inflicted, the laws of their conquerors are enacted and administered in a strange tongue, and one which continually reminds them that the yoke under which they have passed, is that of a The nation towards which they have an hereditary hatred. people of the other portion, on the contrary, owe their relation to the common sovereign of them both, to nothing but their own natural and voluntary choice,― feel towards the nation over which he presides nothing but the attachment and veneration of children towards the parent of their pride, and are bound to it by the powerful ties of a common history, a common language, and a common blood. Tell me, now, which of the two will soonest grow impatient of its colonial restraint, soonest throw off its foreign subordination, and soonest assert itself free and independent?

And what other solution can any one suggest to the problem presented by the fact as it exists-the very reverse of that which would thus have been predicted,-what other clew can any one offer to the mystery, that the French colonies should have remained, not entirely quietly, indeed, but with only occasional returns of ineffectual throes and spasms, up to this very hour, in a political condition which every thing would seem to have conspired to render loathsome and abhorrent, while the English colonies, snapping alike every link either of love or of power, breaking every bond both of affection and authority, resolved themselves into an independent nation half a century ago, what other explanation, I repeat, can any one give to this paradox fulfilled, than that which springs from a consideration of the comparative capacities for self-improvement and self-government of the races by which they were planted? A common history, a common language, a common blood, were, indeed, links of no ordinary strength, between the Atlantic colonies and the mother country. But that language was the language in which Milton had sung, Pym pleaded, and Locke reasoned; that blood was the blood which Hampden had poured out on the plain of Chalgrove, and in which Sidney and Russell had weltered on the block of martyrdom; and that history had been the history of toiling, struggling, but still-advancing liberty for a thousand years. Such links could only unite the

free. They lost their tenacity in a moment, when attempted to be recast on the forge of despotism and employed in the service of oppression. Nay, the brittle fragments into which they were broken in such a process, were soon moulded and tempered and sharpened into the very blades of a triumphant resistance. What more effective instruments, what more powerful incitements, did our fathers enjoy, in their revolutionary struggle, than the lessons afforded them in the language, the examples held up to them in the history, the principles, opinions, sensibilities, impulses, flowing from the hearts and vibrating through the veins, which they inherited from the very nation against which they were contending! Yes, let us not omit, even on this day, when we commemorate the foundation of a colony which dates back its origin to British bigotry and British persecution, even in this connection, too, when we are speaking of that contest for liberty which owed its commencement to British oppression and British despotism, let us not omit to express our gratitude to God, that old England was still our mother country, and to acknowledge our obligations to our British ancestors for the glorious capabilities and instincts which they bequeathed us.

But, with the single exception that both emigrated from England, the colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth had nothing in common, and, to all outward appearances, the former enjoyed every advantage. The two companies, as it happened, though so long an interval elapsed between their reaching America, left their native land within about a year of each other; but under what widely different circumstances did they embark! The former set sail from the port of the Metropolis, in a squadron of three vessels, under an experienced commander, under the patronage of a wealthy and powerful corporation, and with an ample patent from the Crown. The latter betook themselves to their solitary bark, by stealth, under cover of the night, and from a bleak and desert heath in Lincolnshire, while a band of armed horsemen, rushing down upon them before the embarkation was completed, made prisoners of all who were not already on board, and condemned husbands and wives, and parents and children, to a cruel and almost hopeless separation.

Nor did their respective arrivals on the American shores,

though divided by a period of thirteen years, present a less signal contrast. The Virginia colony entered the harbor of Jamestown about the middle of May, and never could that lovely Queen of Spring have seemed lovelier, than when she put on her flowery kirtle and her wreath of clusters, to welcome those admiring strangers to the enjoyment of her luxuriant vegetation. But there were no May-flowers for the Pilgrims, save the name written, as in mockery, on the stern of their treacherous ship. They entered the harbor of Plymouth on the shortest day in the year, in this last quarter of December, and when could the rigid Winter-King have looked more repulsive than when, shrouded with snow and crowned with ice, he admitted those shivering wanderers within the realms of his dreary domination?

But mark the sequel. From a soil teeming with every variety of production for food, for fragrance, for beauty, for profit, the Jamestown colonists reaped only disappointment, discord, wretchedness. Having failed in the great object of their adventure the discovery of gold-they soon grew weary of their condition, and within three years after their arrival are found on the point of abandoning the country. Indeed, they are actually embarked, one and all, with this intent, and are already at the mouth of the River, when, falling in with new hands and fresh supplies which have been sent to their relief, they are induced to return once more to their deserted village.

But even up to the very year in which the Pilgrims landed, ten years after this renewal of their designs, they "had hardly become settled in their minds," had hardly abandoned the purpose of ultimately returning to England; and their condition may be illustrated by the fact, that in 1619, and again in 1621, cargoes of young women, (a commodity of which there was scarcely a sample in the whole plantation - and would to Heaven, that all the traffic in human flesh on the Virginian coast, even at this early period, had been as innocent in itself and as beneficial in its results!) were sent out by the corporation in London and sold to the planters for wives, at from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco apiece! Nor was the political condition of the Jamestown colony much in advance of its social state. The charter, under which

they came out, contained not a single element of popular liberty, and secured not a single right or franchise to those who lived under it. And, though a gleam of freedom seemed to dawn upon them in 1619, when they instituted a Colonial Assembly and introduced the representative system for the first time into the New World, the precarious character of their popular institutions and the slender foundation of their popular liberties at a much later period, even as far down as 1671, may be understood from that extraordinary declaration of Sir William Berkeley, then Governor of Virginia, to the Lords Commissioners: "I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing—and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both."

But how was it with the Pilgrims? From a soil of comparative barrenness, they gathered a rich harvest of contentment, harmony, and happiness. Coming to it for no purpose of commerce or adventure, they found all that they sought-religious freedom; and that made the wilderness to them like Eden, and the desert as the garden of the Lord. Of quitting it, from the very hour of their arrival, they seem never once to have entertained, or even conceived, a thought. The first foot that leapt gently but fearlessly on Plymouth Rock was a pledge that there would be no retreating,―tradition tells us that it was the foot of MARY CHILTON.* They have brought their wives. and their little ones with them, and what other assurance could they give that they have come to their home? And accordingly they proceed at once to invest it with all the attributes of home, and to make it a free and a happy home. The compact of their own adoption under which they landed, remained the sole guide of their government for nine years, and though it

* The distinction of being the first person that set foot on Plymouth Rock has been claimed for others beside Mary Chilton, and particularly for John Alden. But I could not resist the remark of Judge Davis on this point, in one of his notes to Morton's Memorial. After quoting the language of another, that "for the purposes of the arts a female figure, typical of faith, hope, and charity, is well adapted," he observes that, as there is a great degree of uncertainty on this subject, it is not only grateful, but allowable, to indulge the imagination, and we may expect from the friends of John Alden, that they should give place to the lady."

was then superseded by a charter from the Corporation within whose limits they had fallen, it was a charter of a liberal and comprehensive character, and under its provisions they continued to lay broad and deep the foundations of civil freedom. The trial by jury was established by the Pilgrims within three years after their arrival, and constitutes the appropriate opening to the first chapter of their legislation. The education of their children, as we have seen, was one of their main motives for leaving Holland, and there is abundant evidence that it was among the earliest subjects of their attention; while the planters of Massachusetts, who need not be distinguished from the planters of Plymouth for any purposes of this comparison, founded the college at Cambridge in 1636; set up a printing press at the same place in 1639, which "divulged," in its first workings at least, nothing more libellous or heretical than a Psalm book and an Almanac; and as early as 1647 had instituted, by an ever-memorable statute, that noble system of New England free schools, which constitutes at this moment the best security of liberty, wherever liberty exists, and its best hope, wherever it is still to be established.

It would carry me far beyond the allowable limits of this Address, if, indeed, I have not already exceeded them, to contrast, in detail, the respective influences upon our country, and, through it, upon the world, of these two original colonies. The elements for such a contrast. I have already suggested, and I shall content myself with only adding further upon this point, the recent and very remarkable testimony of two most intelligent French travellers, whose writings upon the United States have justly received such distinguished notice on both sides the Atlantic.

"I have already observed," says De Tocqueville, that "the origin of the American settlements may be looked upon as the first and most efficacious cause, to which the present prosperity When I of the United States may be attributed.

reflect upon the consequences of this primary circumstance, methinks, I see the destiny of America embodied in the first PURITAN who landed on these shores, just as the human race was represented by the first man."