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performed can he ask, than to feel that the prosperity of this great nation has been entrusted to him, and that he has fulfilled the trust?

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Every true citizen has a right so to feel. He has filled his sphere he has given an example to the timid; has been a reproach to the corrupt. He has assisted in accomplishing the purposes of another cycle of time, as it rolled on to its eternal judgment. What, in comparison, are crowns and wreaths? What, to the satisfaction of a great political duty performed, is a triumphal procession with its train of languid slaves, its neighing steeds, its glittering display of beauty, arms, treasure!

If the citizen will look over the vast expanse of the continent, and, seeing everywhere the evidences of a high civilization, will remember that it is the growth of years, not of centuries; will recal the fact that this wonderful development is due to the application of a single principle, the right and the ability of man to govern himself; and will learn, from the Constitution. under which he lives, that to his care is entrusted that principle, his manhood must be aroused to meet and assist the great necessities of the times.

The crowded marts of commerce, the teeming cities, the plain and hill-side blooming under the skilful hand of man, the white sails dotting every lake and river, the energy that moves in every enterprize, speak to him with an eloquence and poetry so grand, so beautiful, so true, that he must respond in the performance of those acts which will sustain these efforts of the age, and keep in motion that high principle of progress which, on our shores, has found a development to cease only with time. Do we appreciate the position, perform the duties, enjoy the rewards? Do we, possessing the fullest liberty, know what it is to be free? Do we comprehend that the United States has established another fact in history, that republican liberty is compatible with good government ? Ask the victim of Austrian persecution, what is liberty of the martyrs to Napoleon's despotism on the pestilential shores of Cayenne, ask what is liberty: open the dungeons of the Neapolitan monster, and ask the noble souls there lingering in pain, what is liberty; and they will answer you by pointing to America. In our Revolution, they recognized the success of the principle. They sought to achieve it for themselves, in the very

efforts which have consigned them to the dungeon or to exile. Should not we who enjoy the blessing, appreciate it as fully as those who can only sigh for it? Should not their efforts to obtain it, make us all the more jealous of its care?

In the faithful performance of our duties, we discharge an obligation due to humanity. We are entrusted with a principle, whose preservation should be as dear to us as life and honor. When the Fathers announced it, they pledged to its success "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." That pledge was redeemed; the principle triumphed, and we to-day are living witnesses of their devotion. From this we learn to value our inheritance, and to perform the conditions upon which it is ours. When we forget by what tenure we hold this inheritance, we pronounce our own sentence of deprivation. But can it be that we shall ever forget? Is the victory of the Revolution to be sacrificed? Is the spirit of the Constitution to be thwarted? Are the glorious results of more than eighty years of freedom to be nullified? What say the men of America? Shall it be written in history that the last experiment of freedom failed, because the citizens of the re

public forgot their duties? It is not because we are prosperous, not because our growth has no parallel in the experience of centuries, not because our strength is greater than at any other period, that we are to defy the possibility of national ruin. It is for these very reasons that we are to guard more jealously than ever the bulwarks of our strength; that we are to avoid the false expediences that usurp the place of principle; that we are to inculcate the elemental truths upon which our government is based, and upon whose preservation depends our perpetuity as

a union.

Let us not boast of our strength. It is in the hour of success that the germ of decay is unfolded. It is in the day of prosperity that we should cling most firmly to that truth and virtue which sustained our patriot fathers, and made us free.

Men of America! Forget not your trust.' Liberty, battling everywhere with oppression, looks to you as her standard-bearers. See to it that no stain sullies the stars and stripes. See to it that the glorious emblem of our freedom waves ever from our shores, the signal of rescue and assistance to oppressed humanity. The genius of our institutions, in the name of that

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spirit of universal freedom before whose resistless presence the shackles of the slave fall off, and the man arises in the dignity of his nature, charges you to think of your privileges and your duties; to remember that Providence permitted you to exist as representatives of those great ideas which will one day vindicate their truth to the nations of the earth; to remember that your duty is to give these ideas that expansion and direction which their importance claims; to remember that liberty is unselfish, confined to no land, but belongs as a God-given right to every man that breathes; to remember, above all else, that, possessing liberty, it is your duty to protect it from the degrading contact with corruption at home, as well as against the attack of enemies from abroad. Make it a bright and burning light, an example to the nations, a reproach to despotism, an incentive to arouse the oppressed to vindicate their humanity.

And when, my countrymen, you have accomplished all this, you can claim, with just pride, descent from those patriot fathers whose lives were spent in stern conflict for great principles, whose deaths were blessed by the sweet consciousness of duty well performed. Then can you claim as your countryman, him whose

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