3d. The permanency of their Civil Institutions is enumerated among the causes why the people of Israel would be thankful. "Their children also, shall be as aforetime, and their Congregation shall be established before me." They shall be restored to the blessings which their Ancestors enjoy. ed. The people at large shall be established. The compact which binds them together, shall be indissoluble. And is there I ask, a people under Heaven, who in this respect have equal cause of thankfulness with ourselves? We have a government founded in reason, and the fitness of things. It emanates from the will of the Sovereign People. It is adapted as all Governments should be, to promote the greatest good of the whole. And while it wisely provides for the honour and dignity of the Officers of State, yet it also provides, that all their power and authority shall be derived from, and dependant upon the people.

When our social compact was first formed, the enemies of freedom predicted its speedy destruction. They asserted, that it was too weak to hold the distant and diversified parts of the union together; and denounced it as containing principles which would end in anarchy and ruin. Even some of its friends viewed it as an experiment of doubtful tendency, and were fearful that it could not be permanently estab lished. But not one of these gloomy predictions have been verified. The Demon of Anarchy has not desolated our land. Our social compact has held the different parts of the Union together. It is firmly established. And it proves to be a wise and beauti

fully organized system; diffusing its salutary influence from the north to the south, and from the east to the west. It blesses alike the rich and the poor, and has this distinctive excellence, that it neither favours nor oppresses any particular denomination of professing christians. While it is perpetually conferring the most substantial benefits upon us at home ; it is viewed from abroad, by the Philosopher and Philanthropist of every other Country with wonder and delight.

What cause have we my hearers for thankfulness. While the political Institutions of other countries are tottering under the infirmities of age; ours just in their prime, are receiving firmness and solidity by the addition of years. While wise men in other nations are hoping, and yet fearing a change; while they are expecting, and yet dreading alterations in the social edifice; we are dwelling in ours with security. Relying on the continued kindness of Providence, we are neither agitated by the fear of storms from without, or strife from within.

Our satisfaction would indeed be greatly diminished, could we perceive any thing in the character or condition of the community, that portends the probability of a change in our rational form of Government. But we are confident that our political Institutions will be permanent. Scarcely any of those causes exist in our Country, which have been so unfavourable to the attainment or preservation of Civil Liberty in other nations.

We have no great Military power to awe us into submission to unjust and arbitrary measures; or to

put on us chains of bondage, and make us wear them. The means on which we chiefly rely for national defence consists in a Militia, whose interests and happiness are identified with those of the people, and who in fact are the people. There can therefore be no danger, that an organized body of men, who are habitually engaged in the peaceful and profitable avo→ cations of life, should ever use their arms for the insane purpose of destroying their own sacred.rights and dear bought liberties.

It is also a circumstance peculiarly favourable to the permanency of our free Institutions, that we have no established Priesthood. It is a melancholy fact, that wherever a union between Church and State has existed, the ministers of that church have always been the last in granting a particle of liberty to the people; and always the first in aiding to take it from them. This has not happened because they were worse than other men, but from the very nature of their connexion with the State. They have felt, that it was only dutiful and grateful to strengthen the hand that fed them. And they have known, that it was in vain to aspire at clerical dignity, or the smiles of Court favour, unless they were strenuous supporters of the prerogatives of Princes. Hence both interest and inclination have made them the unblushing advocates of the divine right of Kings and of the Doctrine of non-resistance and passive obedience.

We sincerely bless God, that the ministers of every denomination in this Country, are shut out from all hope of ever being connected with the State; and that they are under no temptation to degrade Reli

gion by employing it as an instrument of secular pow er. We hope few have the disposition, and we are glad that none have the ability either to control the consciences, or abridge the liberties of their fellow men on account of their religious opinions. It is the glory of our social compact that it leaves truth and error, equally unshackled, to contend against each other; and that it knows nothing of that monstrous system which inflicts fines, imprisonment and tortures on the body under the hypocritical pretence of doing good to the soul. An entire separation of the Church from the State, is then, a subject of congratulation, because this circumstance is favourable to the permanency of the freedom of our Government.

Neither is there with us, that utter destitution of knowledge in the poorer classes of the community, which, were it exists, renders them incapable of selfgovernment, and of discerning the nature and proper boundaries of Civil Liberty. Notwithstanding all that has been written on the semi-barbarous state of Society in this Country, there is not a nation on the Globe, with perhaps, the exception of Scotland, where the means of Education are so free and extensive, and where the people so generally avail themselves of them, as in the United States.

"By the Constitution of the United States, says Mr. Ingersoll, it is the duty of government to promote the progress of science, and the useful arts. Not one of the eleven new States has been admitted into the Union without provision in its Constitution for Schools, Academies, Colleges, and Universities. In most of the original States large sums in money

are appropriated to Education, and they claim a share in the great landed investments, which are mortgaged to it in the new States. Reckoning all those contributions, federal and local, it may be asserted, that nearly as much as the whole national expenditure of the United States, is set apart by laws to enlighten the people. Besides more than half a million of pupils at public Schools; there are considerably more than three thousand under graduates matriculated at the various Colleges and Universities, authorized to grant academical degrees; not less than twelve hundred at the Medical Schools; several hundred at the Theological Seminaries; and at least a thousand Students of law," with a population thus informed, and who feel all the lofty consciousness of being freemen; we may well be confident that "their chil dren shall be as aforetime; and their congregation shall be established."

Nor ought we to omit a consideration of the fact, that as a people, we are strangers to that extreme poverty which, by creating a sense of dependance is unfriendly to the liberty of the citizen. When a large population, however virtuous and industrious they may be, find it difficult to obtain the necessaries of life, they must have cares which claim their attention much more effectually than the consideration of government and laws. Hence to procure a bare subsistence, they are frequently obliged to give their suffrages in support of measures which are subversive of the dearert rights of man. But where the state of property is different; where the great body of the people are possessors of the soil; and feel that they