part of the republic. And there is not in this nation, a school, a college, a seminary; a court, a bank, an association of men, that is not based on the presumption, that a state of sound morals will exist in the nation, and that elevated integrity is the very safeguard, the life-blood of the republic. The man without principle, then, is our foe. Be he in high or low life; be he rich or be he poor; be he clothed with office, or be he a voter simply at a ward election; he is the enemy of his country; and a more direct and deadly enemy, though less mighty, than all the armies of Europe can be ;-as the poisonous worm at the heart of a tree, is a more deadly enemy to its growth --small as he may be--than all the storms and winds of heaven. (5.) A fifth thing indispensable to the perpetuity of our freedom, is a due respect for the laws of the land. Our maxim here, is, that the laws must reign; and the majority must govern. Neither by standing armies, nor by a mob-whose existence and doings would be equally fatal to liberty-are we to be governed. The great principle, unknown in ancient times, that the will of the majority is to govern, is perhaps the fundamental principle of this republic. The friends of despotism are laboring to establish the maxim, that the will of an individual, is to be the rule, to which the mass of mind is to be subject. Ancient dynasties were founded on the maxim, that the decisions of a successful military chieftain were to constitute the law; modern dynasties, in the maxim, that that law is to be sought in the will of a hereditary prince, be he a wise man, or be he a fool. Between these views and our own, is the great struggle on the subject of the government of mankind. Our views are settled; and they are proclaimed to the world. They were solemnly adopted by the little band who came to Plymouth. Before they landed on that rock, where they were to lay the foundations of this mighty empire, they entered into a social compact, where this was the leading principle, that the will of the majority was to be law. It was a principle, till then, never fully acted on; never formally recognised in legislation. They adhered to it; they acted on it; they insisted on it as indispensable to their rights. When they could no longer secure it by fair and just representation; when the British people claimed the right of taxing them without their consent, they resisted. It was but carrying out the principle which had been adopted before the Plymouth colony landed; and Divine Providence now so ordered it, that it stood forth fair and bright as the sun in the heavens, shedding its beams across the ocean and through the world, that the will of the majority fairly represented, should be law. In this western world, it was to be held as firm as the granite of our everlasting hills; and was to be laid at the foundation of all our institutions. The declara tion of independence proclaimed it to all nations; the war of the revolution proclaimed it; the eloquence of the revolutionary congress proclaimed it; the thunder of the cannon proclaimed it in battle; the dying groans of patriots proclaimed it; and the shouts and paeans of victory proclaimed it to the wide world. To-day, we with our countrymen proclaim it; and it is the living sentiment in the bosom of every true American citizen, that the law, the expressed will of the majority, is to rule. And it must be so. fluctuation of a mob. ing and restless sea. We have too grave interests ever to be settled by the so great questions to settle, as here. The north and the south by nature have been thrown into rivalship, and the difference of interests, and population, and character, produce a constant tendency to alienation and hostili ty; the conflicting interests of coinmerce and manufactures, the question of peace and war; the great interests of public education, of morality, and religion, are all intrusted to the guardianship of the people. It is not enough that principles in regard to them are once settled and determined. Every thing here is to be examined, and re-examined. There is a tendency to re-investigate all that has at any time been supposed to have been established; a restlessness, a feverish excitement, growing in part out of the circumstances in which we are placed, and in part from the peculiar nature of the population which the heaving waves, and agitations of the old world have cast upon these western shores.-It is not sufficient, therefore, that these have been settled principles of policy, and of morals at any one period of our history. In each succeeding generation, and almost in each year, these subjects will be re-examined, and these grave questions come again for dicision before the people.-It cannot be done by a mob. It cannot be done by popular excitement. It is to be done by public virtue; by a respect for the laws; by intelligence; and by saturating the community with the principles of stern and lofty patriotism. (6.) A sixth thing on which the preservation of our liberties depends is, the just exercise of the right of suffrage. Such is the genius of our institutions, and such the the strifes of party, that it is to be a settled maxim in this land, that all have a right to vote. Not only our native born citizens, but all the foreigners that may choose to come among us, will claim, and will exercise this power. Of this, we do not complain. The remark which I am making is, that our liberty depends on the intelligent and virtuous exercise of this right. Our children should be trained to it; and the foreigner, we should meet on our shore, with the smile of welcome, and the hand of kind ness, and endeavor to imbue him with the true spirit of our institutions. On all sides, in all cities, towns, villages and families, there should arise a set of institutions designed to secure and extend the full benefits of the elective franchise. Every independent, and well conducted newspaper does it. Every copy of the constitution that is circulated does it. Every copy of the "Federalist" that all our booksellers can distribute docs it. Every Bible that you circulate does it. Every common school that you can establish is doing just so much to defeat the plans of cunning and intriguing office seekers. But let the right of suffrage be connected with ignorance; with mad and raging passion; with the mere excitement of party; with taverns and dram-shops; and we may soon bid "farewell, a long farewell to all our greatness." Let the intelligent and the virtuous abandon the polls, and we abandon the ark of our liberty. Every virtuous man is bound to vote always, by all his love to his own principles; by his love to his family; by his love of country; by his love of intelligent freedom every where; by the memory of his father's and by his higher obligations to heaven. blood; (7.) A seventh thing requisite to maintain our liberties, is to cultivate the spirit of our fathers in regard to the defence of our rights. Not the love of war in itself--for they loved it not, and sought it not, while forbearance was a virtue; not the love of military glory, and the pomp and circumstance of battle, for the sake of conquest--for we have territory enough, and need not seek to enlarge our boundaries; but the firm and manly spirit of 1776, when men were willing to lay down their lives in their country's welfare. Much as every virtuous mind must abhor the common principles on which wars have been conducted; deeply as the heart must be pained at the 'recital of battles and the tales of blood; and earnestly as every lover of his race must desire, that the time may come, when nations shall learn war no more, yet the principles of our fathers on this subject we must cherish as indispensible to freedom. We hold a trust for countless millions to come after us; and a trust for mankind, and no ruthless hand of an invader may wrest it from us. In defence of that trust, if need be, we should be ready to tread the field of battle, and to lay down our lives. One of the leading lessons which we are to inculcate in our children is, that this charter of freedom is not to be wrested from them. They are to hold it, even in the grasp of death; and against a world in arms. American freedom is to be defended, by the best blood and treasure of the nation; and by all the aids which the God of nations has put so lavishly in our power. I fear, indeed, that there may be some danger in this nation, of directing the attention too much to military renown. There may be on this anniver sary too exclusive attention besstowed on the deeds of the revolution. There may be too much reference to carnage and to blood. We should not undervalue the services of those lofty minded men; and we should never forget the scenes at Lexington, and Trenton, and Brandywine, and Saratoga, and Yorktown. But there may be danger of overlooking the comparatively tranquil scenes where the master spirits of the revolution thought, and deliberated, and laid the plan of independence. In the State House, in this city there was more, far more, to attract the eye, and to fill the mind with admiration--more that was lofty in intellect, pure in patriotism, elevated in devotion to country, and grand in conception, than there was in any battle of the revolution ;—more, far more, than was at Leuctra, or Marathon, or Pharsalia, or Waterloo. There is a glare and glitter about military glory that dazzles the eye; but it is an admiration rather fitted for monarchies, than republics. Our glory lies in the peaceful scenes of agriculture and the mechanic arts; in our schools and churches, and lyceums, in the wisdom of our counsels, and in the native grandeur of our magnificent scenery, rather than in the laurels of the conqueror, or the garments of the warrior rolled in blood. (8.) I add, that our defence lies in the protection of the God of heaven. So our fathers felt; and so every sober minded man must feel. God is the sovereign of the nations. His own right hand conducted us to freedom; and his holy arm hath gotten for us the victory. Never was divine interposition more manifest, than in the war of independence; never more signal than since. Our safety lies still in his hands. Our liberty is to be secured by the prevalence of the fear of his name; his love; his worship; his laws; and by those great moral principles which a consciousness of his sovereignty, alone can originate and perpetuate among a people. A nation of atheists could not be long free. The sentiments of atheism are incompatible with Jiberty. Once it was tried-tried in the most intelligent, and refined nation in Europe. The result was seen in the groans, and gore, of millions. A nation bled; and from the awful horrors of the scene, refuge has been sought in the arms of monarchy. One thing is true, we know no such liberty as that founded on the prevalence of atheisn. Our fathers knew it not; our institutions know it not; and with it our freedom could not exist. Our independence was commenced in the fear of God; it is to be perpetuated in the same way, or not at all. It only remains, now, that I ask your attention to a few remarks on the bearing of the principles of temperance on all this. We have felt in common with 1,500,000 of our fellow citizens, that the preservation of our liberties, and all our immunities depends on the prevalence of the sound principles of abstinence from all that intoxicates, and makes mad the brain. And feeling that intemperance has made more enlistments to its ranks on this day than any other in the year, we have chosen to observe this anniversary on the principles which we conceive to be in accordance with the sober and virtuous tendencies of our institutions. Our liberty depends on the exclusive possession by the people of the fee simple to the soil. Yet who can long be secure of this, but the men of temperance? Is it not every where known that the habits of intemperance tend to the loss of that right; and that an intemperate man soon ceases to be a freeholder? Do not titles, and deeds, pass soon into the hands of others, when this vice seizes with a giant's force a man? And does not many a farm, cleared and cultivated when the man was a sober man, many a farm necessary to the welfare of the man and his family, pass every day from the hands of the drunkard into the hands of the already rich. Our freedom rests on securing the avails of honest industry. The man who will not work, I repeat, is the enemy of his country. But what is the effect of intemperance? Can any one be ignorant that it spreads idleness every where? That every man who is intemperate, becomes of course an idle man? And can any one be ignorant that this vice, more than all others, exposes a man to the certainty, that all his property will be wrested from him? The avails of former industry, where do they go when a man becomes intemperate? To the dram seller; to the tavern keeper; to the manufacturer of poison, thus living upon the avails of the toil of their neighbors; sustained in the destruction of the estates of others; and rioting on the spoils which they have secured by spreading the causes of temptation, and pouring forth poison to destroy the intellect and the moral sense of the community. The avails of toil thus pass into other hands; intemperance produces idleness and the loss of property; and thus strikes a blow at the very pillars of our liberty. Our freedom depends on the prevalence of intelligence. But is any man ignorant that the mass of mind cannot be enlightened unless that mass can be kept within the bounds of soberness? Can any one be ignorant that a common school cannot be kept up in an intemperate neighborhood, and that the prevalence of this vice would break up all the lyceums, and institutes, and colleges, and seminaries, in the land? Our liberty depends on sound morality, and who can be ignorant that this is dependent on the prevalence of the principle of temperance? Already it is ascertained that not less than nine-tenths of all the crimes in this nation C |