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have been fulfilled. Has "the gloom" which, in the language of Adams, shrouded the 4th of July, 1776, given way on this 4th of July, 1860, "to those rays of ravishing light and glory" which he predicted? Has "the end," as he fondly believed it would do, proved thus far to be "more than worth all the means?" Most signally, so far as he individually was concerned. He lived himself to enjoy a more than Roman triumph, in the result of that day's transaction; to sign with his brother envoys the treaty of peace, by which Great Britain acknowl edged the independence of her ancient Colonies; to stand before the British throne, the first representative of the newly constituted Republic; and after having filled its second office in connection with him, who, whether in peace or in war, could never fill any place but the first, in office as in the hearts of his countrymen, - he lived to succeed to the great Chief, and closed his honored career, as the elective Chief Magistrate of those United States, whose independence he had done so much to establish; with the rare additional felicity at the last of seeing his son elevated to the same station.

But the life of an individual is but a span in the life of a Nation; the fortunes of individuals, for good or for evil, are but as dust in the balance, compared with the growth and prosperity or the decline and fall of that greatest of human Personalities, a Com

monwealth. It is, therefore, a more momentous inquiry, whether the great design of Providence, with reference to our beloved country, of which we trace the indications in the recent discovery of the Continent, the manner of its settlement by the civilized races of the earth, the Colonial struggles, the establishment of Independence, the formation of a constitution of republican government, and its administration in peace and war for seventy years, — I say, it is a far more important inquiry whether this great design of Providence is in a course of steady and progressive fulfilment, -marked only by the fluctuations, ever visible in the march of human affairs, and authorizing a well-grounded hope of further development, in harmony with its auspicious beginnings, or whether there is reason, on the other hand, to fear that our short-lived prosperity is already (as misgivings at home and disparagement abroad have sometimes whispered) on the wane, that we have reached, that we have passed the meridian, and have now to look forward to an evening of degeneracy, and the closing in of a rayless and hopeless night of political decline.

ou are justly shocked, fellow-citizens, at the bare statement of the ill-omened alternative; and yet the inquiry seems forced on us, by opinions that have recently been advanced in high places abroad. In a debate in the House of Lords, on the 19th of April,

on a question relative to the extension of the elective franchise in England, (the principle which certainly lies at the basis of representative government,) the example of the United States, instead of being held up for imitation in this respect, as has generally been the case, on the subject of popular reforms, was referred to as showing not the advantages but the evils of an enlarged suffrage. It was emphatically asserted or plainly intimated by the person who took the lead in the debate, (Earl Grey,) the son of the' distinguished author of the bill for the Reform of Parliament, whose family traditions therefore might be expected to be strongly on the side of popular right, that, in the United States, since the Revolutionary period, and by the undue extension of the right of suffrage, our elections have become a mockery, our legislatures venal, our courts tainted with party spirit, our laws cobwebs,' which the rich and poor alike break through, and the country, and the government in all its branches, given over to corruption, violence, and a general disregard of public morality.

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If these opinions are well founded, then certainly we labor under a great delusion in celebrating the National Anniversary. Instead of joyous chimes and merry peals, responding to the triumphant salvos which ushered in the day, the Fourth of July ought rather to be commemorated by funeral bells, and

minute-guns, and dead marches; and we, instead of assembling in this festal hall to congratulate each other on its happy return, should have been better found in sackcloth and ashes in the house of penitence and prayer.

I believe that I shall not wander from the line of remark appropriate to the occasion, if I invite you to join me in a hasty inquiry, whether these charges and intimations are well founded; whether we have thus degenerated from the standard of the Revolutionary age; whether the salutary checks of our system formerly existing have, as is alleged, been swept away, and our experiment of elective self-government has consequently become a failure; whether, in a word, the great design of Providence, to which I have alluded, in the discovery, settlement, political independence, and national growth of the United States, has been prematurely arrested by our perversity; or whether, on the contrary, that design is not, with those vicissitudes, and drawbacks, and human infirmities of character, and uncertainties of fortune, which beset alike the individual man and the societies of men, in the old world and the new,- in a train of satisfactory, hopeful, nay, triumphant and glorious fulfilment.

And in the first place I will say that, in my judg ment, great delicacy ought to be observed and much caution practised in these disparaging commentaries on the constitution, laws, and administrations of friendly

states; and especially on the part of British and American statesmen in their comments on the systems of their two countries, between which there is a more intimate connection of national sympathy than between any two other nations. I must say that, as a matter both of taste and expediency, these specific arraignments of a foreign friendly country had better be left to the public press. Without wishing to put any limit to free discussion, or to proscribe any expression of the patriotic complacency with which the citizens of one country are apt to assert the superiority of their own systems over those of all others, it appears to me that pungent criticisms on the constitutions and laws of foreign states, and their practical operation, supported by direct personal allusions to those called to administer them, are nearly as much out of place on the part of the legislative as of the executive branch of a government. On the part of the latter, they would be resented as an intolerable insult; they cannot be deemed less than offensive on the part of the former.

If there were no other objection to this practice, it would be sufficient, that its direct tendency is to recrimination; a warfare of reciprocal disparagement, on the part of conspicuous members of the legislatures of friendly states. It is plain that a parliamentary warfare of this kind must greatly increase

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