rants, in breaking down, for their own ends, the obstacles placed by the people in the way of their ambition; condemning public officers; denying to the accused the common right, not only of trial, but even of being heard; passing in secret upon private characters; driving from the national councils men of unquestioned genius and unsullied honor; delaying the progress of public business; scattering the language of dissention through the land; if, indeed, such shall be the decision of the American people, to that decision we must bow-saving to ourselves only the sad consolation that our struggle has been manly, our resolution has never faltered, our hopes have never yielded, our trust in the republican spirit of our country has never for an instant failed.

But it cannot be,-my countrymen, it cannot be. The spirit that animated our forefathers is not dead; the sons of men who risked their fortunes for their freedom, are not to be frightened at the panic of a bank; nor are the descendants of those who braved armies from abroad, to be scared by the noisy intrigues of ambition at home. Our country will go onward, as she has done, in her noble march. We shall smile ere long at the efforts and presumption of these our days. We shall meet together, as we now do, on many a future anniversary of our independence, to rejoice in the unmoved grandeur of our political institutions, and to confess that corruption and ambition, oppression and faction, when exposed to the view and judgment of the people, war against them alike in vain. And God grant! that, when centuries shall have rolled by, and our people are dwelling on every mountain summit, and filling every fertile plain, from the waves of one ocean to another, the stranger who shall chance to be among them, on this returning day, may behold them celebrating the festival of our nation's birth, blessed-not only with extended empire, and unbounded wealthbut blessed with that, without which it were better to dwell within narrow limits and a rugged land, a government of equal laws, of * equal rights, founded, upheld, examined and controlled by the watchful spirit of the people.

DELIVERED AT THE

UNION AND HARMONY CELEBRATION,

BY THE

Democratic Citizens of the City and County of Philadelphia,

Masonic Hall, 8th January, 1836.

On motion of Col. JAMES PAGE,

Resolved unanimously, That the Orator of the Day be requested to furnish a copy of his Speech for publication.

SPEECH.

Fellow Citizens:-We are again met to commemorate a day, made illustrious by deeds no American can forget. Twentyone years have passed, since the gallant army of our brethren fought for us, on the distant banks of the Mississippi. Though a thousand miles extended between us and them, though mountains divided us and vast rivers flowed between us, we then felt and we still remember that they pledged their lives for us, as well as for themselves. The cause they defended was the cause of Pennsylvania as well as of Louisiana; the blow they struck was for the safety and welfare of the North, as much as for the protection and glory of the South. The thrilling tidings of their success made hearts to beat with manly pride, and tears of ready gratitude to flow, in every concourse assembled to welcome them, in the streets of Philadelphia, as surely as did the shouts of triumph in the neighboring squares of New Orleans. We knew that our honor and our rights were, at that awful moment, defended by our brethren. We knew that the conflict was a common conflict for us and for them; that it was not the outpouring of mercenary blood; that it was not the rally of desperate ambition; that no sanguinary trophy of selfish conquest was to be reared on the graves of those who fell; but that it was the stern resistance of freemen, determined to preserve their homes from pollution, and to guard from sacrilege all the avenues of our land.

Had ours been the chosen scene of aggression, it would have been our lot to act as they acted; to fight for them on the shores of the Delaware, as they fought for us on the shores of the Mississippi. If we would then have asked of them, to remember what might have been achieved by us, we can never cease gratefully to cherish, and, as the anniversary returns, cheerfully to commemorate their sacrifices and their triumph. Of those who stood forward on that well-won day, perhaps not a third still survive. Time, hurrying onward, has borne most of them to that fate which they did not then refuse to meet, in the flush of youth and the promise of lengthening years. Yet to the survivors and to the dead their grateful countrymen still love to pay the tribute