ting, as does no other nation, the laborer to detain enough in his possession to furnish himself and his household with the necessaries and luxuries of life. She has filled her hundred harbors with ships, and sent them forth, with the fleetness of the wind, on every sea and to every nation, to collect the treasures of the deep, or bear the treasures of both sea and land to other marts: till her tonnage competes with that of the most favored commercial nations, and her navy, the protectress of her commerce, rivals theirs. And she collects a revenue which, for the lightness of its burthen and its competency, may well render her the envy of nations perplexed with enormous expenditure, and impoverished with oppressive taxation.

View, next, our civil privileges. This, is the dwelling of freedom. This, the home of liberty. Exiled from other lands, she here has found a resting place. Nor is the freedom which marks our institutions of government a mere word, suited to swell a thoughtless declamation. Go ask the Turk, by what tenure he holds his possessions, his personal liberty, his life and he will tell you by the will of a Pacha, or the Grand Seignor. That is despotism; tyranny. The yeoman of this favored nation will tell you that he holds them by the will of God and unalienable right; that they are secured to him by his fellow-citizens, in a written bill of rights and constitution of authority which no power, legislative, judicial, or executive can violate. That is freedom: power emanating from the citizens; regulated by open compact, in which the majority.

through their agents, protect the individual in his
just rights, and restrain and punish offenders for the
good of the whole. This is our shield in the house
and by the way; our shelter of repose, through
every innocent occupation and enjoyment; the bond
of confidence, in our social intercourse and com-
mutations; the incentive to enterprize, in every
branch of honorable gain or preferment. In what
nation, unless in the fatherland of our ancestors,
will you find the citizens thus treated by govern-
ment as being equal in their rights; left free in their
intercourse with one another; or permitted to as-
pire to more elevated conditions than those of birth?
If you doubt your superior privileges, go hold as
tenants of European lords; surrender your freedom
of speech to the jealous espionage of kings; and
subject the liberty of your persons to the gendarme-
rie of
power.

Look, next, at our literary privileges. Vain were it indeed for us, in the infancy of our literary institutions and means, to boast a supremacy over the older institutions of Europe, with their distinguished patronage, their immense libraries, and their vast apparatus for scientific experiment and research. We can only assert that we are advancing towards rivalry. Yet this nation is fast rearing the edifice of her literary fame. She is rapidly multiplying her men of science and letters, and infusing into them the keenest ardor of research. Her writers, her orators, her poets, are already commanding the respect of other nations as well as elevating the genius of her own children. But on this survey,

it is my joy as an American to recognise that diffusion of privilege which, rather than accumulation, characterizes our happy country. Our institutions of learning are not designed for a select few: but, in the form of the college, academy and school, they are diffused through the several States, and bring the means of knowledge to every village and to the doors of almost every hamlet in the nation : and from the free and unshackled press, channels of instruction and intelligence are opened to the whole population through which knowledge is constantly circulating. How rare is that phenomenon at least in New-England, that is so common in other nations; an adult who cannot read! Yes: you may travel to an obscure cottage on some distant mountain, apparently secluded from all intercourse with the surrounding world; and yet its inmates shall show you, that they hold communion, in their thoughts, with every part of this nation, in her minute interests; with South America, in her revolutions; with Greece, in her struggles; with Europe, in her developing policy. Yes, that they hold converse with the dead of past ages; and they will tell you of the fall and rise of empires; or inspire you with the sentiments of illustrious writers. The traveller who visits us from foreign nations, acknowledges, with surprise, this happy diffusion of knowledge and intelligence: for he leaves a peasantry at home shut out from the avenues to learning-as ignorant, almost, of what is passing on the wide theatre of the world, as the cattle that graze upon the domains of their lords.

Survey, again, the religious privileges which enrich this nation. These in their very nature are heavenly privileges. They elevate man as a spiritual being. They resemble him to the moral image of his Maker and the angels. They bring him into communion with God on earth and prepare him for that communion in more exalted stations in eternity. And how richly are they enjoyed here! Not only in the volumes of divine truth, that are on the shelves of our habitations, and constantly spread before individuals and families the ways of present and eternal happiness; not only in those temples which elevate their spires towards heaven from the spacious cities and thousand villages of our territory, and weekly open their portals of praise and instruction for the pilgrim to eternity: but in that religious freedom and toleration which dawns on us as on no other nation, and leaves the friends of piety an open field for their benevolent labors; and in the presence of the Spirit of God in our churches, with his most signal gifts;-our last and best hope of elevating a triumphant standard against the irruptions of ungodliness.

We have thus far surveyed the bounty of God in the profusion of his gifts: let us now contemplate his watchful care over their preparation and trans

mission.

On the opening of the seventeenth century, but a little more than two hundred years since, the vast territory which now embraces the population of these United States, was one immense forest ; broken only by the silent bosom of the lake or the lonely

pathway of the river; inhabited by the savage and his game. At that time Great Britain claimed authority over it; disputed in the title, only by the States General of Holland. By all in that nation, it was regarded with great interest: by the king, as an accession to his dominions; by the capitalist, as a source of profitable investment; and by the adventurer, as a scene of hardy and industrious enterprise. Divided into North and South Virginia, and held by the two companies of Plymouth and London by patent from the king, it was prepared for the introduction upon its soil of the adventurous colonist who, from any motives, might choose to fix his residence here and plant the germ of a rising empire.

A colony of Englishmen under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, first landed as settlers on South Virginia. To North Virginia, the Puritans, exiled from their native land, or harassed in it, came; bearing in their breasts the sacred love of liberty and religion. These latter adventurers, (I confine myself to these, for their history is briefly the history of all, and soon merges itself in that of all,) these adventurers, while their ship was yet hovering on the coast, and before they disembarked, appointed a day of thanksgiving to that God who had conducted them safely across the ocean, and formed on that day a civil compact with each other that they should be ruled by the majority,-in which latter act they founded the liberties and union of a representative republic. When they landed, the germ of all our present prosperity lay concealed in their little socie