fathers acted in their days, how our beloved country has held its onward way in arts, in happiness and in fame, and how its noble institutions and the lofty character of its sons have made it, even in this early time of its history, among the fairest of human things. But such a celebration would evince a vain and weak, if even a pardonable, feeling. It would be to let slip, in thoughtless ceremonies, the period for performing an important and patriotic duty. If we have not the same cause for bold and vigorous conduct which animated the sages of 1776, we have other duties equally sacred to perform. It was theirs to preserve hallowed rights, republican institutions, the principles of a fierce democracy from a foreign foe. It is ours to see that all these are now as safe as they were at the moment our ancestors saved them from that foe. What matters it to us, if we have lost the virtuous impulses from which freedom alone can spring, whether they have been yielded to the hand of violence from abroad, or sunk beneath the silent inroads of ambition, of dissention, of weakness, or of corruption at home? What matters it to us, whether our liberties are avowedly lost, or whether they are subverted in effect by policy altogether at variance with them? As in the later days of the republic of Rome, year after year, when we thus met together, might show us the same outward forms of government, but the real, the animating spirit would be gone-the true voice of the people would be drowned by the increased and undue influence of power, meant to be subordinate; by the combinations of a false ambition, or the interested motives of powerful classes of individuals, who would, for purposes of transient and selfish interest, forget or overlook the real welfare of their country.

The duty, then, of American citizens who assemble on the Fourth of July, is not merely to celebrate the day of their inde. pendence. It is not even mainly to do this. Their proper duty is, to examine the present, and to look forward to the future. To see that the just motives which actuated our forefathers then, actuate their descendants now. To observe whether our present measures and policy are founded on, and sustain them. To watch the conduct of those who have been elevated to offices of trust, confidence and honor. To examine the career and explore the designs of ambitious men, who aim at personal advancement or distinction. To pledge ourselves, with a solemnity as sacred as that of the signers of the great charter which has just been read, to do in these days, as they did then, whatever is necessary to

preserve what they established, honestly and usefully, not merely in theory and name.

And never, my countrymen, on any previous anniversary of our independence, have American citizens assembled with this duty imposed upon them more sacredly than now. At no moment of our political existence have they been required to weigh with greater care the measures and conduct of their public men, to examine the practical results of their policy, and to revert to the great ends of social government, and the means by which they must be maintained. No foreign enemy roams along our shores, no desolating scourge hovers over our homes. Peace extends her olive wand, and heaven seems more abundantly to heap on us the prosperity and the bounteous blessings it has always showered, with a gracious hand. Yet the voice of domestic strife is not silent. The halls that should be sacred to patriotic deliberation, ring with the echoes of faction. The intrigues of ambition, and the designs of avarice, are at work in every corner of the land, and the purposes of the one and the other are to be subserved amid the tumult they have conspired to excite. Yet in truth, the contest with these is never difficult, their overthrow is never doubtful, the triumph is never uncertain, when the determination is resolutely made.

Fellow citizens, factions have ever been the curse of republics. The leaders of factions have ever been the designing, the disappointed, the malignant-those who are actuated, not by a lofty, but by a low and selfish ambition. Party must, and always does, perhaps always should exist, in free governments; but it is founded on principles, it rallies men together, it sacrifices smaller objects for the attainment of greater ends. Faction has no principle; sometimes it professes one, and at others the reverse; it is now aiming to destroy an individual, and then it becomes his accomplice or his tool; it carries its ends by corruption, it deals in falsehood and misrepresentation, it forms unnatural alliances, it digs the grave of patriotism, and pollutes the fountains of national honor. In the early days of our republic, the citizens of America, new to the political institutions they had framed, differed essentially as to the principles on which they were to be administered. Parties were formed on this difference; these opposing principles became the subject of anxious deliberation; and after a struggle, arduous but determined in its character, the democracy of the country nobly. and signally prevailed. The republican party became avowedly

triumphant; the ranks of its opponents dwindled into a small minority of the people. A course of policy, distinguished by the reduction of the public debt, the abolition of the bank of the United States, the security of the navigation of the Mississippi, and the extension of our boundaries to the great western ocean, was rendered more illustrious by the glories of a war in which our flag waved in triumph on every ocean, and the eagle of victory perched on the standards of our armies. Throughout this long career, the mutterings of faction were not always suppressed; and the designs of ambition could not always be disguised. Many manly and generous spirits opposed to the principles of our party, did indeed act nobly with us in the common cause of country, but there were not wanting those, who alike in the hour of prosperity and of trial, were deaf to the voice of patriotism, though they could listen to the whispers of selfishness and ambition.

In the natural consequences of a war-the derangement of the finances, the accumulation of the public debt, the necessity of large supplies of manufactures, and the want of ready means of transportation, the opponents of the republican party saw a favourable occasion to introduce into the system of our general government, those broader views of power which hitherto the people had refused to approve. Many of them, honestly actuated by the belief that they were those on which our government ought to be administered, sustained them now as they had sustained them before; while ambitious leaders, found in their ranks, as in those of all political associations, saw in these, topics which might be serviceably used for their own ends. Even some who maintained inflexibly original democratic sentiments, believed that a change of policy, required by the exigencies of the times, was not at variance with them. The result was the establishment of a new national bank, intended to be a useful fiscal agent, subject to strict examination and control; the protection, by a moderate tariff, of the domestic industry of the country; and the commencement of a plan of internal improvement, limited in extent, and confined to objects of evident national utility. Well were it for us, if the system so established had been maintained in the same spirit with which it was founded. Well were it, if it had not been perverted and misused to subserve political designs. The boundaries, however, were quickly overleaped; the promotion of manufactures was converted into a scheme of partizan protection designed to aid the aspirations of certain politicians; the expenditure of pub

lic money for internal improvements, became a notorious means of bargaining for the advancement of personal popularity in particular districts; and the national bank began to assume a power independent of the government, of which it was the agent, and to establish an influence over the community, which might be employed for purposes oppressive, selfish, or corrupt. These consequences, gradually developed, were at length fully displayed during the administration of John Quincy Adams-a president having less than one third of the electoral votes, and elevated to power against the will of the people, by means of a coalition, fortunately without a parallel in our history, a coalition with an old and avowed political rival, himself a candidate for the presidential chair, also rejected by the people. Could the consequences be doubtful? No.-The American people indignantly hurled from the offices of trust, men who had thus stolen unwarily into places of honour; the principles of the republican party were again asserted; the chief place in the government was' confided to a man grown venerable in the service of his country, whose blood had been freely shed beneath her banners, whose integrity was unsullied by the breath of suspicion, whose courage and decision were equal to every crisis, and whose cherished political maxims were those that had been ever maintained by the great democratic family. Representing as he has done the sentiments of the people, carrying out their honest wishes, yielding to no motives of partizan ambition, suffering himself to be the tool of no struggling or aspiring faction, we have seen the republican party rallying round him, and extricating us from the toils into which we had been deceitfully led. Internal commerce is no longer made the instrument of politicians. The funds raised from the labours of the people, have been faithfully applied to lessen their burthens, not squandered with local, partial, and interested designs. Domestic manufactures are protected with a view to the general benefit, not'so as to excite vindictive contests. The quiet majesty of the laws is upheld against the designs of defeated political aspirants, who publish under the name of democracy doctrines which it would blush to own. The honor and fame of the American people are protected and extended over distant countries, the wrongs of our citizens redressed, claims unjustly withheld readily discharged, and new sources of wealth opened to fearless enterprise. But above all this, throughout our land, the positive and practical spirit of democracy asserts its sway; the people rule now as they ruled thirty years ago; they

are redeemed from the control of interested leaders; they see the government of their choice administered by men of their choice; they are carrying on triumphantly that struggle, which, in every republic, must be periodically carried on, between the great mass of the people, honest, conscientious, and straight forward, and those who, actuated by false theories, or by a misguided ambition, or by their peculiar position, or by considerations of personal interest, are constantly at variance with them.

Such, fellow citizens, has hitherto been the progress of affairs, gradually restoring the government, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, to its republican tack." But the work is not yet accomplished. As the contest hastens to its close, the struggle becomes more violent, and is attended with all the recklessness of anger and the fury of despair. The political events of the last eighteen months have no parallel in our domestic history. They display the last rally of a few politicians, who see close at hand the prostration of their ambitious designs; and the last struggle of a band of moneyed monopolists, who dread the inevitable termination of privileges, heedlessly conferred on them, by which their own interests have been served, at the expense of their fellow citizens. Disguise it as they may, the people of the United States know too well that this is now a contest between the democracy and the country on one hand, and, on the other, a coalition formed between political leaders already rejected by the people, and the Bank of the United States, always distrusted by them, and only tolerated from a confidence and a hope, which have now been proved to be vain. Whatever disguise is assumed, whatever name is invoked, the evident truth is this. If the clamour about executive usurpation is raised, what is it but an unflinching opposition on the part of the chief executive magistrate towards the Bank of the United States? If lamentations over popular errors are querulously uttered, what are they but a settled purpose on the part of the people to discard from their favour Clay, Webster, or Calhoun? Yes, fellow citizens, the history of the last eighteen months, is the history of a coalition between the bank for its selfish purposes, and a few factious politicians, for their own ambitious designs. It is to put down this coalition that all our efforts should be directed; it is the last battle the republican party has now to fight; it is a cause to which, before every other, they should pledge themselves on the anniversary of the Fourth of July.

Never have the annals of a republic presented a course of conduct