and whose daily discipline is duty, can, upon solemn debate, make its option to be faithless-can dare to act what des. pots dare not avow, what our own example evinces, the states of Barbary are unsuspected of. No, let me rather make the supposition, that Great Britain refuses to execute the treaty after we have done every thing to carry it into effect. Is there any language of reproach, pungent enough to express your commentary on the fact? What would you say, or rather what would you not say? Would you not tell them, wherever an Englishman might travel, shame would stick to him—he would disown his country. You would exclaim, England proud of your wealth, and arrogant in the possession of power-blush for these distinctions, which be. come the vehicles of your dishonor. Such a nation might truly say to corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister. We should say of such a race of men, their name is a heavier burden than their debt.

EXTRACT FROM AN ORATION,

DELIVERED BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF CAMBRIDGE, 1824.

BY EDWARD EVERETT.

It may be objected, and it has been, that for want of a hereditary government, we lose that powerful spring of action which resides in the patronage of such a government, and must emanate from the crown. With many individ uals, friendly to our popular institutions, it is nevertheless an opinion, that we must consent to lose something of the genial influence of princely and royal patronage on letters and arts, and find our consolation in the political benefits of our free system. It may be doubted, however, whether this view be not entirely false. A crown is in itself a strip of velvet set with jewels; the dignity which it imparts and the honor with which it is invested, depend on the numbers, resources, and the intelligence of the people who permit it to be worn. The crown of the late emperor of Hayti, is said to have been one of the most brilliant in the world; and Theodore of Corsica, while confined for debt in the Fleet in London, sat on as high a throne as the king of England. Since then the power and influence of the crown are really in the people, it seems preposterous to say, that what in, creases the importance of the people can diminish the effect of that, which proceeds from them, depends upon them, and reverts to them. Sovereignty, in all its truth and efficacy, exists here, as much as ever it did at London, at Paris, at Rome, or at Susa. It exists, it is true,

in an equal proportionate diffusion; a part of it belongs to the humblest citizen. The error seems to be in confounding the idea of sovereignty, with the quality of an individual sovereign. Wheresoever Providence gathers into a nation the tribes of men, there a social life, with its energies and functions, is conferred; and this social life is sovereignty. By the healthful action of our representative system, it is made to pervade the empire like the air; to reach the farthest, descend to the lowest, and bind the distant together; it is made not only to co-operate with the successful and assist the prosperous, but to cheer the remote, 'to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken.' Before the rising of our republic in the world, the faculties of men have had but one weary pilgrimage to perform-to travel up to court. By an improvement on the Jewish polity, which enjoined on the nation a visit thrice a year to the holy city; the great, the munificent, the enlightened states of the ancient and modern world have required a constant residence on the chosen spot. Provincial has become another term for inferior and rude; and unpolite, which once meant only rural, has got to signify, in all our languages, something little better than barbarous. But since, in the nature of things, a small part only of the population of a large state can, by physical possibility, be crowded within the walls of the city, and there receive the genial beams of metropolitan favor, it follows that the great mass of men are cut off from the operation of some of the strongest excitements to exertion. It is rightfully urged then, as a great advantage of our system, that the excitements of society go down as low as its burdens, and search out and bring forward whatsoever of ability and zeal are comprehended within the limits of the land. This is but the beginning of the benefit, or rather it is not yet the benefit. It is the effect of this diffusion of privileges that is precious. Capacity and opportunity, the twin sisters, who can scarce subsist but with cach other, are now brought together. The people

who are to choose, and from whose number are to be chosen, by their neighbors, the highest offices of state, infallibly feel an impulse to mental activity; they read, think, and compare; they found village schools, they collect social libraries, they prepare their children for the higher establishments of education. The world, I think, has been abused on the tendency of institutions perfectly popular. From the ill-organized states of antiquity, terrific examples of licence and popular misrule are quoted, to prove that man requires to be protected from himself, without asking who is to protect him from the protector, himself also a man. While from the very first settlement of America to the present day, the most prominent trait of our character has been to cherish and diffuse the means of education. The village school-house, and the village church, are the monuments, which the American people have erected to their freedom; to read, and write, and think, are the licentious practices, which have characterized our democracy.

But it will be urged, perhaps, that, though the effect of our institutions be to excite the intellect of the nation, they excite it too much in a political direction; that the division and subdivision of the country into states and districts, and the equal diffusion throughout them of political privileges and powers, whatever favorable effect in other ways they may produce, are attended by this evil,-that they kindle a political ambition, where it would not and ought not to be felt ; and particularly that they are unfriendly in their operation on literature, as they call the aspiring youth, from the patient and laborious vigils of the student, to plunge prematurely into the conflicts of the forum. It may, however, be doubted, whether there be any foundation whatever for a charge like this; and whether the fact, so far as it is one, that the talent and ambition of the country incline, at present, to a political course, be not owing to causes wholly unconnected, with the free character of our institutions. It need not be said that the administration of the government of a country,

whether it be liberal or despotic, is the first thing to be provided for. Some persons must be employed in making and administering the laws, before any other interest can receive attention. Our fathers, the pilgrims, before they left the vessel, in which for five months they had been tossed on the ocean, before setting foot on the new world of their desire, drew up a simple constitution of government. As this is the first care in the order of nature, it ever retains its paramount importance. Society must be preserved in its constituted forms, or there is no safety for life, no security for property, no permanence for any institution civil, moral or religious. The first efforts then of social men are of necessity political. Apart from every call of ambition, honorable or selfish, of interest enlarged or mercenary, the care of the government is the first care of a civilized community. In the early stages of social progress, where there is little property and a scanty population, the whole strength of the society must be employed in its support and defence. Though we are constantly receding from these stages, we have not wholly left them. Even our rapidly increasing population is and will for some remain small, compared with the space over which it is diffused; and this, with the total absence of large hereditary fortunes, will create a demand for political services, on the one hand, and a necessity of rendering them on the other. There is then no ground for ascribing the political tendency of the talent and activity of this country, to an imagined incompatibility of popular institutions with the profound cultivation of letters. Suppose our government were changed to-morrow; that the five points of a stronger government were introduced, a hereditary sovereign, an order of nobility, an established church, a standing army, and a vigilant police; and that these should take place of that admirable system, which now, like the genial air, pervades all, supports all, cheers all, and is nowhere seen. Suppose this change made, and other circumstances to remain the same; our population no more dense,