savage country. They were but a hundred miles from the plantations of the coast; but powerful bands of Indians occupied the intermediate space. For all purposes of relief and succor, they might as well have been at a distance of a thousand miles from Boston. Such was the difficulty of crossing the pathless wilderness which lay between them and the coast, that a man may now go from Boston to New Orleans, by way of Pittsburg, (I have done it myself,) a distance, I presume, of twenty-five hundred miles, in about as many days as it took some of the first settlers to reach the banks of the Connecticut River.

I think we see, in the settlement of this river, an early — perhaps the earliest indication of that larger and more courageous spirit of adventure which characterizes the country. It was a work of the highest daring to cross the ocean and settle the Atlantic coast of the continent; and we should have thought that this would have been deemed sufficient at least for the enterprise of one generation. The commencement being made on the coast, it would have seemed natural almost necessary that the colonists should cling together on the verge of the strange continent, and leave their little commonwealth to increase by gradual expansion, planting a village or a hamlet this year a few miles in advance of last year's boundary. But not so. The worthy fathers at Dorchester, Newton, and Watertown, soon found themselves, in their own quaint language, "straitened." They had heard of the noble river of the west, and of the fertile regions which stretched beyond it,

---

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

Stand dressed in living green,"

and they gave themselves no rest, night nor day, till they had gone forth to possess them.

The early writers have described to us their pilgrimage through the wilderness. There are few traits of colonial adventure to be compared with it. It was not merely the youthful and vigorous huntsman, breasting his way through

the tangled forest, scattering wild flowers and dew-drops, as he broke through the thicket. They went in a company, the aged and the young, the women and the infants. Their flocks and their herds yielded them sustenance, and their weary progress was cheered with the voice of their spiritual leader, and the melody of anthems resounding through the solemn aisles of the forest. Sir, even in this little history of their journey to the river, we retrace the most important feature of the character of the Pilgrims. I am persuaded that, often as our forefathers have been spoken of as religious men, full justice has hardly yet been done to the topic. It is not merely that in their enterprises, conduct, and the ordinary business of life, they acted as becomes religious men. This may be affirmed of a portion of mankind, in all ages, and under every form of civil society. But there is something, in the Pilgrim settlers of New England, which lies much deeper than this. I consider the strong religious sense which animated them as the true historical basis of the forms and institutions of civil society, which they organized and transmitted to us. Born the subjects of a monarchy, accustomed to an hereditary nobility and a splendid hierarchy, they put every thing at once upon a footing of a broad downright political and religious equality. Why? under what influences? Men do not, like DIVINE POWER, create worlds out of nothing. They modify the existing, and renovate the ancient. Where did our fathers find the elements, out of which they constructed the social edifice? They found them in the BIBLE; in the spirit of that religion which levels to the dust all human distinctions; and teaching us that there is no respect of persons with God, furnishes the great and true basis of a well understood and honestly applied equality among men.

It does not, of course, belong to me, nor to this place, to enter into a discussion of this or any other subject. I cannot, however, forbear to observe, that I have lately looked through the work of an intelligent French traveller, M. de Tocqueville, a gentleman sent by his government to explore the condition of the penitentiaries in this country. He professes himself a Catholic, and is consequently not likely to be under

the influence of any prejudice in favor of the prevailing religious character of the country. But he remarks that it was this which most arrested his attention; and after studying our country its government, its character, its parties, its manners — with more care than any other foreigner with whose writings I am acquainted, and commenting with much freedom and occasional severity upon them, he comes to the conclusion that there is a more widely diffused and operative sense of religion in the United States than in any other country, and that this is the true basis of their political system. He states it as an extraordinary contrast, that in most of the states of Europe, religion, so far as it subsists, is mainly upheld by its alliance with the state, and is considered, in consequence, by the mass of the people, as one of their burdens, and as one of the first things from which a deliverance is to be sought by means of a revolution; while in America, on the other hand, it is found to form the real secret of the firmness of the political system; and that, amidst so many apparent tendencies to fluctuation and change, an efficient principle of stability here exists in the generally diffused influence of religious belief and religious institutions on the public mind.

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I think this discriminating observation of the French traveller does us no more than justice. How much of the predominant religious character described by him is to be referred to the influence and example of our forefathers, the men who settled New England, the men of whom we this day commemorate some of the most meritorious, I need not say. Sir, they were very remarkable men; men of sterling worth. They had some faults, principally those of the age in which they lived; but take them together, the world has not seen their superiors among uninspired men. Their work has stood, because it was laid on a sound basis. Sir, it will stand yet for ages, for it was founded on the rock of ages. They have achieved that which will not die. They established principles, they set examples, they founded systems of government, which will serve as models to the end of the world. The race of men has taken hold of this inheritance of liberty, and

will not let it go. All that now exists may be changed and subverted in the eloquent language of the orator, New England may cease to be the abode of civilized men; revolutions may sweep the country, as if yonder river should rise and swell, and wash away the prosperous settlements it now beautifies and enriches; but it is impossible that what has been done for the cause of human liberty and happiness, by the fathers of New England, should ever perish. If prostrated here, it will revive in other regions and happier times. The plan of a representative republic, which they devised, will go down, with the Scriptures, from which its principles are drawn, to the latest posterity, as the application, made by the Pilgrim fathers, of divine wisdom to the political affairs of

men.

I beg leave to offer as a closing sentiment,

OUR FATHERS THEIR FAULTS WERE THE FAULTS OF THE AGE IN WHICH THEY LIVED; THEIR PIETY, FORTITUDE, AND LOVE OF LIBERTY WERE THEIR OWN. TIME, WHICH DE

STROYS ALL THINGS, SHALL

HALLOW THEIR MEMORY.

STRENGTHEN THEIR WORK AND

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MILITIA.*

MR COMMANDER:

I AM sensible to the honor done me by the chair, and the company, and I beg leave to make my grateful acknowledgments. The toast just given does me no more than justice, in anticipating my best efforts for the promotion of the welfare of the militia system. I embrace also with pleasure the opportunity to declare my entire sympathy with that feeling of respect for the work and the memory of our fathers, to which we owe the perpetuity of the "Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company." I have always considered this feeling as one of the safeguards of the republic; as one of the best correctives of the violence of the selfish and party passions of the day. To cherish and strengthen this respect for the principles of our fathers, has been one of the chief objects I have proposed to myself in life; and one in the accomplishment of which I have spared no effort, within my humble sphere of influence.

Perhaps, sir, there is no subject, in regard to which their principles are better entitled to respect, than the military defence of the country. The more I turn over the pages of our early colonial history, the more I am struck with the allpervading traces of a sort of providential watchfulness for the security of civil liberty, and in nothing more than in this important respect. I need not repeat what is so well known to all who have read the early history of the colony, that it was left to itself, -a handful of pious adventurers, self-exiled to the distant and savage shore, shut out by the ocean

* Delivered at the anniversary dinner of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, 6th June, 1836.