cestry into the caverns of ravishers and robbers. It is your peculiar privilege to commemorate in this birth day of your nation, an event ascertained in its minutest details: an event of which the principal actors are known to you familiarly as if belonging to your own age: an event of a magnitude before which imagination shrinks at the imperfection of her powers. It is your further happiness to behold in those eminent characters who were most conspicuous in accomplishing the settlement of your coun try, men upon whose virtues you can dwell with honest exultation. The founders of your race are not handed down to you, like the father of the Roman people, as the sucklings of a wolf. You are not descended from a nauseous compound of fanaticism and sensuality, whose only argument was the sword, and whose only paradise was a brothel. No Gothic scourge of God-No Vandal pest of nations-No fabled fugitive from the flames of TroyNo bastard Norman tyrant appears among the list of worthies who first landed on the rock which your veneration has preserved as a lasting monument of their achievement. The great actors of the day we now solemnize were illustrious by their intrepid valour, no less than by their christian graces; but the clarion of conquest has not blazoned forth their names to all the winds of Heaven. Their glory has not been wafted over oceans of blood to the remotest regions of the earth. They have not erectEd to themselves, colossal statues upon pedestals of human bones, to provoke and insult the tardy hand of heavenly retribution. But theirs was "the better fortitude of patience and heroic martyrdom." Theirs was the gentle temper of christian kindness-the rigorous observance of reciprocal justice-the unconquerable soul of conscious integrity. Worldly fame has been parsimonious of her favours to the memory of those generous champions. Their numbers were small-their stations in life obscure the object of their enterprise unostentatious-the theatre of their exploits remote: how could they possibly be favourites of worldly fame? That common crier, whose existence is only known by the assemblage of mulitudes-that pander of wealth and greatness so eager to haunt the palaces of fortune, and so fastidious to the houseless dignity of virtue-that parasite of pride, ever scornful to meekness, and ever obsequious to insolent

power-that heedless trumpeter, whose ears are deaf to modest merit, and whose eyes are blind to bloodless distant excellence.

"No European settlement ever formed upon this continent has been more distinguished for undeviating kindness and equity towards the savages. There are indeed moralists, who have questioned the right of the Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the aboriginals in any case, and under any limitations whatsoever. But have they maturely considered the whole subject? The Indian right of possession itself stands with regard to the greatest part of the country, upon a questionable foundation. Their cultivated fields; their constructed habitations; a space of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and whatever they had annexed to themselves by personal labour, was undoubtedly by the laws of nature theirs. But what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the liberal bounties of Providence to the race of man be monopolized by one of ten thousand for whom they were created? Shall the exuberant bosom of the common mother, amply adequate to the nourishment of millions, be claimed exclusively by a few hundreds of her offspring? Shall the lordly savage not only disdain the virtues and enjoyments of civilization himself, but shall he controul the civilization of a world? Shall he forbid the wilderness to blossom like the rose ? Shall he forbid the oaks of the forest to fall before the axe of industry, and rise again, transformed into the habitations of ease and elegance? Shall he doom an immense region of the globe to perpetual desolation, and to hear the howlings of the tiger and the wolf, silence forever the voice of human gladness? Shail the fields and the vallies, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness? Shall the mighty rivers poured out by the hands of nature, ás channels of communication between numerous nations, roll their waters in sullen silence and eternal solitude to the deep? Have hundreds of commodious harbours, a thousand leagues of coast, and a boundless ocean been spread in the front of this land, and shall every purpose of utility to which they could apply be pro

hibited by the tenant of the woods? No, generous philanthropists! Heaven has not been thus inconsistent in the worksof its hands! Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcilable strife, its moral laws with its physical creation! The Pilgrims of Plymouth obtained their right of possession to the territory on which they settled by titles as fair and unequivocal as any human property can be held. By their voluntary association they recognized their allegiance to the government of Britain; and in process of time received whatever powers and authorities could be conferred upon them by a charter from their sovereign. The spot on which they fixed had belonged to an Indian tribe, totally extirpated by that devouring pestilence which had swept the country, shortly before their arrival. The territory thus free from all exclusive possession, they might have taken by the natural right of occupancy. Desirous however of giving ample satisfaction to every pretence of prior right, by formal and solemn conventions with the chiefs of the neighbouring tribes, they acquired the further security of a purchase. At their hands the children of the desert had no cause of complaint. On the great day of retribution, what thousands, what millions of the American race will appear at the bar of judgment to arraign their European invading conquerors! Let us humbly hope that the fathers of the Plymouth colony will then appear in the whiteness of innocence. Let us indulge the belief that they will not only be free from all accusation of injustice to these unfortunate sons of nature, but that the testimonials of their acts of kindness and benevolence towards them will plead the cause of their virtues, as they are now authenticated by the records of history upon earth."

Extract from Rev. Dr. J. T. KIRKLAND's Oration delivered on the Anniver. sary beforementioned, at Plymouth, Dec. 228, 1803.

“IF the merit of men is to be determined by their institutions and of institutions by their effects, both what our ancestors were and what they did, afford subjects of high adıniration.

Being left, particularly till they rose into so much consequence as to engage the attention of the parent country, to manage their own affairs in their own way, and model

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the form of their society according to their necessities and wishes, they gradually instituted a popular and representative government. From opinion and from habit, this mode of civil polity is dear to their posterity. We think it one great recommendation of such a system, that it introduces numbers to an active share in the concerns of the community, and thus affords scope to their faculties and affections upon an engaging object. A better reason for our partial attachment to democratical institutions, is a rational belief in their tendency to secure liberty-that liberty, which is the cause of the weak against the strong and of the innocent against the guilty-not of the poor against the rich and of the low against the high; which depends on restraint and consists in no person having power to injure, and every person being exempt from injury. Our fathers had or devised many provisions to withstand the evils and to secure the advantages of their republican establishments. A spirit of subordination ran through every class and department of society. Whilst they had no privileged orders; family, talents, character, age, the learned professions, operated as steady and powerful checks upon the licentiousness of popular passions. It was acknowledged to be the object of laws to protect the fairly acquired condition of all, however unequal. If the power of treating the magistrate with contempt belongs to the republican system, theirs was but partially republican, for they punished that offence with severity. If an unrestrained press be one of the rights of men, they had something to learn, for they legislated against irreligious, immoral, and false publications. If rotation in office be one evidence and security of freedom, and not rather a contrivance of the ambitious to insure a partition of power, they failed in reducing this principle to practice; particularly in the Plymouth colony, which had but six governors for seventy years. If universal suffrage be a feature of a free government, they were not free, for they established many qualifications for the exercise of this right, particularly that of unimpeached probity. They were not forward to admit foreigners of every description to political power, although they were generally ready to afford them protec-tion, aware that such a government as they established, requires a homogeneous people, and that strangers might not "stop at the point of temperate liberty." The institu

tion of slavery, that moral and political pestilence, they happily escaped, aware that if slavery is more odious and afflicting in one country than in another, it is where liberty is proclaimed as the greatest good, and where the rights of man are in the mouths of all. Such were some of the features of their civil polity. Legislation will alter with the genius and circumstances of society. If their laws be not entirely free from error, we have no reason for surprize.

"But vain are government and laws to make a people happy without religion and morals. Sensible of this truth, our fathers made the support of public religious instruction and the education of youth the objects of legislative provision, and regulated with great strictness their do mestic habits. The importance of these institutions is a copious subject. Their operation is slow and impercepti ble, but mighty; and makes one of the principal portions of that large and capacious base, on which the welfare of a country rests. The discipline of schools was administered with care, and parental authority had its just and natural weight. Youth, accustomed to external control, ac quired the government of their appetites and inclinations. The aristocracy of reason and principle was established over the wild democracy of the passions; and by early restraints, the young were qualified to fill their places in society with usefulness and honour. It was happy for our progenitors that they brought with them into the wilderness the confidential associates of their domestic labours and domestic cares. Throughout their arduous enterprise, they experienced the inexpressible value of that conjugal friendship, which no change of fortune can weaken or interrupt; in which, "tenderness is heightened by distress, and attachment cemented by the tears of sorrow." The family society began with the civil and ecclesiastical society. Family religion and order began with the family society. To him who had directed them in a right way for themselves, for their little ones and for all their substance, "the saint, the father and the husband," was accustomed to offer in the presence of his household, his daily and nightly sacrifice of praise. Regular and beautiful was the church, in which he who ministered had only to place in order in the building, those materials, which parents had previously formed and adjusted to his house.