Constitution, an honor to their intellects and the charter of our freedom. It is republican and democratic. It recognizes the rights of the people; the right to choose their own rulers and make their own laws--the right to be heard, through their representatives, in the halls of legislation-the right to petition for a redress of grievances-the right to read their Bibles, without the restrictions of Priest or Pontiff-and the right to adopt any form of ecclesiastical government which they deem most in accordance with the Scriptures. According to our representative and republican form of government, the rulers are not the arbitrary oppressors, but the obedient servants of the people, and directly responsible to their constituents. Amid the excitement and frenzy of political debate, there is one voice to which they must listen the voice of the people. This is the grand tribunal of our country.

Our laws are our own, and they can be altered or amended to suit the will of the people. And they are designed not to favor the few at the expense of the many. No man, be his condition what it may, can be touched in his person, his property, or his reputation, without the right to challenge the assailant and refer the issue to a process of law. No man can be punished as a criminal, until fairly tried and convicted by a jury of his country. Such is our system of free government-the best and cheapest in the world, supported by the people without feeling the pecuniary pressure. It is also safe and practicable. We are now in the seventy-fifth year of our national independence, and we are still borne on eagles' wings. We are not going to decay. We may have sectional jealousies, and strong conflicts of interest and opinion, but the wings of our eagle will soar aloft to a calmer region amid the plaudits of the people. They love their country, her constitution and her laws, and are ready to forego any local advantage for the sake of preserving the Union. And as for foreign interposition, we have passed beyond the peradventure of peril or defeat. Let any five of the strong monarchies of Europe combine to subvert the liberties of this country, and attach us to some foreign crown, and you would see the spectacle of a people coming up to the work, shoulder to shoulder, absolutely wild under the power of national enthusiasm, ready to steep the soil with their blood, and make the whole heavens ring with the thunder of arms. The experiment would involve a development of our character never to be forgotten in the annals of the human race, that, in its grandeur and awfulness, would seem fresh after the lapse of a thousand years. This people love their government, love their free institutions; it is a broad, deep, intelligent love. Set this people down in the heart of Russia, and the old monarch would tremble upon his throne. The very Cossacks and serfs of the soil would burn with the inspiration of freemen. The spirit of liberty, kindled in this country, has already gone across the waters. It has entered France, Italy, and Hungary; it beats in the bosoms of millions, and though the bolt of every chain

has again been driven, yet the despots of Europe can no more hold the heaving mass, than the chains of Xerxes could hold the Hellespont, vexed with storms. Floods have been poured upon the rising flame, but they can no more extinguish it, than they can extinguish the fires of Etna. Still it burns, and still the mountain heaves and murmurs, and soon it will explode with voices, and thunderings, and earthquakes. Then will the trumpet of jubilee sound, and earth's oppressed millions will leap from the dust and shake off their chains, thrilled with ecstacies and ideas of freedom! The world is hastening to such a destiny, and our land is cheering the nations on in their struggle for universal emancipation. There is but one voice that adds discord to the music of our applause, and that is the voice of three millions of human beings, in the very heart of this country, crying aloud for freedom!

III. Let us, in the third place, contrast the past and present aspects of our country in an educational point of view. I design to use the term education in a very generic sense, implying the progress and improvement made in the sciences and arts for the past hundred years. New and important discoveries have been made in astronomy, enlarging our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, filling our minds with sublimer views of the Divine Being-in natural philosophy, developing its latent principles for the comfort and convenience of man-in botany, giving every flower and shrub a meaning and a voice-in geology, bringing its every newly discovered fact and feature to harmonize with revealed truth-in electricity, that mysterious agent, which seems to bid defiance to all power, save the infinite and the boundless. What a wonderful triumph of art is that invention, which carries thought along the regions of the atmosphere with the rapidity of lightning, and with all the accuracy of typography! It seems more like a dream of romance than sober reality. We can scarcely realize that our country has become, as it were, one great speaking gallery, where a whisper is heard from one extremity of the land to the other, almost as soon as uttered. The application of steam to mechanical and commercial purposes, is comparatively a recent discovery, and yet who is not amazed at the perfection it has already reached? Rivers are navigated against wind and currentthe ocean bridged-mines explored-the most massive machinery moved-manual labor and the labor of beasts of burden, to a great extent, superseded by this wonder-working agent, now under the control and made to facilitate the movements, add to the convenience, and give success to the enterprises of man. In all the higher branches of education, progress has distinguished the past; and in common school education, how amazing has been the change! One hundred years ago, how limited were the facilities for learning and improvement! The common school system, which is now the ornament and glory of our country, had not been natured and adopted. Our forefathers felt the want and took early steps to meet it. It had been the policy of the land of their birth to keep the masses in ignorance; they deter

mined that the land of their adoption should be characterized by a different and wiser policy. Hence, no sooner was the foundation-stone of the church laid, than the school house and the college arose, and the patron of piety was also the patron of learning. There was no talk of sects, nor parties, but of union-the union of hearts that loved God and throbbed with a holy pulsation for posterity and the race. Since then, we have been borne on eagles' wings.

Colleges and common schools have been planted everywhere throughout the land. They are free and open to all. No barriers are thrown around their threshold; no sect, nor creed, nor wealth, nor aristocratic pride can claim pre-eminence here. Our colleges, unlike the proud and moss-covered universities of the East, seek no solitude and embowering shades and seclusion, like reputed orbs of glory, viewless from the immense clouds, but as open suns and stars leading on and cheering every one in his pursuit after knowledge.

The first thing which strikes a traveler, as he enters the old world, is the immense soldiery, that everywhere meet his eye. Why are these stationed at every corner and nook of the land? Not to protect the rights of the many, but to guard the rulers from the people, and keep their crowns well balanced upon their heads. We, on the contrary, can point to our common schools. and say, "These are our standing army, the grand palladium of our liberties." It has ever been the policy of despotism, whether civil or religious, to monopolize knowledge, to enslave the popular understanding, and thus to hold the great mass of humanity passive and quiet. This is one of the great difficulties in the way of popular government in Europe. The truth is, the people, as a people, are not sufficiently intelligent for this purpose. In a sudden burst of passion, they may shake down a throne, but either they will go into anarchy, which is far worse, or some proud remnant of fallen greatness, chosen in the fury of popular excite ment, will soon impose chains, perhaps golden chains, yet real chains, upon the delighted captives-the people. Look at France, her peasantry too republican for monarchy, too ignorant for a republic! See 100,000 soldiers stationed in Paris to keep the people from destroying their own government. See 30,000 Republicans sail into Italy to put down a republic, and at the point of the bayonet re-establish the most accursed system of ecclesiastical and civil despotism, which ever enslaved and degraded man! We see no such scenes enacted in this country, and, for the simple reason, that the laboring classes, those who control the ballot-box, are intelligent, and know how to appreciate civil liberty and the rights of man. True we have ignorance here, but it is mostly imported. Our native population, our farmers, our mechanics, our merchants, for the most part, are a thinking, reading, intelligent population. And our peculiar institutions, our common school system, free to the poorest, have made them such. "But still," says a foreign critic, "how exceedingly raw you appear in this

country; everything lies in the rough; your blunt manners, your provincialisms, all your ideas need to be taken across the waters to a planing-machine." This is the impression and the language of some, who look only at the surface of things, who are fascinated with the tinsel and glitter of royalty. But if we have not all the external polish, which adorns the more favored circles of Europe, we have intelligence more generally diffused, scattered, like the sun's radiance, over the masses of the people. England has always been able to boast of some tall pillars of intellectual light, but they have only made the surrounding gloom and darkness the more impressively visible. Our plan is to have a large number of fair men, who can do their own thinking, and do it well. Once in a while, we produce a great man, to let the world know what we are capable of doing. Such men we have, and such we have always had, and they will not suffer in comparison with the greatest men of the old world. But we prefer to kindle up a great many lights, which, like the thickly scattered lamps of a city, illumine every street and alley. This is our plan, and it is the best one on the earth. I want no country or system that finishes up a few men, called noblemen, and leave the great mass of men in the rust. I prefer to distribute this polish, to have it a little less concentrated, so that common people can get at it and share in the lustre. Who would pour all the light of the sun through a gaspipe, for the sake of having one bright spot? Or who would think of making one tremendous bonfire, to excite the gaze of the collected throng, rather than kindle a fire on every man's hearthstone? This is what our system of education is aiming to do-to diffuse light over the great multitude, who hold the destinies of this country at their own disposal-to bring every man's conscience under the power of truth and the grace of God. This is our plan for preserving the Union, and perpetuating the institutions for which our fathers shed their blood.

IV. Let us, in the fourth place, contrast the past and present aspects of our country in a religious point of view. If we compare Europe with our own country, we do virtually contrast the past with the present; for her institutions are stereotyped; what was, is now, and the evils which our forefathers suffered are the legitimate and necessary evils resulting from a union of Church and State. In England, where monarchy exists in its mildest form, Episcopacy is the reigning type of Christianity. The Queen is the visible head of the church. She appoints the archbishops, who, in virtue of their ecclesiastical office, are members of the House of Lords, mingling in the heat and strife of political debate, receiving an income of from 15 to £20,000 a year, the owners of palaces, and yet, the successors of the apostles! They move amid the most splendid circles of gayety and fashion, and on retiring from Parliament, administer, within their baronial precincts, an extended patronage, appoint their bishops, wield an absolute sceptre over the inferior clergy, and by an indefinite prerogative awe and control the laity, who are taxed to oppression to support this pon

derous hierarchy. Can the fruits of the Spirit flourish in such a soil? Like the deadly Upas, this wide-spreading tree casts its pestiferous shade over bishops, curates, pastors, and people.

The bad effects of this union are thus described by one who has recently left the establishment. "The church and the world are completely fused at the table of the Lord. The theaters, the ballrooms, and the race courses, may pour their whole contents into the assemblies of communicants, and be welcomed by the churches as members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. Believers are yoked together with unbelievers; the righteous with the unrighteous; the worshipers of Christ with the worshipers of Belial. Men of a schismatical spirit, who cast out their brethren, fierce successors of Diotrephes, violating the law of charity with shameless party zeal, kneel side by side with Christ's disciples at the altar, from which the most estimable and faithful brethren of dissenting churches are rudely excluded. The covetous, the railer, and even those who are generally thought to be fornicators and drunkards, may take their place at the Lord's table as easily as in their pew. Pastors who are ignorant, and even irreligious, remain under the sanction of law to misrepresent the gospel and mislead the congregation:" and yet the people are compelled to support them.

The evils of this union of Church and State are much more apparent in all Papal countries, where the Pope is the universal sovereign, to whom kings and emperors render a servile homage, and where millions of ignorant and degraded subjects are utter strangers to personal and political freedom. The Pope appears as the embodied reality of that prophetic delineation of the "Man of Sin," which is given by the apostle, when he says, "He opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." He sits as an arbiter over the human conscience, the infallible judge of right and wrong, and from his decision there is no appeal. The church, under his jurisdiction, is alike infallible, and her dogmas and decisions ultimate and binding. And though she may teach the most strange and unscriptural doctrines-that the Virgin Mary, instead of Jesus, is "a mediator between God and men," that the humble confession of a penitent to God, like that of the Publican, is unavailing, unless breathed first privately into the ears of a Romish priest, that the dead are not only subjects of prayer, but that they can be so dei fied by canonization, as to be objects of prayer, that the proba bility of a man's escape from purgatory depends upon the amount of money which his friends are willing to pay for masses to be said in Latin for his soul, and that the eternal and immutable law of God, which sweeps over a universe and an eternity, the embodied transcript of Divine purity and glory, is so accommodating, that it can be safely set aside, if the Pope sees fit to grant, as he has often granted, a plenary indulgence to sin, these doctrines are taught by the church, and having all the enginery of