me no other boon, than that of hereafter enjoying a comfortable Fourth of July dinner like this, in old Faneuil Hall, instead of being doomed to endure the almost blistering rays of a Washington sun every alternate year, I might well congratulate myself on the result.

Of how

Why, Sir, where should an American desire to be on a Fourth of July but in Faneuil Hall? Where else can he breathe the very natal air of American Independence? Where else can he quench his thirst at the very fountain-head of American liberty? Whatever part Massachusetts may have sustained in the great controversies which have agitated the country in later years, and I am not ready to admit that it has been an unworthy or an inferior one, no one will venture to suggest that she played any thing less than the first part in that great drama, whose opening scenes we are assembled to commemorate. many of the great events of the Revolution was not Massachusetts the stage? How many of them were enacted almost within eye-shot and ear-shot of the spot on which we stand? The heights which overhang us on the right hand and on the left the plains which lie behind them the harbor at our feet the Hall in which we are assembled State street - the Old State House the Old South-where else was engendered that noble spirit, that fearless purpose, that unconquerable resolve, of which the Declaration of Independence was, after all, only the mere formal and ceremonious proclamation? We sometimes talk playfully about the walls having ears. O, Sir, if these walls could have had ears three quarters of a century ago, and if they could find a tongue now, what a tale would they not unfold of the true rise and progress of American Liberty!

Let me not seem to disparage the particular act which we meet to celebrate, or to be disposed to deck these hallowed columns with laurels stripped from other theatres. There are enough for all. The Declaration itself was a bold and noble act. Honor to the pen which drafted it! Honor to the tongue which advocated it! Honor to the hands which signed it! Honor to the brave hearts and gallant arms which maintained and vindicated it! Honor to the five Massachusetts Delegates

in the Congress of that day, who were second to none in that illustrious body for ability, eloquence and patriotism,- Hancock, under whose sole signature it was originally published, the two Adamses, Elbridge Gerry, and Robert Treat Paine. Honor to them all!

Indeed, the more one reflects on the real character of that act, the more full of noble courage it appears. Remember, Sir, that there was no divided responsibility in that Congress. There were no checks and balances in our confederated system. There was no concurrent vote of a second branch; there was no Executive signature, or Executive veto, to fall back upon. Fiftysix Delegates, chosen, as you yourself have just suggested, long before there was any distinct contemplation of such a course, sitting in a single chamber, with closed doors, in the capital of a colony by no means the most ripe for such a movement, are found, doing what? Taking the tremendous responsibility of adopting a resolution, and promulgating an instrument, which may not only subject their own property to confiscation, and their own necks to the halter, but which must involve their constituents and their country in a war for existence, and of incalculable duration, with the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. There was no example for such a deed. There was no precedent on file for such a declaration. And who will say that, to put one's name to such an instrument, under such circumstances, in the clear, bold, unmistakable characters of John Hancock, was an exhibition of a courage less heroic than that which has rendered many a name immortal on the field of battle?

Still, Sir, the way had been opened for such a proceeding; the popular heart had been prepared for it. As was well said by John Adams at the time, "the question was not whether by a Declaration of Independence we should make ourselves what we are not; but whether we should declare a fact which already exists." And how did that fact exist? How had it been brought about? By what events, but those which had occurred at Concord and Lexington, at Bunker Hill and in Faneuil Hall? By what men, but by our own Otis, and Quincy, and Hancock, and Hawley, and Bowdoin, and Samuel Adams, and John Adams,

and Paul Revere, and Prescott, and Warren, and all that glorious company of Massachusetts patriots, whose names will live forever?

ment.

You have all taken notice, I doubt not, fellow-citizens, of the beautiful experiment which has been in operation at Bunker Hill for some weeks past, for making visible the revolution of the earth, by a pendulum suspended from the apex of the monuIt has furnished a convincing proof of the correctness of those great physical laws of the universe which philosophy had long ago unfolded to us. But I could not help reflecting, as I witnessed it the other day, that Bunker Hill had done something more than merely furnish a convenient place for exhibiting the visible and tangible evidence of the world's motion. Sir, it has itself made the world move! And if, by some mechanical arrangement of pendulums or clock-work, it were possible to mark the course of the moral and political changes of mankind, and to trace them back to their original impulse, — where, where would it be, but to Bunker Hill or Faneuil Hall, that we should betake ourselves and not to any place nearer either to the North Pole or to the Equator-to witness the most exact and perfect illustration of the world's progress, and to find the very primum mobile of those great revolutions, American and European, by which human liberty, during the present century, has been so vastly advanced and extended?

I am not disposed, Mr. Mayor, to indulge in too much of local complacency, or of sectional pride, on such an occasion as this. We have come together, not as Bostonians or as New Englanders, but as Americans. We have assembled to celebrate the birth-day of our country, and I would embrace in all the good wishes and pleasant remembrances and proud anticipations which belong to the hour, that whole Country, in all its length and breadth, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.

I would associate with all the homage which we render to the memory of the revolutionary patriots and heroes of our own State, the Hamiltons and Jays, the Morrises and Franklins, the Laurenses and Marions, the Henrys and Jeffersons, and, above all, the unapproached and unapproachable WASHINGTON, of other

States. I would think of our country, to-day and always, as one in the glories of the past, one in the grandeur of the present, and one, undivided and indivisible, in the destinies of the future. But at a moment when there seems to be a willingness in some quarters to disparage our ancient Commonwealth, and almost to rule her out from the catalogue of patriot States, I have not been unwilling to revive some recollections of our local history, and of the part which she has played in other days. I could hardly help feeling that, if we were to hold our peace, the very stones would cry out. Sir, in all that relates to Liberty and Union, Massachusetts, I am persuaded, is to-day just what she was seventy-five years ago. There is no variableness or shadow of turning in her devotion to the great principles of her revolutionary fathers, nor will she ever, as I believe, be found wanting to any just obligation to her sister States.

Mr. Mayor, the act of the 4th of July, 1776, was an act of revolution. It was an act of organized and systematic resistance to an oppressive and tyrannical government. It was a solemn and stern appeal from the decrees of a foreign despot, to that great original right of self-preservation and self-government which the Declaration so nobly promulgates. Thanks to the courage of our fathers, the appeal was successful, and the yoke of colonial bondage was forever thrown off.

But another and more difficult task was still to be performed by them, without which all their previous toils and trials would have been worse than useless. The work of overthrow, separation, independence, completed, the greater labor of building up a system of government for themselves remained, — a system which should render revolutions forever unnecessary, by establishing law and order on the basis of the popular will constitutionally expressed. That labor, also, was performed. The Constitution was framed, adopted, and organized, and we and our fathers have lived under it for a little more than sixty-two years.

Yes, fellow-citizens, we have reached a marked epoch in the history of our country. You have been reminded that it is just three quarters of a century since our independence was declared. But, if I mistake not, something of a mysterious significance has been attached to the precise age which our Constitution has

now reached. A man in his sixty-third year is said to be at a critical period in his life. It is called his "grand climacteric." If he safely passes over that period, he looks for a long continuance of life and health. And our Federal Constitution has at length reached its grand climacteric. And though differences of opinion may exist among us as to the exact amount of danger in which we have been involved, and as to the precise manner in which our controversies have been adjusted, nobody will deny that circumstances have occurred to mark the period through which we are passing, as a more than commonly critical period in our political existence. But, thanks to that Almighty Being who shapes our ends and controls our destinies, the shades which seemed gathering over our pathway are already scattered, the bow is clearly visible upon the clouds, and the sky above us is beginning to be once more radiant with the healing beams of a restored national concord!

Let us not indulge ourselves, however, in any hopes or in any fears, founded only on a superstitious tradition. Human life may have its mysterious periods of safety and of danger, and they may be altogether beyond our control. We know that it has one period, which no prudence can avert and no foresight postpone. We "cannot stay mortality's strong hand." The beloved Chief Magistrate who, this day last year, was engaged in adding another stone to the monument of his illustrious exemplar, was himself the subject of a monument before the expiration of a single week. And the patriotic hands and eloquent voices which are assisting this day in laying the corner-stone of a new Capitol, may have become motionless and mute before that structure shall have reached its completion. One after another, we must all meet "the inexorable hour." But not so with our country. There is no natural term to the life of a nation. It is for the people to say, as they rise up, generation after generation, to the enjoyment of the Institutions which their fathers have founded, whether, by God's blessing, they will transmit them unimpaired to their children.

It is for us to say, whether we will be true to those great elements of Free Government, to those noble principles of Liberty and Law, and to that blessed compact of Union, which our fathers have enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.