sisting in breaking down the entailments of landed estates, in destroying the right of primogeniture, and in establishing that religious freedom which enabled each individual to worship his God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and without being taxed to support a church, the mode of worship and principles of which his judgment did not approve. All these measures were designed and calculated to produce the great end "that the few should not rule and oppress the many." See the course of his administration; he made good all he promised. The general and state governments moved on harmoniously, each confined within its proper and constitutional sphere. At the end of eight years, he declined a re-election, and retired to his country seat in Virginia—even here he could not be idle; he could not live without toiling for his country— he entered on the establishment of the great central college, and labored as assiduously to rear and give it stability and permanency as he had done in establishing this Republic. He Fit employment for the statesman and philosopher. knew, full well, that liberty and knowledge were fond associates, and would dwell together, and that a well informed and virtuous people could not be made slaves. His house was the home of the men of science of all nations who visited our country. Did they wish to learn the peculiarities of our governments in their practical operations, who so fit to be enquired of as him, who of all others, had done most in giving to these operations their proper tendencies? and who, of all men living, best understood the genius of his countrymen were they anxious to learn whatever was strange and curious in the new world in the productions of nature, in him they found a philosopher who had already explored through the hidden recesses of her wondrous works, ready to communicate the information they desired. Our own countrymen, young and old, resorted to him as the Nestor of the age, to learn wisdom from the accents which fell from his tongue. The love of liberty, the rights of man, was his ruling passion. When laboring under his final and fatal illness, perhaps the last letter that the hand that penned your liberties ever wrote, he says" may it," (meaning our Independence) "be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the signal of arousing men to burst their chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and assume the blessings of security and self-government. The form we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion; all eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the lights of science has already laid open to every view, the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, to ride them legitimately by the grace of God."" ، He had seen the Spanish American Provinces break their chains, elevate themselves among the nations of the earth, and adopting our political institutions as their model. Mr. Jefferson died at that hour of the day, on the 4th of July last, on which he had been engaged fifty years before in reading to Congress, for their adoption, the Declaration of Independence the great Charter of our liberties: Fortunatemost fortunate man, to link together, at the same moment of time, immortality on earth with immortality beyond the grave. Mr. Adams, too, on the same day, and at that moment of it when our political fathers were proclaiming to the citizens assembled around the Capitol in Philadelphia, the result of their deliberations, breathed his last. Strange! wonderful coincidence of events! Is this the effect of accident and blind chance? Or has that God, who holds in his hands the destinies of nations and of men, designed these things as an evidence of the permanency and perpetuity of our institutions? Mr. Jefferson had expressed, a short time before his death, a strong desire that he might live, again to see that day. Mr. Adams, when he heard its rejoicings, exclaimed, "It is a great and glorious day." God seems to have granted to these favored men the privilege of ratifying and sealing, by their deaths the great deeds of their lives. They are gone to the grave; yet shall they live, and although their bodies perish, still in the recollection of their country will their deeds survive. Through all time, while liberty shall endure, will the awful peril of that moment be remembered, when a scattered people, few in number, proclaimed their dependence dissolved; and stood proudly forth among the nations of the earth. At home, hope and anticipation were on tiptoe; while abroad, it was every where maintained that man cannot rule himself, and quickly must their institutions fail-but, behold, fifty years have rolled over us and still happiness and prosperity go hand in hand along with us. In this we have cause of joy for this abundant cause of gratitude towards our fathers, whose exertions secured for us so rich an inheritance-be all their virtues remembered, their foibles and errors forgotten. What remains for us to do? See that lonely, venerable man, Charles Carroll of Carrollton; of all the patriarchs, who sealed our Independence, he alone remains-he has lived so long in this world, that he has become a stranger in it-when he asks for the companions of his early life, who toiled and la bored with him for his country's good; when he surveys the labors of the Congress of 1776, and enquires for its mighty actors, all, all are gone, and he is left alone.-Now, even now, he is saying, "age is on my tongue, my eyes are dim, my soul has failed, and memory fails on my mind; I hear the call of years; roll on ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your course; let the tomb open, for my strength has failed-the sons of freedom are gone to rest." For him, my friends, let us indulge in one fond wish, that his life may be lengthened out so long as it can be comfortable to him—and at last, on some future 4th of July, he, like those whose deaths we this day commemorate, may make his exit from this world, and that his immortal spirit may take its flight to the realms on high, where may he meet his old companions and friends, hailing and welcoming him to these mansions of eternal rest for this end, let a prayer-hearing and prayergranting God be now addressed. |