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attempted by them; that even now our counsels and acts will operate as powerful precedents in this great family of republics; we learn the importance of the post which Providence has assigned us in the world. A wise and harmonious administration of the public affairs—a faithful, liberal, and patriotic exercise of the private duties of the citizen-while they secure our happiness at home, will diffuse a healthful influence through the channels of national communication, and serve the cause of liberty beyond the equator and the Andes. When we show a united, conciliatory, and imposing front to their rising states, we show them, better than sounding eulogies can do, the true aspect of an independent republic. We give them a living example that the fireside policy of a people is like that of the individual man. As the one, commencing in the prudence, order, and industry of the private circle, extends itself to all the duties of social life, of the family, the neighborhood, the country, so the true domestic policy of the republic, beginning in the wise organization of its own government, pervades its territories with a vigilant, prudent, temperate administration, and extends the hand of cordial interest to all the friendly nations, especially to those which are of the household of liberty.

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It is in this way that we are to fulfil our destiny in the world. The greatest engine of moral power known to human affairs, is an organized, prosperous state. All that man, in his individual capacity, can do all that he can effect by his private fraternities, by his ingenious discoveries and wonders of art, or by his influence over others is as nothing, compared with the collective, perpetuated influence on human affairs and human happiness, of a well-constituted, powerful commonwealth. It blesses generations with its sweet influence; even the barren earth seems to pour out its fruits under a system where rights and property are secure, while her fairest gardens are blighted by despotism. Nature enters into a beautiful accord, a better, purer asiento, with man, and guides. an industrious citizen to every rood of her smiling wastes. We see, at length, that what has been called a state of nature, has been most falsely, calumniously so denominated; 17

VOL. I.

that man is in his nature neither a savage, a hermit, nor a slave, but a member of a well-ordered family, a good neighbor, a free citizen, a well-informed, good man, acting with others like him. This is the lesson which is taught in the charter of our independence; this is the lesson which our example ought to teach the world.

EULOGY ON ADAMS AND JEFFERSON."

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS :

WE are assembled, beneath the canopy of the Sweeping heavens, under the influence of feelings in which the whole family of Americans unites with us. We meet to pay a tribute of respect to the revered memory of those to whom the whole country looks up as to its benefactors; to whom it ascribes the merit of unnumbered public services, and especially of the inestimable service of having led in the councils of the revolution. It is natural that these feelings, which pervade the whole American people, should rise into peculiar strength and earnestness in your hearts. In meditating upon these great men, your minds are unavoidably carried back to those scenes of suffering and of sacrifice into which, at the opening of their arduous and honored career, this town and its citizens were so deeply plunged. You cannot but remember that your fathers offered their bosoms to the sword, and their dwellings to the flames, from the same spirit which animated the venerable patriarchs whom we now deplore. The cause they espoused was the same which strewed your streets with ashes, and drenched your hill-tops with blood. And while Providence, in the astonishing circumstances of their departure, seems to have appointed that the revolutionary age of America should be closed up by a scene as illustriously affecting as its commencement was disastrous and terrific, you have justly felt it your duty — it has been the prompt dictate of your feelings —

Delivered at Charlestown, 1st of August, 1826, in commemoration of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who died on the 4th of July preceding.

to pay, within these hallowed precincts, a well-deserved tribute to the great and good men to whose counsels, under God, it is in no small degree owing, that your dwellings have risen from their ashes, and that the sacred dust of those who fell rests in the bosom of a free and happy land.

It was the custom of the primitive Romans to preserve in the halls of their houses the images of all the illustrious men whom their families had produced. These images are supposed to have consisted of a mask exactly representing the countenance of each deceased individual, accompanied with habiliments of like fashion with those worn in his time, and with the armor, badges, and insignia of his offices and exploits; all so disposed around the sides of the hall as to present, in the attitude of living men, the long succession of the departed; and thus to set before the Roman citizen, whenever he entered or left his house, the venerable array of his ancestors revived in this imposing similitude. Whenever, by a death in the family, another distinguished member of it was gathered to his fathers, a strange and awful procession was formed. The ancestral masks, including that of the newly deceased, were fitted upon the servants of the family, selected of the size and appearance of those whom they were intended to represent, and drawn up in solemn array to follow the funeral train of the living mourners, first to the market-place, where the public eulogium was pronounced, and then to the tomb. As he thus moved along, with all the great fathers of his name quickening, as it were, from their urns, to enkindle his emulation, the virtuous Roman renewed his vows of respect to their memory, and his resolution to imitate their fortitude, frugality and patriotism.*

Fellow-citizens, the great heads of the American family are fast passing away; of the last, of the most honored, two are now no more. We are assembled, not to gaze with awe on the artificial and theatric images of their features, but to contemplate their venerated characters, to call to mind their invaluable services, and to lay up the image of their virtues

* Polyb. Historiar. Lib. VI. pp. 495, 496, ed. Casaubon.

in our hearts. The two men who stood in a relation in which no others now stand to the whole Union, have fallen. The men whom Providence marked out among the first of the favored instruments to lead this chosen people into the holy land of liberty, have discharged their high office, and are no more. The men whose ardent minds prompted them to take up their country's cause, when there was nothing else to prompt, and every thing to deter them; the men who afterwards, when the ranks were filled with the brave and resolute, were yet in the front of those brave and resolute ranks; the men who were called to the helm, when the wisest and most sagacious were needed to steer the newlylaunched vessel through the broken waves of the unknown sea; the men who, in their country's happier days, were found most worthy to preside over the Union they had so powerfully contributed to rear into greatness, these men

are now no more.

They have left us not singly, and in the sad but accustomed succession appointed by the order of nature; but having lived, acted, and counselled, and risked all, and triumphed and enjoyed together, they have gone together to their great reward. In the morning of life-without previous concert, but with a kindred spirit—they plunged together into a conflict which put to hazard all which makes life precious. When the storm of war and revolution raged, they stood side by side, on such perilous ground, that, had the American cause failed, though all else had been forgiven, they were of the few whom an incensed empire's vengeance would have pursued to the ends of the earth. When they had served through their long career of duty, forgetting the little that had divided them, and cherishing the great communion of service, and peril, and success, which had united them, they walked in honorable friendship the declining pathway of age; and now they have sunk down together in peace. Time, and their country's service, a like fortune and a like reward, united them; and the last great scene confirmed the union. They were useful, honored, prosperous, and lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided.

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