whenever the supposed glory, or interest of our country comes in competition with that of any portion of mankind, who are out of those limits. We should find it also in the selfishness, and cruelties, and oppressions that are permitted in all countries; in the degradation and abject servitude to which, in many countries, a large portion of the population is born, as their natural inheritance, and inevitable lot, from the odious distinction of casts so disgraceful to pagans in the eastern hemisphere, to the still more horrible system of African and American slavery, by which so indelible a stain is fixed upon christians in the western.

That christians in other countries, besides our own, are beginning to understand, better than they have done, the spirit and the demands of their religion, and to apply it to correct the abuses of government, its false principles and maxims, and the evils of the social state, is a just cause of joy, and a reasonable ground of hope. That a cause against which so many passions, and prejudices, and interests are armed, should meet with opposition, and occasionally fail of success, is what we are to expect. But of its eventual prevalence, and final triumph, we have a sure pledge in the effects already achieved, and in the engines which are brought into activity to accomplish the rest; but above all in the assurance that it is the cause of humanity, the cause of truth, the cause of God-and that God will own and vindicate his cause.

There are several circumstances, which give peculiar interest to the present occasion, and furnish unusual reasons for public joy and gratulation. I shall confine myself to the mention of two.

The first is the public sense, so clearly expressed in the recent election, of satisfaction in the past administration of the government of the state. As the highest reward that those, who serve the public, can receive, is to know, that their services have been acceptable;

that their well meant endeavors to promote the public good have been successful, and have met the approbation of their fellow citizens: so is there no method, by which the public sentiment respecting the administration of government can be so distinctly expressed, as by the reappointment of the same persons to the important offices of the state.

In the reelection of those distinguished citizens to the two first offices in the government, whose faithful services, in high stations and important trusts, the public has enjoyed for so many years; and in the return of so large a proportion of the Senators and Representatives of the last year to compose the Legislature of the present; an honorable testimony is given of the public satisfaction in the wisdom, fidelity and usefulness of their past services, and of the general confidence which they have inspired. We contemplate the fact also in a still higher view; as an assurance to us of the strength and stability of our institutions, and of the good sense and good spirit of the community; and that there is intelligence enough in the people to enable them to understand when they are faithfully served by those, in whose hands they entrust the public interests; and correct principles enough to approve and to encourage public virtue, public spirit, and upright and well directed services.

While we notice, and mention on this occasion with great satisfaction, these tokens of a wise and faithful administration of the civil government, of the public prosperity and tranquility, which are its natural consequence, and the general expression of approbation it has received; we regard it, also, as a promise of the future. It invites us to confident hope, and the indulgence of pleasant anticipations of the future management of the interests of the state. It enables us to feel assured, that the administration of the government, will be committed hereafter, as it has been hitherto, to able and faithful hands; and that the people, after

exercising with sound judgment and due care their right, in the selection of those, to whom their most important interests are to be intrusted, will be reasonable and just in the judgment they pass afterwards upon the manner in which the trust has been executed; and ready to express their approbation and gratitude, wherever they shall have been merited by a steady pursuit of the public good.

The other circumstance, to which I alluded, as imparting a peculiar interest to this, beyond what we have felt upon similar occasions, is the evidence we have had the opportunity of witnessing in the course of the past year, of the general satisfaction of our citizens in the principles and form of the government itself. The people have been called upon to express their opinion, not only as they have annually opportunity to do, of the administration, but also of the constitution of our government. The result is the most gratifying, the most encouraging, and the most honorable, that could have been anticipated. It has exhibited a new proof of the soundness of those principles upon which our government is founded. It has taught us what before was doubtful, and must have remained so until the doubt was removed by such an example, the practicability of perpetuating republican principles and republican institutions. We have now to offer, in proof of the stability of republican institutions, the example of a people, to whom, after an experiment of forty years, the form of their government has again been submitted for revision, to be wholly set aside, or altered, or preserved entire, according as experience shall have taught them to regard it as sound in its principles and forms, or defective, or radically wrong. That it has passed through the trial, to which it was subjected, without any injury, with so few alterations, and with all its important original features unchanged; while it is so honorable to the prospective wisdom of the illustrious men, its original framers, reflects not less honor upon the wisdom of the equally

great men, who were appointed to revise the instrument; and upon the good sense and moderation of the people in the primary assemblies, to whose final decision the amendments which it was thought proper to make in it, were submitted. We have learned, what it is most consoling and encouraging to know, that there is not in them that restlessness and love of change, which would make them willing, in pursuit of an unattainable object, to put at hazard all that is valuable in their civil institutions.

There is probably no other country on earth, where the same experiment could have been made with safety; and it may be doubted whether, in every part of this, it could have been done with equal probability of a favorable issue. If it be asked, to what it is to be attributed, that we have been able, without violence, without force, without civil commotion to accomplish that, which in other countries, the friends of rational liberty and good government dare not attempt; the answer is easy and satisfactory. It is to be found in the principles and habits of the people; in the religious and moral character of the inhabitants of this state; in a state of society, derived originally from our ancestors; brought with them when they came to this country; preserved and improved by the institutions which they established, and the provisions which they made, and which are yet continued, for religious instruction, for general education, and for the general diffusion of knowledge and virtue.

It is to your reverence for religion and its institutions, the general respect paid to the christian sabbath, and the worship of God in public assemblies, to the general diffusion of knowledge among all classes of people, and the system of education, by which provision is made for extending competent means of instruction to every family and every child. It is to these, that you owe that elevation of moral and intellectual character in the great body of the people, those sober

habits, and those just views, by which they are qualified for the enjoyment and the preservation of a free government; capable not only of selecting from among themselves, the men who are best qualified for the several offices in the administration of their government, but also of determining the great principles and rules upon which its administration shall proceed, of choosing the kind of government under which they will live.

The considerations which discover to us the causes, to which we are to attribute those circumstances in our condition, by which we are so happily distinguished, and for which we have so much cause to be grateful; point out to us also, and urge upon us, the means, by which a state of things so desirable, must be preserved. It can only be by a vigilant and faithful care of those institutions, to the influence of which we are so much indebted. Should it ever happen, that the people of this state, losing their sense of the value of religion and the importance of education, should cease to make provision for their support; our school houses and places of religious worship, be deserted, and suffered to go to decay, or be converted to other uses; and our sabbaths, instead of being consecrated to religious retirement and social worship, become seasons of business or amusement; then will our children grow up in ignorance and irreligion, and in those habits fatal to all purity and elevation of character, of which irreligion and ignorance are the unfailing source. Throwing off their allegiance to God, what is to be expected, but that they will throw off their subjection to parental authority; having learned to trample upon the laws of Heaven, that they will not be slow in casting off their respect for human laws? Corruption thus introduced, by the neglect or perversion of education, how rapidly will the whole mass be contaminated! Nor will it be slow in passing from the people to the administration, and thence to the very principles of the government. Then instead of the