generations, among which we belong, might be safer and freer and happier than themselves. It can never be too well understood that the generations of men, in moral and political culture, sow and plant for their successors. "Let it not be grievous to you," said Bradford, the meek but brave and constant leader, to the small and forlorn Pilgrim commonwealth, that he was landing on this rock in midwinter "Let it not be grievous to you that you have been made instruments to break the ice for others. The honor shall be yours, to the world's end." Such was the only worldly encouragement the truthful founder of the Plymouth colony could give to his guileless comrades. Happily, the Pilgrims needed no others.

It is a familiar law of nature, that whatever grows rapidly also declines speedily. Time and trial are necessary to secure the full vigor without which no enterprise can endure. It was only by long, perilous and painful endurance and controversy, that the Puritans acquired the discipline which, without consciousness of their own, qualified them to be the leaders of the nations.

Need I add, that there can be neither great deeds nor great endurance without faith; and that true, firm, enduring faith can only be found in generous and noble minds? The true reformer, therefore, must calculate on frequent and ever-recurring treacheries and desertions by allies, such as Milton graphically, describes:

"Another sort there is, who, coming in the course of these affairs to have their share in great actions above the form of law or custom, at least to give their voice and approbation, begin to swerve and almost shiver at the majesty and grandeur of some noble deed; as if they were newly entered into a great sin, disputing precedents, forms and circumstances, when the commonwealth nigh perishes for want of deeds in substance done with just and faithful expedition. To these I wish better instruction and virtue equal to their calling."

Nor will all these qualities suffice, without discretion and gentleness as well as firmness of temper. The courageous reformer will shrink from no controversy, when the field is open, the battle is set, and the lists are fair. But, on the other hand, he will neither make nor seek occasions for activity; and he will be always unimpassioned. Truth is not aggressive; but, like the Christian religion, is first pure, then peaceable. Nor need the reformer fear that occasions for duty will be wanting. Error and injustice never fail to provoke contest; because, if unalarmed, they are overbearing and insolent; if alarmed, they are rash, passionate and reckless.

The question occurs, Whence shall come the faith, the energy, the patient perseverance, and the moderation, which are so indispensa ble? I answer, that all these will be derived from just conceptions of the great objects of political action. It was so with the Puritans. Their fixed purpose to retain the right of conscience, fully comprehended by them, extinguished selfishness and ambition, and called into activity in their places the fear of God and the love of man. Let them explain themselves:

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Knowing, therefore, how horrible a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God, by doing that which our consciences (grounded upon the truth of God's Word and the example and doctrine of ancient fathers) do tell us were evil done, and to the great discrediting of the truth whereof we profess to be teachers, we have thought good to yield ourselves into the hands of men; to suffer whatscever God hath appointed us to suffer, for the perfecting of the commandments of God and a clean conscience before the commandments of men. Not despising

men, therefore, but trusting in God only, we seek to serve Him with a clear conscience so long as we shall live here, assuring ourselves that the things that we shall suffer for so doing shall be a testimony to the world that great reward is laid up for us in heaven, where we doubt not but to rest forever with those that have before our days suffered for the like."

Contrast these sentiments, so profoundly self-renouncing and reverential of God, with the blasphemous egotism of the French revolutionists of 1798, and contrast also the slowly formed and slowly maturing, but always multiplying and ripening fruits of the Puritan reformation, with the blasted and shriveled benefits of that other great modern convulsion, and you have an instructive and memorable lesson upon the elevation and purity of spirit which alone can advance human progress.

Increase of wealth and commerce, and the enlargement of empire, are not truly primary objects of the American patriot. These are, indeed, worthy of his efforts. But the first object is the preservation of the spirit of freedom, which is the soul of the republic itself. Let that become languid, and the republic itself must languish and decline. Let it become extinct, and the republic must disastrously fall. Let it be preserved and invigorated, and the republic will spread wider and wider, and its noble institutions will tower higher and higher. Let it fall, and so its example fail, and the nations will retrograde. Let it endure, and the world will yet be free, virtuous and happy. Hitherto, nations have raised monuments to survive liberty and empire. And they have been successful. Egypt, As

syria, Greece and Italy are full of those monuments. Let our ambition be the nobler one of establishing liberty and empire which shall survive the most stupendous material structures which genius can devise or art erect, with all the facilities of increasing knowledge and public wealth.

Here my reflections on a subject infinitely suggestive come to an end. They will not be altogether fruitless, if I have been at all successful in illustrating the truths that continual meliorations of society and government are not only possible, but certain; that human progress is slow, because it is only the unfolding of the Divine Providence concerning man; that the task of directing and aiding that progress is rendered the most difficult of all our labors, by reason of our imperfect knowledge of the motives and principles of human conduct, and of countless unforeseen obstacles to be encountered; that this progress, nevertheless, must and will go on, whether favored or resisted; that it will go on peacefully, if wisely favored, and through violence, if unwisely resisted; that neither stability nor even safety, can be enjoyed by any state, otherwise than by rendering exact justice, which is nothing else than pure equality, to all its members; that the martial heroism, which, invoked after too long passiveness under oppression and misrule, sometimes achieves the deliverance of states, is worthy of all the honor it receives; but that the real authors of all benign revolutions, are those who search out and seek to remove peacefully the roots of social and political evils, and so avert the necessity for sanguinary remedies; that the Puritans of England and America have given the highest and most beneficent illustration of that conservative heroism which the world. has yet witnessed; that they have done this by the adoption of a single, true and noble principle of conduct, and by patient and persevering fidelity to it; that they thus overcame a demoralizing political and social reäction, and gave a new and powerful impulse to human progress; that tyranny is deceitful, and mankind are credulous, and that therefore political compromises are more dangerous to liberty than open usurpations; that the Puritan principle, which was so sublime and so effective, was nothing else than the truth, that men retain in every state all the natural rights which are essential to the performance of personal, social and religious duties; that the principle includes the absolute equality of all men, and therefore tends to a complete development in pure republican sys

tems; that it has already modified the institutions of Europe, while it has brought into existence republican systems, more or less perfect throughout the American continent, and is fixing and shaping such institutions wherever civilization is found; that hindrances, delays and reäctions of political progress are nevertheless unavoidable, but that they also have corresponding benefits; that it is our duty to labor to advance that progress, chiefly by faith, constancy and perseverance-virtues which can only be acquired by self-renunciation, and by yielding to the motives of the fear of God and the love of mankind.

Come forward, then, ye nations, states and races-rude, savage, oppressed and despised-enslaved or mutually warring among yourselves, as ye are upon whom the morning star of civilization hath either not yet dawned or hath only dimly broken amid clouds. and storms, and receive the assurance that its shining shall yet be complete, and its light be poured down on all alike. Receive our pledges that we will wait and watch and strive for the fullness of that light, by the exercise of faith, with patience and perseverance. And ye reverend men, whose precious dust is beneath our unworthy feet, pilgrims and sojourners in this vale of tears no longer, but kings and princes now at the right hand of the throne of the God you served so faithfully when on the earth-gather yourselves, immortal and awful shades, around us, and witness, not the useless honors we pay to your memories, but our resolves of fidelity to truth, duty and freedom, which arise out of the contemplation of the beneficent operation of your own great principle of conduct, and the ever-widening influence of your holy teachings and Godlike example.

After the preceding oration had been pronounced the company sat down to a public dinner,' at which the following toast was proposed:

The Orator of the Day-Eloquent in his tribute to the virtues of the Pilgrims; faithful, in his life, to the lessons they taught.

Mr. Seward spoke in response substantially as follows:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The Puritans were Protestants, but they were not protestants against everybody and everything, right or wrong. They did not protest indiscriminately against everything they found in England.

1 Se: Memoir, ante page 36.

other hand, as we have abundant indications in the works of genius and art which they left behind them, they had a reverence for all that is good and true; while they protested against everything that was false and vicious. They had a reverence for the good taste and the literature, science, eloquence and poetry of England, and so I trust it is with their successors in this once bleak and inhospitable, but now rich and prosperous land. They could appreciate poetry, as well as good sense and good taste, and so I call to your recollection the language of a poet, who had not loomed up at the time of the Puritans as he has since. It was addressed to his steed, after an ill-starred journey from London to Islington town. The poet said:

""Twas for your pleasure you came here,

You shall go back for mine."

Being a candid and frank man, as one ought to be who addresses the descendants of the Puritans, I may say that it was not at all for your pleasure that I came here. Though I may go back to gratify you, yet I came here for my own purposes. The time has passed away when I could make a distant journey from a mild climate to a cold, though fair region, without inconvenience; but there was one wish, I might almost say there was only one wish of my heart that I was anxious should be gratified. I had been favored with many occasions to see the seats of empire in this western world, and had never omitted occasions to see where the seats of empire were planted, and how they prospered. I had visited the capital of my own and of many other American states. I had regarded with admiration the capital of this great republic, in whose destinies, in common with you all, I feel an interest which can never die. I had seen the capitals of the British empire, and of many foreign empires, and had endeavored to study for myself the principles which have prevailed in the foundation of states and empires. With that view I had beheld a city standing where a migration from the Netherlands planted an empire on the bay of New York, at Manhattan, or perhaps more properly at Fort Orange. They sought to plant a commercial empire, and they did not fail; but in New York now, although they celebrate the memories and virtues of fatherland, there is no day dedicated to the colonization of New York by the original settlers, the immigrants from Holland. I have visited Wilmington, on Christina creek, in Delaware, where a colony was planted by the Swedes, about the time of the settlement of Plymouth, and though the old church built by the colonists still stands there, I learned that there did not remain in the whole state a family capable of speaking the language, or conscious of bearing the name of one of the thirty-one original colonists.

I have stood on the spot where a treaty was made by William Penn with the aborigines of Pennsylvania, where a seat of empire was established by him, and although the statue of the good man stands in public places, and his memory remains in the minds of men, yet there is no day set apart for the recollection of the time and occasion when civil and religious liberty were planted in that state. I went still further south, and descending the James river, sought the first colony of Virginia at Jamestown. There remains nothing but the broken, ruined tower of a poor church built of brick, in which Pocahontas was married, and over the ruins of which the ivy now creeps. Not a human being, bond or free, is to be seen within the circumference of a mile from the spot, nor a town or city as numerously populated as Plymouth, on the whole shores of the broad, beautiful,