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cult point of constitutional jurisprudence or public law, to whom would you have propounded it sooner than to him? If you desired a guest for the festive circle, whose very presence, when ceremony is dropped and care banished, gave life and cheerfulness to the board, would not your thought, while he was with us, have turned to him? And if your life, your fortune, your good name were in peril; or you wished for a voice of patriotic exhortation to ring through the land; or if the great interests of the country were to be explained and vindicated in the senate or the cabinet; or if the welfare of our beloved native land, the union of the States, peace or war with foreign powers, all that is dear or important for yourselves and your children were at stake, did there live the man, nay, did there ever live the man, with whose intellect to conceive, whose energy to enforce, whose voice to proclaim the right, you would have rested so secure? Finally, if, through the "cloud" of party opposition, sectional prejudice, personal "detraction,” and military availabilities which catch the dazzled fancies of men, he could have "ploughed his way," at the meridian of his life and the maturity of his faculties, to that position which his talents, his patriotism, and his public services so highly merited, is there a fair man of any party, who, standing by his honored grave, will not admit that, beyond all question, he would have administered the government with a dignity, a wisdom, and a fidelity to the Constitution, not surpassed since the days of Washington?

Two days before the decease of Daniel Webster, a gentle and thoughtful spirit touched to the finest issues, (Rev. Dr. Frothingham,) who knew and revered him, as who that truly knew him did not, contemplating the setting sun as he "shed his parting smile" on the mellow skies of October, and anticipating that a brighter sun was soon to set, which could rise no more on earth, gave utterance to his emotions in a chaste and elevated strain, which I am sure expresses the feelings of all present:

"Sink, thou autumnal sun!

The trees will miss the radiance of thine eye,
Clad in their Joseph-coat of many a dye,
The clouds will miss thee in the fading sky;
But now in other climes thy race must run,
This day of glory done.

"Sink thou of nobler light!

The land will mourn thee in its darkling hour, Its heavens grow gray at thy retiring power, Thou shining orb of mind, thou beacon-tower! Be thy great memory still a guardian might When thou art gone from sight."

RECEPTION AT PHILADELPHIA.*

MR. MAYOR AND GENTLEMEN,

I BEG you to believe me duly sensible of the honor done me by this reception. A unanimous vote of the councils of this great and patriotic city, an address like that just pronounced by the honored chief of her magistracy, a concourse of my fellow-citizens such as that which I see before me— these are distinctions which call loudly for my most grateful acknowledgments. They would do so under any circumstances; but when I reflect that (as you, sir, have been pleased to remark,) a reception like this is rarely given to a private citizen, in which character alone I appear before you, I feel that the hour is one to be ever remembered with gratitude.

I am fully aware, sir, that these distinguished municipal courtesies are usually awarded only to persons in high official station, or to those who are marked out by the public opinion of the country, as the just expectants of its favors. I am neither, sir; wearied with the labors and cares, and satiated with the honors, which have fallen to my lot, I desire to pass the residue of my humble career in those pursuits and avocations which befit the down-hill of life, leaving all the distinctions of public life to those who bear its burdens and court its rewards.

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But it is no affected humility which leads me to ascribe

* Reply to a complimentary address of his Honor R. T. Conrad, the Mayor of Philadelphia, in behalf of the City Council, in Independence Hall, on the 5th of April, 1856.

this flattering reception, not to any relation in which I stand to the country, or your prosperous and hospitable city, but to the accidental circumstances, which have placed my visit to you in momentary association with the brightest name in the history, not merely of the American Union, but of the civilized world. You honor not me, but my errand. In that association I may without arrogance accept your courtesies. They are but a new expression of your reverence for the name of Washington, which to some extent ennobles all it touches. Men in high office write their own names upon their letters, and thus frank them to the furthest borders of the country. We private citizens have but to stamp ours with the image of Washington, and they will travel as fast and as far as those of secretaries and senators.

It adds inexpressibly, Mr. Mayor, to the value of these courtesies so kindly tendered to me, that they are offered in Independence Hall, whose name will ever stand side by side with that of Faneuil Hall, on the brightest page of the history of freedom. This hall, this venerated hall, in the times that tried men's souls, witnessed the consummation of an act already felt to be the most important in the progress of free institutions, and one which wraps up in its bosom consequences yet to be unfolded of inestimable importance, not merely to ourselves, but to mankind.

I hold it to be certain, that, if the manifold political evils which afflict the societies of men in the elder world are to be remedied, and if any mode of settling national controversies without a resort to war is to be devised, it must be by the development and application of the two great ideas, solemnly inaugurated in this hall on the 4th of July, 1776, namely, the ideas of representative government and confederate union. Whenever, throughout the civilized world, the first of these great ideas shall be so applied, not only in theory but in practice, as to bring every citizen, however humble, into vital union with every other, thus forming one harmonious whole; and whenever great and kindred States, retaining their separate sovereignties for all their local interests, shall be willing to unite for the designated objects of common concernment,

in well-balanced confederacies cemented by constitutional compacts, then, and not till then, the political millennium is at hand. When that day shall come, sir, the nations of the East and the nations of the West will alike turn their faces to Independence Hall. Regenerated Europe will renew her youth, by the streams of life drawn from her daughter's bosom, and the rising republics of the Pacific will gratefully acknowledge the exemplar of their hopeful institu

tions..

I have not the voice nor the strength, Mr. Mayor, after the effort of last evening, to make any thing that can be called a speech; but among the memories which cluster around this hall, there are some to which, as a dutiful son of Massachusetts, I must give utterance. Here, on the 15th of June, 1775, George Washington was unanimously chosen to the chief command of the armies of United America, on the earnest recommendation of John Adams. Massachusetts had her own troops, her own generals, in the field. The patriot army which held the forces of Great Britain closely besieged in Boston, were commanded by a Massachusetts major-general. There hangs his likeness, Mr. Mayor, (pointing to the portrait of General Ward); but with prophetic discernment inspired by patriotic disinterestedness, John Adams urged the appointment of the Virginia colonel over the Massachusetts majorgeneral; and on the 15th of June, 1775, under these auspices and in this hall, Washington was called to the command of "all the continental forces raised or to be raised in defence of American liberty."

But the 17th of June was a day of brighter and dearer fame, with which this hall also is intimately associated. On the very day, probably at the very hour, when Warren fell on Bunker Hill, the commission of Washington was reported and adopted in this hall. Providence was pleased, on that day, to hold an even balance with the rising liberties of the country. While the lifeblood of Warren was ebbing away, Washington was clothed with his country's panoply. Oh! that the hero-victim, in his parting hour, could have caught a glimpse of the hero-chieftain of the Revolution! Oh! that

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