EULOGY,

PRONOUNCED AT HALLOWELL, MAINE,

July, 1826.

BY PELEG SPRAGUE.

Ir is good for us to be here. We are assembled to pay our tribute of respect to the memory of distinguished benefactors; to indulge in recollections of exalted virtues and resplendent talents devoted to the service of our country and of mankind. ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more! They, whose names are associated with all that belongs to us-are intertwined with whatever is dear in the recollections of youth, and all that is valuable in the possessions of manhood -which were pronounced with reverence by trembling age, and lisping infancy; and admired throughout the civilized world—they have passed away-the shroud, the coffin, and the hearse have received them; the long train has followed them in sable, solemn silence, and the tomb has echoed to the hollow tread of the mourners !

To do justice to one such man would far transcend my feeble powers. How doubly impossible where both are combined! If the task you have assigned me required this, I should indeed shrink from it in despair. But we are assembled to do them homage, not in the vain expectation of adding to their glory, but to obey the impulse of our own feelings, and to prove that we appreciate, and are worthy to retain the blessings we have derived from them. The occasion does not call for the minutiae of their lives and characters, and I shall attempt only, in a humble manner, to dwell, for a few moments, on their prominent features, and present

in connexion some plain reflections upon the nature, extent, and effects of their labors.

We inquire not who were the progenitors of such men.No ancestry could add to that lustre, which will gild their descendants for ages to come.

As their celebrity is derived from their intellect, it would be most interesting, if time permitted, to trace the early cultivation and the whole training of their minds. Both received their education at public colleges, and both studied the profession of the law.

Mr. ADAMS made such distinguished progress in this profession that, at an early age, the office of Chief Justice of his native State was tendered to him; but he declined its acceptance. His successful defence of the British officers tried for murder at the time of the Boston massacre, when popular indignation against them had been excited almost to fury, shows at once his power and independence of mind, and his high sense of justice and professional duty.

Mr. JEFFERSON rendered a most important service to his State, by aiding in the revisal of all the Colonial and British statutes in force in Virginia, and reducing them, with a part of the comon law, to one code. He divested them of their aristocratical features and feudal barbarisms; and by abolishing entails, and the rights of primogeniture, decreed the equal distribution of estates among children-the true agrarian law of republics, beneath which the greatest masses of wealth soon melt away.

Their course of legal study and professional exertion was admirably adapted to prepare them both for their destined career; to strengthen, enlarge and liberalize the mind; to give clear views of natural rights, and the violations of them by human institutions. I know it is said that this profession tends to narrow and contract the sphere of thought. It does so, where the attention is fixed with microscopic vision, upon its rigid forms and the artificial processes of mere technichal deduction; where precedents, like the decrees of Fate, de

mand a blind submission, and inveterate absurdities are bowed down to, with superstitious awe, which holds the intellect in bondage, and shrinks from improvement as impiety. But those of whom we speak regarded law in its true exalted character; the rule of human action founded on right and reason, designed for the security and happiness of all rational beings the fountain of all human societies and human enjoyment. Its origin and its objects: the foundation and the fabric, were by them viewed with a comprehensive eye, and examined with an unyielding scrutiny; calling into exercise the most enlarged comprehension and the most vigorous grasp of intellect.

In 1770, Mr. Adams began his political career as representative from the town of Boston. In 1774, being elected to the council, he had the honor of being negatived by Governor GAGE on account of his political conduct.

Mr. Jefferson was scarcely more than twenty-one years of age when he was elected a member of the legislature of Virginia. Thus, like the father of his country, he was called early into the public service. While they were yet scarcely hardened into manhood, to Washington as a military commander, Virginia entrusted the lives of her citizens and the safety of her frontier; and Jefferson mingled his counsels among the reverend and the grave in her halls of legislation. Such was the policy of Virginia, which has nourished her great men, and clustered around her so many brilliant names, and gave her, for a time, such preponderating sway in the national council. Whenever a new luminary was discovered emerging from her horizon, she scattered no mists of prejudice nor clouds of distrust before him, but courted his earliest beams and gloried in his meridian splendor.

Adams and Jefferson in the colonial assemblies of Massachusetts and Virginia, and in the Continental Congress, were among the earliest and most strenuous opposers of Brit ish aggression. They were conspicuously active in the measures which led to, and maintained our Independence. They

knew well the magnitude of the undertaking, but they knew also the immense importance of our severance from the mother country. They early foresaw that it was to be a contestof blood; but they saw too that the object was worth all the cost of sacrifices and dangers, through which it was to be attained. It is for the essential part they took in the great work of our Revolution that we owe them our profoundest gratitude. A work, the magnitude of which, cannot be exaggerated-its value can never be estimated.

There are those indeed, who, dazzled by the glory of Britain, are apt to think that there is nothing so forbidding in a connexion with her, and that there could not be much danger under the dominion of so brave, so free, and refined a nation. We may concede to them all that is asked for her arts, her literature, and her science; for the measured freedom which she enjoys, and the watchfulness and vigor with which she guards and maintains her rights. But we are not to forget the principles of human nature, and that history and observation teach us that those who are most jealous of their own freedom, are often the most ready to bind the yoke and wield the lash of servitude upon others. The refined Athenian and the lofty Roman had their slaves, and the invincible Spartans, their helots; and even in a portion of our own thrice blessed country, we see the high-minded, the free, and the chivalric, holding their fellow men in bondage. But why do we seek other illustrations when the example of Britain herself is before us? Look at her treatment of her colonies, hardly excepting even those now remaining on this side the Atlantic, from whose poverty she can filch no wealth, and who, being contiguous to us and in full view of our unrestrained happiness, are held by so feeble a tie, that, if she attempt to straighten, she must sunder it.

Look at Ireland-whose green fields have been scorched by oppression, and where the fruits of Heaven are blasted by the breath of man! See her emaciated sons; with starvation on the one hand, and the gibbet on the other-they

crawl into their low, mud-built huts to carry to famishing children only a communion of wretchedness! Look at India-where Ambition has reddened his hands in the blood of millions; and Rapine has rioted on their spoils !-where Avarice has been sent to glean the fields which War and Desolation had reaped !

I trust that I speak from no prejudice, much less from any narrow spirit of hostility towards England. But I would have you appreciate the freedom you enjoy, and the merits of those who gave it. I know that much, very much, of the wrong, which Britain inflicts upon others, results inevitably from her own condition. Her sense of justice yields to the necessities of her own excessive population. But this renders not her connexion the less disastrous. The Lion is indeed of noble nature, but when his own whelps cry out for hunger, let all beware of his embrace.

It is mere delusion to suppose that we should have escaped the deadly effects of England's unrestrained dominion, if our fathers had not resisted. Had they yielded to her claim of right" to bind us in all cases whatsoever," it is vain to say that our Independence would only have been for a short time delayed. She would have bound our infant-giant limbs in fetters, and stinted them forever of their fair proportions. Our people would not have multiplied as now-our commerce would not have covered every sea, nor our extended fields gloried in their harvests;-but the forest would still have frowned around us, and poverty, and weakness, and dependence have been our portion. This is the thraldom-such are the miseries from which Adams and Jefferson have redeemed and honored and blessed be their names forever.

us,

The Continental Congress was the theatre of their severest trials and highest glory. Among the measures of that august assembly, the Declaration of our Independence stands preeminent. Every thing connected with it excites deep and acute interest. The motion "that these States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent," was made by Rich