which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing, once more, my deep conviction, that since it respects nothing less than the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recesses behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured-bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they A P.-10. God grant float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart-Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! SECOND CENTENNIAL OF BOSTON. JOSIAH QUINCY, JR. Boston, September 17, 1830. If, after this general survey of the surface of New England, we cast our eyes on the cities and great towns, with what wonder should we behold, did not familiarity render the phenomenon almost unnoticed,' men, combined in great multitudes, possessing freedom and the consciousness of strength,-the comparative physical power of the ruler less than that of a cobweb across a lion's path,-yet orderly, obedient, and respectful to authority; a people, but no populace; every class in reality existing which the general law of society acknowledges, except one, and this exception characterizing the whole country. The soil of New England is trodden by no slave. In our streets, in our assemblies, in the halls of election and legislation, men of every rank and condition meet, and unite or divide on other principles, and are actuated by other motives than those growing out of such distinctions. The fears and jealousies which in other countries separate classes of men, and make them hostile to each other, have here no influence, or a very limited one. Each individual, of whatever condition, has the consciousness of living under known laws, which secure equal rights, and guarantee to each whatever portion of the goods of life, be it great or small, chance or talent or industry may have bestowed. All perceive that the honors and rewards of society are open equally to the fair competition of all,—that the distinctions of wealth or of power, are not fixed in families,—that whatever of this nature exists to-day may be changed to-morrow, or, in a coming generation, be absolutely reversed. Common principles, interests, hopes, and affections are the result of universal education. Such are the consequences of the equality of rights, and of the provisions for the general diffusion of knowledge, and the distribution of intestate estates, established by the laws framed by the earliest emigrants to New England. If from our cities we turn to survey the wide expanse of the interior, how do the effects of the institutions and example of our early ancestors appear, in all the local comfort and accommodation which mark the general condition of the whole country!-unobtrusive indeed, but substantial; in nothing splendid, but in everything sufficient and satisfactory. Indications of active talent and practical energy exist everywhere. With a soil comparatively little luxuriant, and in great proportion either rock, or hill, or sand, the skill and industry of man are seen triumphing over the obstacles of nature; making the rock the guardian of the field; moulding the granite, as though it were clay; leading cultivation to the hill top, and spreading over the arid plain hitherto unknown and unanticipated harvests. The lofty mansion of the prosperous adjoins the lowly dwelling of the husbandman; their respective inmates are in daily interchange of civility, sympathy, and respect. Enterprise and skill, which once held chief affinity with the ocean or the sea-board, now begin to delight the interior, haunting our rivers, where the music of the waterfall, with powers more attractive than those of the fabled harp of Orpheus, collects around it intellectual man and material nature. Towns and cities, civilized and happy communities; rise, like exhalations, on rocks and in forests, till the deep and far-sounding voice of the neighboring torrent is itself lost and unheard, amid the predominating noise of successful and rejoicing labor. What lessons has New England, in every period of her history, given to the world! What lessons do her condition and example still give! How unprecedented, yet how practical ! How simple, yet how powerful! She has proved that all the variety of Christian sects may live together in harmony, under a government which allows equal privileges to all, exclusive pre-eminence to none. She has proved that ignorance among the multitude is not necessary to order, but that the surest basis of perfect order is the information of the people. She has proved the old maxim, that "no government, except a despotism with a standing army, can subsist where the people have arms,' to be false. Ever since the first settlement of the country, arms have been required to be in the hands of the whole multitude of New England; yet the use of them in a private quarrel, if it have ever happened, is so rare, that a late writer of great intelligence, who had passed his whole life in New England, and possessed extensive means of information, declares, “I know not a single instance of it. " proved that a people of a character essentially military may subsist without duelling. New England has at all times been distinguished, both on the land and on the ocean, for a daring, fearless, and enterprising spirit; yet the same writer asserts that, during the whole period of her existence, her soil has been disgraced but by five duels, and that only two of these were fought by her native inhabitants! Perhaps this assertion is not minutely correct. There can, however, be no question that it is sufficiently near the truth to justify the position for which it is here adduced, and which the history of New England, as well as the experience of her inhabitants, abundantly confirms,-that, in the present and in every past age, the spirit of our institutions has, to every important practical purpose, annihilated the spirit of duelling. Such are the true glories of the institutions of our fathers! Such the natural fruits of that patience in toil, that frugality of disposition, She has that temperance of habit, that general diffusion of knowledge, and that sense of religious responsibility, inculcated by the precepts, and exhibited in the example, of every generation of our ancestors! And now, standing at this hour on the dividing line which separates the ages that are passed from those which are to come, how solemn is the thought, that not one of this vast assembly-not one of that great multitude who now throng our streets, rejoice in our fields, and make our hills echo with their gratulations-shall live to witness the next return of the era we this day celebrate! The dark veil of futurity conceals from human sight the fate of cities and nations, as well as of individuals. Man passes away; generations are but shadows;-there is nothing stable but truth; principles only are immortal. What, then, in conclusion of this great topic, are the elements of the liberty, prosperity, and safety which the inhabitants of New England at this day enjoy? In what language, and concerning what comprehensive truths, does the wisdom of former times address the inexperience of the future? These elements are simple, obvious, and familiar. Every civil and religious blessing of New England-all that here gives happiness to human life, or security to human virtue—is alone to be perpetuated in the forms and under the auspices of a free commonwealth. The commonwealth itself has no other strength or hope than the intelligence and virtue of the individuals that compose it. For the intelligence and virtue of individuals there is no other human assurance than laws providing for the education of the whole people. These laws themselves have no strength, or efficient sanction, except in the moral and accountable nature of man disclosed in the records of the Christian faith; the right to read, to construe, and to judge concerning which belongs to no class or caste of men, but exclusively to the individual, who must stand or fall by his own acts and his own faith, and not by those of another. The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history,—the language addressed by every past age of New England to all future ages, is this: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom, nor virtue, nor knowledge has any vigor, or immortal hope, except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion. Men of Massachusetts ! citizens of Boston! descendants of the early emigrants! consider your blessings; consider your duties, You have an inheritance acquired by the labors and sufferings of six successive generations of ancestors. They founded the fabric of your prosperity in a severe and masculine morality, having intelligence for its cement, and religion for its groundwork. Continue to build on the same foundation, and by the same principles; let the extending temple of your country's freedom rise, in the spirit of ancient times, in proportions of intellectual and moral architecture,-just, simple, and sublime. As from the first to this day, let New England continue to be an example to the world of the blessings of a free government, and of the means and capacity of men to maintain it. And in all times to come, as in all times past, may Boston be among the foremost and boldest to exemplify and uphold whatever constitutes the prosperity, the happiness, and the glory of New England. PROCLAMATION AGAINST NULLIFICATION. ANDREW JACKSON. Washington, December 19, 1832. Whereas a convention assembled in the State of South Carolina have passed an ordinance, by which they declare "That the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities, and now having actual operation and effect within the United States, and more especially," two acts for the same purposes passed on the 29th of May, 1828, and on the 14th of July, 1832, are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null and void, and no law," nor binding on the citizens of that State or its officers; and by said ordinance, it is further declared to be unlawful for any of the constituted authorities of the State or of the United States to enforce the payment of the duties imposed by the said acts within the same State, and that it is the duty of the legislature to pass such laws as may be necessary to give full effect to the said ordi nance; And whereas, by the said ordinance, it is further ordained, that in no case of law or equity decided in the courts of said State, wherein shall be drawn in question the validity of the said ordinance, or of the acts of the legislature that may be passed to give it effect, or of the said laws of the United States, no appeal shall be allowed to the Supreme Court of the United States, nor shall any copy of the record be permitted or allowed for that purpose, and that any person attempting to take such appeal shall be punished as for a contempt of court; And, finally, the said ordinance declares that the people of South Carolina will maintain the said ordinance at every hazard; and that they will consider the passage of any act by Congress abolishing or closing the ports of the said State, or otherwise obstructing the free |