mother country, has been abandoned; to the colonies, whose social condition is supposed to be sufficiently mature, responsible governments have been granted, administered on the principle of entire non-interference on the part of the crown, except in matters which affect the interest of the whole empire; and within the past year, by the repeal of the navigation act, the last pillar of the ancient system has been thrown down and the commerce of the world opened on equal terms to the colonies. Whether these liberal concessions will be found to give permanence to what remains of the colonial system, or whether the much that has been yielded will create a necessity for the abandonment of the little that is retained, are mysteries of State which this is not the time nor the place to attempt to discuss.

The navigation act, which confined the commerce of the colonies to the mother country, never effectually executed, though always peremptorily asserted, was a standing colonial grievance, and not the less severely felt because the right of parliament to enforce it was conceded. In the infancy of the colonies it was comparatively of little consequence, but, as they grew in numbers and wealth, and in aptitude for commerce, it was an unavowed source of abiding irritation. In like manner, the inhibition of manufacturing industry began to be felt in the middle of the last century as an intolerable grievance. These were causes of discontent supposed to be fairly incident to a state of colonial dependence, but they were not the less efficient in preparing the public mind to kindle at the first suggestion of internal taxation. This was resisted at the outset, as a violation of the first principles of civil liberty; an infringement of the rights of which those who were entitled to the benefits of the British constitution could as little divest themselves, as they could be deprived by the authority of Parliament. It was said of James II. by a brother monarch, that he sacrificed three kingdoms for a mass. The ministry who undertook to raise a revenue in America sacrificed a continent for three pence a pound on a few chests of tea. It was that paltry tax which piled upon each other the mighty blocks of yonder monument and

planted that flag on the headlands of California. Mysterious chain of events! which binds causes to their effects after ages of conflict and endurance; which links the 21st of December, 1620, with the 17th June, 1775, and makes the ice-clad rock of Plymouth but a stepping-stone to the flaming glories of Bunker Hill. When I compare the feeble beginnings of American liberty, the sufferings of the pilgrims, the political restraints of the colonies, the humble weakness of a few despised plantations, dotting the Atlantic coast of the continent, with the vast domain which has been brought within the realm of civilization, the abounding resources of this great confederacy of States, I can liken them to nothing but our mighty Missouri, which, springing in a silver thread from the melting side of some arctic glacier, where the wild hunter catches it in the hollow of his hand to slake his thirst, winds along through open wastes and trackless prairies, widening and deepening on the way; descends to the region of civilized man, dividing territories and States; and having gathered up the bounties of nature and the fruits of industry from half a continent, pours at last into one of the great gulfs of the ocean with a volume of water scarcely less than its own.

II. The struggle for constitutional freedom was, as I have stated, the first great cause of the revolutionary drama. Beyond this, the distinct purpose of those who gave the impulse to the public mind does not appear to have proceeded. The possible results of the struggle must, of course, have presented themselves to ardent minds; but a strong sentiment of loyalty still bound the people to the mother country. It was the land of their fathers; a living nerve connected every portion of the colonies with their transatlantic home (as they fondly called it); family names, and kindred ties, and the mysterious sympathy of a common language still exercised a controlling influence. The political life of the colonies had been principally developed in the border warfare with the possessions of France, the hereditary enemy (as she was regarded) of the Protestant faith and the British name. This feeling was so strong throughout the British colonies, that Arnold assigned, as a justification for his treason, that Con

gress had formed an alliance with France. In 1774 a letter was addressed by Washington, then a member of the Congress at Philadelphia, to a British officer in Boston, with whom he had served in the former war, in which Washington says, "I think I can announce it as a fact, that it is not the wish nor the interest of the government of Massachusetts, nor of any other government upon this continent, separately or collectively, to set up for independence; but this you may rely upon, that none of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable rights and privileges which are essential to the inhabitants of every free State, and without which life, liberty, and property, are rendered totally insecure." The address to the king, which was adopted a short time after this letter was written, contains the most earnest protestations of loyalty; and after setting forth in strong language the grievances of the colonies, it adds, "these sentiments are extorted from hearts that would much more willingly bleed in your majesty's service."

But the fulness of time was come. Although the magnitude of the impending crisis was fully appreciated on neither side, the colonies had reached a stage in their progress in which they were ripe for self-government. A continent was trembling on the verge of revolt, and the experience of the past yielded no instruction how it should be retained in its allegiance. Columbus had given a new world to Castile and Leon; but no Columbus had taught how a new world, mature for independence, could be retained in subjection to the old. The whole mind and heart of the colonies had been aroused; the demand for the redress of grievances had come up from every town, and village, and hamlet. It was then found, if it had been before doubtful, that the great social, moral, and political world has its laws of progress as unerring as those of physical nature. A great constitutional season had opened on America. Incipiunt magni procedere menses. The liberties of the people were budding and bursting into

* Washington's Works, Vol. II. p. 401. Journal of the Continental Congress, Vol. I. p. 66.

life and beauty, under the same providential influence which paints the fields with verdure, and which clothes the garden and the forest with the honors of spring. And not less presumptuous and hopeless were the attempt, on the part of man, to strike a chill throughout the universal vegetable kingdom, which should arrest this vernal renovation and wrap the promise of June in the shroud of January, than to subdue the instinct of freedom which had begun to warm and move the great heart of the country. The colonial winter is past; the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.

But unlike the gentle influences of inanimate nature, the great movements in political affairs seem by a law of our fallen humanity to require, for the assurance of their purity, the stern test of bloody conflict. It seems to be necessary, in order to check the license of innovation, and to prevent society from being convulsed on light grounds, that the rupture of the bonds which unite States together should not be effected without the keenest sufferings to the whole body politic. American independence must have its baptism of fire and of blood, and the summit of Bunker Hill was the great altar of sacrifice. The solemn appeal to arms had been made on the 19th of April; the entire population of the country had ratified the call and sent its chosen to the field; and on the day we celebrate, three quarters of a century ago, it was proved, by the steadiness and courage of the citizen soldiers of America, in open battle, that the cause of liberty was safe. A twelvemonth was yet to elapse before the final declaration was made; but the independence of the United States was as effectually asserted on the seventeenth of June, 1775, as on the fourth of July, 1776. It was no more certain on the third of September, 1783, when the definitive treaty of peace was signed and sealed at Paris, by Adams, Franklin, and Jay, than it was when Warren sealed it with ⚫ his blood eight years before.

It would require a volume to set forth all the consequences to America and the world, which have resulted from the es

tablishment of our independence; which have already resulted from that event; and who shall presume to break the seals of the volume of the future? This momentous step gave us at once a position in the family of nations. It raised the colonial quarrel into a controversy of States, to be carried on before the great tribunal of the public opinion of the world. The sharp encounter of wits with provincial governors is over; the keen discussion of parliamentary right has gone by. No more black-letter volumes to be anxiously turned; no more musty parchments to be unrolled; no more American privileges to be spelled out of Norman French, in the statutes of the Edwards and Henrys. The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The question at issue is now to be decided by open public war, in the face of mankind, with the law of nations to prescribe the rules of the contest:- that mighty code, which nature enacts, and reason expounds, and God sanctions; which binds great empires and protects the humblest individual; which rules the rulers of the earth, and alone of all the rulers extends its jurisdiction over the common sea; which watches over the peaceful mariner on the lonely deep; which chases the pirate and the marauder to the furthest bounds of the ocean; which, in a good cause, marches with twelve legions of angels to the rescue of the weak; and hangs up the unrighteous conqueror, at the head of his hosts, on the gibbet of public execration, before the civilized world.

With this great tribunal, before which republics and kings are of equal worth, the Congress of Philadelphia lodged its appeal of independence. A pause of ominous expectation succeeds in the great political world of Europe. The leading governments, vigilant for the balance of power, which had been disturbed by the transfer of the American colonies of France to England, await anxiously the indications of a firm basis of resistance on the part of the revolted States. The dignity and wisdom of the American Congress, the fortitude of the army, the spirit of the people, and, as embodying and representing all, the transcendent character of Washington, furnished the needed assurance of the solidity of the cause; and the world is soon astonished by the spectacle of