished. Yes, brethren, it is by the intellect of the country that the mighty mass is to be inspired, that its parts are to communicate and sympathize, its bright progress to be adorned with becoming refinements, its strong sense uttered, its character reflected, its feelings interpreted to its own children, to other regions, and to after ages.

Meantime, the years are rapidly passing away and gathering importance in their course. With the present year will be completed the half century from that most important era in human history, the commencement of our Revolutionary War. The jubilee of our national existence is at hand.

The space of time that has elapsed from that momentous date, has laid down in the dust, which the blood of many of them had already hallowed, most of the great men to whom, under Providence, we owe our national existence and privileges. A few still survive among us to reap the rich fruits of their labors and sufferings; and one has yielded himself to the united voice of a people, and returned in his age to receive the gratitude of the nation to whom he devoted his youth.

Welcome, friend of our fathers, to our shores! Happy are our eyes that behold those venerable features. Enjoy a triumph, such as never conqueror or monarch enjoyed, the assurance that throughout America there is not a bosom which does not beat with joy and gratitude at the sound of your name. You have already

met and saluted, or will soon meet, the few that remain of the ardent patriots, prudent counsellors, and brave warriors, with whom you were associated in achieving our liberty. But you have looked round in vain for the faces of many who would have lived years of pleasure on a day like this with their old companion in arms and brother in peril. Lincoln, and Greene, and Knox, and Hamilton, are gone; the heroes of Saratoga and Yorktown have fallen before the only foe they could not meet. Above all, the first of heroes and of men, the friend of your youth, the more

than friend of his country, rests in the bosom of the soil he redeemed. On the banks of his Potomac he lies in glory and peace. You will revisit the hospitable shades of Mount Vernon, but him whom you venerated as we did, you will not meet at its door. His voice of consolation, which reached you in the Austrian dungeons, cannot now break its silence, to bid you welcome to his own roof. But the grateful children of America will bid you welcome, in his name. Welcome, thrice welcome to our shores! and whithersoever throughout the limits of the continent your course shall take you, the ear that hears you shall bless you, the eye that sees you shall bear witness to you, and every tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, Welcome, welcome, Lafayette!

NORTHERN LABORERS.-C. C. Naylor.

THE gentleman has misconceived the spirit and tendency of northern institutions. He is ignorant of northern character. He has forgotten the history of his country. Preach insurrection to the northern laborers! Who are the northern laborers? The history of your country is their history. The renown of your country is their renown. The brightness of their doings is emblazoned on its every page. Blot from your annals the deeds and the doings of northern laborers, and the history of your country presents but a universal blank.

Who was he that disarmed the thunderer; wrested from his grasp the bolts of Jove; calmed the troubled ocean; became the central sun of the philosophical system of his age, shedding his brightness and effulgence on the whole civilized world; whom the great and mighty of the earth delighted to honor; who participated in the achievement of your independence; prominently assisted in moulding your free institutions, and the beneficial effects of whose wisdom will be felt to the last moment of "recorded time"? Who, I ask, was he? A northern labórer, a Yankee tallow-chandler's son, a printer's runaway boy!

And who, let me ask the honorable gentleman, who was he that,

in the days of our Revolution, led forth a northern army,—yes, an army of northern laborers, and aided the chivalry of South Carolina in their defence against British aggression, drove the spoilers from their firesides, and redeemed her fair fields from foreign invaders? Who was he? A northern laborer, a Rhode Island blacksmith, the gallant General Greene, who left his hammer and his forge, and went forth conquering and to conquer in the battle for our independence! And will you preach insurrection to men like these?

Our country is full of the achievements of northern laborers! Where are Concord, and Lexington, and Princeton, and Trenton, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill, but in the north? And what has shed an imperishable renown on the never-dying names of those hallowed spots, but the blood and the struggles, the high daring and patriotism, and sublime courage, of northern laborers? The whole north is an everlasting monument of the freedom, virtue, intelligence, and indomitable independence of northern laborers! Go, preach insurrection to men like these!

The fortitude of the men of the north, under intense suffering for liberty's sake, has been almost godlike! History has so recorded it. Who comprised that gallant army, that, without food, without pay, shelterless, shoeless, penniless, and almost naked, in that dreadful winter, the midnight of our Revolution,

whose wanderings could be traced by their blood-tracks in the snow, whom no arts could seduce, no appeal lead astray, no sufferings disaffect, but who, true to their country and its holy cause, continued to fight the good fight of liberty, until it finally triumphed? Who were these men? Why, northern laborers!

THE MILITIA OF THE REVOLUTION.-H. Hubbard.

No body of troops were more patriotic, no men were more ardent in the prosecution of the war of the Revolution, no men in the public service endured more or suffered more, no men were clothed less, fed less, or paid less than they were. In every point of view