method to secure the rights of the citizen and to preserve order and tranquillity, was to strengthen the arm of government with every power which the people could be persuaded to surrender. Confident of their error, he resisted all such plans of government and secured that just distribution of power between the Federal Government, the States, and the people, which is above all things calculated to insure durability to our institutions.

To his humane and just principles are we indebted for the measure prohibiting the importation of slaves-then an alarming and a growing evil-always a curse-happily for our country, not of our own creation, but a wretched inheritance from those who had governed us before the revolution.

To his exertions was his native state indebted, and the rest of the world through her example, for the abolition of entails and of the principle of primogeniture. A reform designed to prevent, as far as human laws could prevent, those accumulations of wealth, and that growth of aristocracy, which had been in other countries and might be in this, so destructive to civil liberty. To these may be added the measure dissolving the unnatural union between church and state, and securing to every man the sacred privilege of worshipping his God according to his faith.

The three measures to which I have referred, were limited in their sphere of operation, but their importance is not therefore diminished-they lie at the very foundations of liberty in every country. And were the enlightened statesmen of Europe to incorporate these three principles with their constitutions and laws, we should no longer be referred to the premature convulsion of France and the stifled efforts of Piedmont, Naples, and Spain, as the sad evidences that Europe is not prepared for our liberal form of government. Indeed, we have already some indications of the silent but irresistible influence of one of these principles. The principle of primogeniture was abolished in France-such was the effect, that government became alarmed. At a late session of the cham

ber of deputies, the monarch recommended the restoration of the principle and the ministers advocated it; but the people resisted it—and the people triumphed. Happy will it be for France should they continue to triumph, but fatal to the power of the monarch.

Our country is largely indebted to the illustrious Jefferson, for having guided its councils in peace, and for having administered its government upon constitutional principles; next and next only, to the service rendered to a country by establishing a free and constitutional government, is the office of restoring it, after a lapse of years and an accumulation of power, (a result inevitable under every form,) to its original character and simplicity. He watched the growth of power with a jealous eye, and arrested its tide at the first flood. He brought legislation back within what he believed to be its constitutional boundaries, and restored power to its ancient distribution, between the government, the states and the people. He retired from the councils of the nation with his principles unchanged-power could not corrupt the man-nor its selfish sophistries seduce the philosopher and statesman-he retired from public life with the same confidence in the people, the same jealousy of power and the same reverence for the con

stitution.

He retired from office, but not to repose-he sought the shades of retirement-but not to resign himself like a Charles to Monkish superstition, not yet like others, who on leaving public life, seem at once to sink into oblivion," the world forgetting, by the world forgot." His ambition was not so selfish as to require the impulse of continued elevation-his life was devoted to the cause of mankind—and his labors were uniform, whether guiding the destinies of a nation, or seeking new lights amidst the speculations of philosophy. Freed from the anxieties of public life, he returned with all the alacrity of youthful ambition, to those paths of science from whence the public voice had called him. His evening was employed in explaining to his young countrymen the mysteries of sci

ence--and in analyzing the principles of philosophy. The stranger visited him as one among the few monuments our country could boast, and shared the simple but refined hospi tality of the Sage of Monticello. Near the close of his long and useful life, his physical powers gradually declined, but his vigorous mind retained all its faculties to the last. Sensible of his approaching dissolution, a day or two previous to our anniversary, he had communed with the members of his family, and directed that he should be buried without pomp or parade. The body had wasted away-but the energies of a powerful mind, struggling with expiring nature, kept the vital spark alive till the meridian sun shone on our 50th Anniversary--then content to die-the illustrious Jefferson gave to the world his last declaration. "I have done," said he, "for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God, my daughter to my country." He was buried according to his directions-without pomp-without parade-no cannon announced the funeral march to his tomb-no muffled drum's dead note-no dirge.--He was buried in all the simplicity becoming true greatness. He has followed a Washington and a Franklinwho with him will live in the gratitude of mankind, till the last of records shall have perished with the last of men.

There is perhaps, Fellow Citizens, no spectacle more in< structing or grateful to mankind, none more sublime, than that of a nation of freemen lamenting the loss of two such illustrious men; both of whom had directed the councils of their country, and both of whom had retired to the bosom of private society and to the condition of private life. It is a nation of freemen mourns, and for no monarchs dead; but for those whose names will outlive in fame the glorious diadem, and imperial name. We see not around us the solemn pomp and pageantry of the Court, nor the sullen sorrow of the benighted vassal-we hear not the wild cry of the Cossac, the Calmuc and the Tartar,—it is liberty and intelligence, morality and devotion, weeping at the tomb of patriotism.

But why should we mourn. Our countrymen have been taken from among us on the day which of all others they would have chosen for themselves on the only day when we should have been willing to part with them. Men never reaped on earth a harvest like theirs. They had lived to see the wilderness bloom with civilization-the hills and the vallies rejoicing—to see their country rising in power, wealth and population. They had seen the sons rivaling their gallant sires, and raising for themselves a monument rich with the inscriptions of naval and military glories. They had seen them engaged in four wars-with France, Tripoli, Algiers and England-and concluding all in triumph. The venerable Adams, who, fifty years ago, had seen one war commence with his neighbors' cottages blazing around him, with the slaughter of a brave but half armed yeomanry at Lexington, Concord and Breed's Hill, lived to see another war closed in a glorious triumph-to see the children avenge the father's wrongs, and the yeoman's blood avenged by yeoman's arms, on the plains of Orleans.

The illustrious Jefferson saw the great Valley of the West, pouring fourth her gallant legions in the public cause-and that new world which he had added to ours, become the theatre of our glory. They who had once seen this land in an infant, colonial and vassal condition, saw their country in less than half a century rising to the first rank among nations-nay (there is no vain glory in the truth) marching in the van of nations, the most powerful of all.The most powerful-for in this revolutionized age the power of a nation is not to be measured by population, armies and fleets; but by its moral power; and where is that nation boasting a moral power equal to that of twelve millions of freemen? Tell me not of England's power-it is unsubstantial-it is artificial and declining. It never can revive till the children shall share the father's inheritance, till man shall be permitted to worship his God according to his faith -till the three kingdoms shall be confederated on the basis

of equal rights and privileges-till Ireland, persecuted Ireland, shall enjoy civil and religious liberty. It never can revive till England ceases to waste her millions in carrying war and desolation to the remote and unoffending Indies, while in the heart of her own empire the quivering lips of poverty supplicate charity and pale visaged famine announces approaching dissolution. We say not these things in bitterness--nor in derision--we are friends, and I trust we shall long continue so. But we say them in the hope that the enlightened ministers of that country, rejecting all ancient superstitions, will proceed fearlessly onward in their march of reform, till the land from whence our forefathers sprung shall be refreshed and invigorated, and become as free and as happy as is the land of their adoption.

Our illustrious countrymen lived to see the principles they had advocated in '76, spreading through the world-to see the plant they had watered in the morning, ere their evening closed in darkness, lifting its top to the heavens, and spreading its branches and overshadowing countries beyond the Andes. They had seen the Proclamation of Independence waking the nations of the South, and refreshing them with light and liberty. They heeded not the cloud which passeth o'er Colombia; for they knew the rallying word of every patriot Colombian would be Union and the Constitution. They saw the banner of freemen floating on the walls of Athens--the spirit of Independence warring with the crescent and rousing the long slumbering Greek to arms. They lived to sympathize with the sufferings of that devoted country; for their own had once been the theatre of revolutionary calamities and they knew how to sympathize. Yes, Fellow Citizens, we, of more modern times, may sketch imaginary scenes of war and of oppression--but would we know them, we must appeal to those who shared in the war of our Independence--we must appeal to the veteran remnant of other days, whom I see near me, for they have seen and felt what it is impossible for us ever to realize. They have seen a