ard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Let history answer this question.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

AMERICAN LIBERTY IS REASONABLE AND JUST.

To the Anglo-Saxon mind, liberty is not apt to be the enthusiast's mountain nymph, with cheeks wet with morning dew, and clear eyes that mirror the heavens; but rather is she an old dowager lady, fatly invested in commerce and manufactures, and peevishly fearful that enthusiasm will reduce her establishment, and panics cut off her dividends.

Our political institutions, again, are but the body, of which liberty is the soul; their preservation depends upon their being continually inspired by the light and heat of the sentiment and idea whence they sprung, and when we timorously suspend, according to the latest political fashion, the truest and dearest maxims of our freedom to the call of expediency or threat of passion; when we convert politics into a mere game of interest, unhallowed by a single great or unselfish principle, we may be sure that our worst passions are busy "forging our fetters;" that we are proposing all those intricate problems which red republicanism so swiftly solves, and giving manifest destiny pertinent hints, to shout new anthems of atheism over victorious rapine.

The liberty which our fathers planted, and for which they sturdily contended, and under which they grandly conquered, is a rational, and temperate, but brave and unyielding freedom; the august mother of institutions; the hardy nurse of enterprise; the sworn ally of justice and order; a liberty that lifts her awful and rebuking face equally upon the cowards who would sell, and the braggarts who would pervert, her precious gifts of rights and obligations.

This liberty we are solemnly bound, at all hazards, to protect; at any sacrifice to preserve; and by all just means to extend, against the unbridled excesses of that ugly and brazen hag,

originally scorned and detested by those who unwisely gave her infancy a home, but which now, in her enormous growth and favored deformity, reels with blood-shot eyes, and dishevelled tresses, and words of unshamed slavishness, into halls where Liberty should sit enthroned.

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE.

AMERICAN RESPONSIBILITY MEASURED.

WHEN We reflect on what has been, and is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibleness of this republic to all future ages! What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence!

The Old World has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and end of all its own marvellous struggles in the cause of liberty. Greece, lovely Greece, "the land of scholars and the nurse of arms," where sister republics, in fair procession, chanted the praises of liberty and the gods, where and what is she? For two thousand years the oppressor has bound her to the earth. Her arts are no more.

The last sad relics of her temples are but the barracks of a ruthless soldiery; the fragments of her columns, and her palaces, are in the dust, yet beautiful in ruin. She fell not when the mighty were upon her. Her sons were united at Thermopyla and Marathon; and the tide of her triumph rolled back upon the Hellespont. She was conquered by her own factions. She fell by the hands of her own people. The man of Macedonia did not the work of destruction. It was already done, by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions.

Rome, republican Rome, whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun, where and what is she? The Eternal City yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The Malaria has but travelled in the paths worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have.

mourned over the loss of her empire. A mortal disease was upon her vitals before Cæsar had crossed the Rubicon. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was already begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The legions were bought and sold, but the people offered the tribute-money.

And where are the republics of modern times, which clustered round immortal Italy? Venice and Genoa exist but in name. The Alps, indeed, look down upon the brave and peaceful Swiss in their native fastnesses; but the guarantee of their freedom is in their weakness, and not in their strength. The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained. When the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country is too poor for plunder, and too rough for valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barriers, on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition; and Switzerland remains, with her simple institutions, a military road to fairer climates, scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors.

We stand the latest, and, if we fail, probably the last, experiment of self-government by the people. We have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppressions of tyranny. Our constitutions have never been enfeebled by the vices or luxuries of the Old World. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning,-simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect. Atlantic rolls between us and any formidable foe.

The

Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude and longitude, we have the choice of many products and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches, or may reach, every home. What fairer prospect of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created?

Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes and snuffed the breezes of both

oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the low lands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of Germany and the North, and, moving onward to the South, has opened to Greece the lessons of her better days.

Can it be that America, under such circumstances, can betray herself? that she is to be added to the catalogue of republics, the inscription upon whose ruins is, "They were, but they are not"? Forbid it, my countrymen! forbid it, Heaven!

I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are and all you hope to be, resist every project of disunion, resist every encroachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction.

I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are, whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short, which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too soon, if necessary in defence of the liberties of your country.

I call upon you, old men, for your counsels, and your prayers, and your benedictions. May not your gray hairs go down in sorrow to the grave with the recollection that you have lived in vain! May not your last sun sink in the west upon a nation of slaves!

No, I read in the destiny of my country far better hopes, far brighter visions. We who are now assembled here must soon be gathered to the congregation of other days. The time of our departure is at hand, to make way for our children upon the theatre of life. May God speed them and theirs! May he who, at the distance of another century, shall stand here to celebrate this day, still look upon a free, happy, and virtuous people! May he have reason to exult as we do! May he, with all the enthusiasm of truth, as well as of poetry, exclaim that here is still his country!

"Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil, serene amidst alarms;

Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms."

JOSEPH STORY.

AMERICAN LIBERTY ON A PERMANENT BASIS.

THE election of a chief magistrate by the mass of the people of an extensive community was, to the most enlightened nations of antiquity, an impossibility. Destitute of the art of printing, they could not have introduced the representative principle into their political systems even if they had understood it. In the very nature of things, that principle can only be coextensive with popular intelligence. In this respect the art of printing, more than any invention since the creation of man, is destined to change and elevate the political condition of society. It has given a new impulse to the energies of the human mind, and opens up new and brilliant destinies to modern republics, which were utterly unattainable by the ancients. The existence of a country population, scattered over a vast extent of territory, as intelligent as the population of the cities, is a phenomenon which was utterly and necessarily unknown to the free states of antiquity. All the intelligence which controlled the destiny and upheld the dominion of republican Rome was confined to the walls of the great city. Even when her dominion extended beyond Italy, to the utmost known limits of the inhabited world, the city was the exclusive seat both of intelligence and empire. Without the art of printing, and the consequent advantages of a free press, that habitual and incessant action of mind upon mind, which is essential to all human improvement, could no more exist among a numerous scattered population, than the commerce of disconnected continents could traverse the ocean without the arts of navigation. Here, then, is the source of our superiority and our just pride as a nation. The statesmen of the remotest extremes of the Union can converse together like the philosophers of Athens in the same portico, or the politicians of Rome in the same forum. Distance is overcome, and the citizens of Georgia and Maine can be brought to co-operate in the same great object, with as perfect a community of views and feelings as actuated the tribes of Rome in the assemblies of the people.

It is obvious that liberty has a more extensive and durable foundation in the United States than it ever has had in any