"Principles, and those _only_ who will maintain them."

I urge this course, at the present moment, from deep conviction of
its importance. And be assured, Sir, whatever the final determination
of this Convention, there are many here to-day who will never yield
support to any candidate, for Presidency or Vice-Presidency, who is
not known to be against the extension of Slavery, even though he have
freshly received the sacramental unction of a "regular nomination." We
cannot say, with detestable morality, "Our party, _right or wrong_."
The time has gone by when gentlemen can expect to introduce among us
the discipline of the camp. Loyalty to principle is higher than loyalty
to party. The first is a heavenly sentiment, from God: the other is a
device of this world. Far above any flickering light or battle-lantern
of party is the everlasting sun of Truth, in whose beams are the duties
of men.

                        THE LATE HENRY WHEATON.

        ARTICLE IN THE BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER, MARCH 16, 1848.

The death of a person like Mr. Wheaton naturally arrests
attention,--even at this period of funereal gloom, when the Angel
of Death has overshadowed the whole country with his wings. He was
long and widely known in official relations, devoted for many years
to the service of his country, studious always of literature and
jurisprudence, illustrious as a diplomatist and expounder of the Law of
Nations,--with a private character so pure as to make us forget, in its
contemplation, the public virtues by which his life was elevated.

He died after a brief illness, accompanied by a disease of the brain,
on Saturday evening, March 11, 1848, at Dorchester. On that day the
remains of John Quincy Adams, who, as President of the United States,
first advanced Mr. Wheaton to a diplomatic place in the service of
his country,--after a long procession, through mourning towns and
cities, from the Capitol, which had been the scene of his triumphant
death,--were brought to their final resting-place in the adjoining town
of Quincy. The faithful friend and servant thus early followed his
venerable chief to the fellowship of another world.

The principal circumstances in Mr. Wheaton's life may be briefly told.
He was born at Providence, on the 27th of November, 1785, and was a
graduate of Brown University, in 1802. After admission to the bar,
he visited Europe, particularly the Continent, where his mind thus
early became imbued with those tastes which occupied so much of his
later years. Some time after his return, finding little inducement to
continue the practice of the law in Providence, he removed to New York.
This was in 1812. Here he became the editor of an important journal,
"The National Advocate,"--a paper afterwards merged in "The Courier and
Inquirer." His experience in this character closed May 15, 1815. As a
journalist, he is reputed to have been uniformly discreet, decorous,
and able, at a time when the fearful trials of war, in which the
country was engaged, added to the responsibilities of his position.

His labors as editor did not estrange him from the law. About this
period he became for a short time one of the justices of the Marine
Court, a tribunal now shorn of its early dignity. In 1815 he appeared
as author of a treatise on jurisprudence. This was a "Digest of the
Law of Maritime Captures and Prizes." In the judicial inquiries
incident to the administration of the Laws of War--still maintained by
the Christian world--such a treatise was naturally of much practical
utility. It may also claim the palm of being among the earliest
juridical productions of our country. Nor, indeed, has it been without
the disinterested praise of foreign nations. Mr. Reddie, of Edinburgh,
in his recent work on Maritime International Law, says, "Although it
cannot be strictly called a valuable accession to the legal literature
of _Britain_, it gives us much pleasure to record our opinion, that,
in point of learning and methodical arrangement, it is very superior
to any treatise on this department of the law which had previously
appeared in the English language."[236] No American contribution to
jurisprudence so early as 1815 has received such marked commendation
abroad. Kent and Story had not then produced those works which have
secured to them their present freehold of European fame.

    [236] Maritime International Law, Vol. II. p. 298.

In 1816 he became Reporter to the Supreme Court of the United States,
which office he held till 1827. His Reports are in twelve volumes,
and embody what may be called the _golden judgments_ of our National
Judicature, from the lips of Marshall, Livingston, Washington,
Thompson, and Story.

Mr. Wheaton's time was not absorbed by these official duties. He
entered much into the practice of his profession. His name appears as
counsel in important causes at Washington. He was editor of divers
English law books, republished in this country, with valuable notes. On
several literary occasions he pronounced discourses of signal merit.
One of these, in 1820, before the Historical Society of New York,
touches upon his favorite theme, with which his name is now so firmly
connected, the Law of Nations; another, in 1824, at the opening of the
New York Athenæum, takes a rapid survey of American literature. In 1826
he published his Life of that great lawyer, William Pinkney. It is also
understood that during all this period he was a frequent contributor to
the "North American Review."

Nor did these accumulated labors, literary and juridical, keep him from
other services. He was a member of the Legislature of New York, and in
1821 held a seat in the Convention which remodelled the Constitution
of that State. In 1825 he was placed on the commission for revising the
statutes of New York. This was the first effort of any State professing
the Common Law to reduce its disconnected and diffusive legislation to
the unity of a code. Thus is his name associated with one of the most
important landmarks in American law.

All these duties and callings he relinquished in the summer of 1827,
when he entered upon the diplomatic service, which opened before him a
new career of usefulness. It was then that he became Chargé d'Affaires
at Copenhagen, where he continued till 1835, when he was transferred
by President Jackson to Berlin, as Minister Resident. In 1837 he was
raised by President Van Buren to the rank of Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary at the same court. On July 22, 1846, he had
his audience of farewell from the King of Prussia, being recalled by
President Polk. This long term of service was passed abroad with the
intermission of a brief period in 1834, when he revisited his country
on leave of absence.

During this protracted career in foreign countries, charged with
responsible negotiations, he was not lost in the toils of office, or in
the allurements of court life. He was always a student. At Copenhagen
he prepared his "History of the Northmen, or Danes and Normans, from
the Earliest Times to the Conquest of England by William of Normandy."
This was published in 1831, both in England and in America. In 1844 it
was much enlarged, and translated into French. At the time of his death
he was occupied in preparing another edition. In 1838 he contributed
to the Edinburgh Cabinet Library a portion of the volumes entitled
"Scandinavia." By these works he earned an honorable place among our
historical writers. His History of the Northmen preceded, in time, the
productions of Bancroft and Prescott, which have since achieved so much
renown.

From literature he passed again to jurisprudence, where he has won his
surest triumphs. His "Elements of International Law" appeared in London
and the United States in 1836, and again in 1846, much enlarged. This
was followed by a "History of the Law of Nations in Europe and America,
from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Washington," which first
appeared in French, at Leipsic, in 1841, under the title of _Histoire
des Progrès du Droit des Gens en Europe depuis la Paix de Westphalie
jusqu'au Congrès de Vienne, avec un Précis Historique du Droit des Gens
Européen avant la Paix de Westphalie_. This was originally written for
a prize offered by the French Institute. The question proposed was,
_Quels sont les progrès qu'a fait le droit des gens en Europe depuis
la Paix de Westphalie?_ It was bold and honorable in Mr. Wheaton to
venture in a foreign tongue the discussion of so great a subject.
The Greek of Cicero excited the admiration of the rhetoricians at
Rhodes and Athens, and the French of Gibbon was in harmony with his
own swelling English style; but Mr. Wheaton, whether in French or
English, is commended by matter rather than manner. On this account he
was at disadvantage before the polished French tribunal. His effort
received what was called _mention honorable_; but the prize was awarded
to a young Frenchman, whose production has never seen the light. An
impartial public opinion has awarded our countryman another prize more
than academic. The same work in English, much enlarged, is now an
authority.

Besides these classical treatises, Mr. Wheaton published an able and
thorough Inquiry into the Validity of the Eight of Visitation and
Search, particularly as recently claimed by Great Britain. Here he
upheld the views of the American government. The acknowledged weight of
his opinion in the science of law gave to his conclusions commanding
influence.

On his recent return to this country, he was welcomed with many
manifestations of regard, both public and private. Wherever he
appeared, he was a favored guest. At the last Commencement of Brown
University, he delivered the Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
His subject was Germany. The various departments of thought and
conduct, which have been successfully occupied by the "many-sided"
mind of that country, were sketched with singular ability. His voice
was feeble, and, as he spoke, large numbers of the audience drew near
the pulpit, filling the adjacent aisles, and standing in respectful
attention, that they might follow his learned discourse.

Such were the important and diversified labors of his valuable life.
Without any adventitious aids of fortune, or special favor, he achieved
eminent place in the civilized world. By virtue of his office he lived
as an equal among nobles and princes, while his rare endowments opened
to him at will the fraternities of learning and science. And yet his
qualities were not those of the courtier. Nor did any heaven-descended
eloquence lend fire to his conversation or style. Both were simple,
grave, reserved, like his manners, attractive rather from clearness and
matter than from brilliancy or point.

His career abroad as Diplomatist was one of the longest in our
history,--longer even than that of John Quincy Adams. It was not his
fortune to affix his name to any treaty, like that of 1783, which
acknowledged our Independence, or that of Ghent in 1814, which restored
peace to England and the United States. But his extended term of
service was filled by a succession of wise and faithful labors, which
rendered incalculable good to his own country, while they impressed his
character upon the public mind of Europe. His negotiation with Denmark
was important. More important still was his careful management of our
national interests in connection with the German Zollverein. Besides
these conspicuous acts, with which all are familiar, there is his long
and constant correspondence with the Department of State at Washington,
which is known to comparatively few, although of exceeding merit.

It was his habit, contrary to the usage of many American ministers,
by regular authentic communications, to keep the Government at home
informed with regard to the position of foreign nations, as observed
by him. All the matters which prominently occupied the Continental
nations during his residence abroad, particularly those two disputes
known as the Belgian question and the Egyptian question, which seemed
for a while to fill the firmament of Europe with "portents dire," were
discussed in these despatches with instructive fulness. These may be
found in the archives of his legation, and in the Department of State
at Washington, "enrolled in the Capitol," where they will be studied by
the future historian.

His familiarity with the Law of Nations, from his position as a
diplomatist, was enhanced by mature and thorough study. For this he
was prepared by training at the bar, the influence of which may be
discerned in some of his writings. He was master alike of its learning
and its dialectics. It happened in Berlin that he was called to defend
the rights of ambassadors against an injurious usage established or
recognized by the Prussian government. All who have read his paper on
this occasion will attest the force and sharpness of his unanswered
argument. Strange that this task should have devolved upon an American
minister! Strange that the privileges of ambassadors should have found
their defender in a Cis-Atlantic citizen! His defence excited the
attention of the diplomatic body in Europe. Copies were transmitted to
the different courts, where, as I have understood, it was discussed,
and generally, if not universally, sanctioned.

Justly eminent as a practical diplomatist, his works derived new value
from the position of their author, while even his official rank was
aided by his works. His was a solitary example in our age, perhaps the
only instance since Grotius, of an eminent minister who was also an
expounder of the Law of Nations. His works, therefore, are received
with peculiar respect. Already they have become _authorities_. Such
they are regarded by the two British writers who have since appeared in
this field, Mr. Manning and Mr. Reddie. The former, in his excellent
Commentaries, refers to Mr. Wheaton's work on the Elements of
International Law as "certainly the best elementary book on the topic
that exists";[237] while Mr. Reddie announces that "this work, although
not by a British author, was certainly, at the date of its publication,
the most able and scientific treatise on International Law which had
appeared in the English language."[238] It is admitted that the method
is superior to that of Martens, Chitty, Schmalz, or Klüber.

    [237] Commentaries on the Law of Nations, Preface, p. v.

It cannot be disguised that his two works in this department are
remarkable for careful statement and arrangement, rather than for that
elegance, or glow, or freedom of discussion, by which the reader is
carried captive. His Elements afford the best view yet presented of the
Law of Nations, as practically illustrated in the adjudged cases of
England and the United States, and in recent diplomacy. But we miss in
them the fulness and variety of illustration which characterize some
of the earlier writers, and especially that genial sentiment which
interests us so constantly in Vattel. The History, which first appeared
in French, is not less important than the Elements. Here the field is
more clearly his own. This work supplies a place never before filled in
the literature of the English language, if in that of any language. To
all students of jurisprudence, nay, more, to all students of history,
who ascend above wars and battles to the principles which are at once
parent and offspring of events, this account of the Progress of the Law
of Nations is an important guide.

Had Mr. Wheaton's life been longer spared, he would have found it his
province, in the discharge of his recently assumed office as Lecturer
on the Civil [Roman] and International Law at Harvard University, to
survey again the same wide field. What further harvests he might then
have gathered it is impossible now to estimate. He never entered upon
these labors. The reaper was removed before he began to use the sickle.

    [238] Maritime International Law, Vol. II. p. 441.

Such was his life,--passed not without well-deserved honor at home and
abroad. In those two great departments of labor, History and the Law of
Nations, he is among our American pioneers. Through him the literature
and jurisprudence of our country have been commended in foreign lands:--

    "Fluminaque in fontes cursu reditura supino."[239]

Others may have done better in the high art of History; but no American
historian has, like him, achieved European eminence as a writer on
the Law of Nations; nor has any other American writer on the last
great theme been recognized abroad as historian. He was a member
of the French Institute; and I cannot forget, that, at the time of
his admission, the question, so honorable to his double fame, was
entertained by the late Baron Degérando, the jurist and philanthropist,
whether he should be received into the section of History or of
Jurisprudence. He was finally attached to the latter. Prescott and
Bancroft belong to the former.

It is as an expounder of Public International Law that his name will
be most widely cherished. In the progress of Christian civilization,
many of the rules now sustained by learned subtilty or unquestioning
submission, shaping the public concerns of nations, will pass away. The
Institution of War, with its complex code, now sanctioned and legalized
by nations, as a proper mode of adjusting their disputes, will yield
to some less questionable arbitrament. But a profound interest must
always attach to the writings of those great masters who have labored
to explain, to advance, and to refine that system, which, though
incomplete, has helped to keep the great Christian Commonwealth in the
bonds of Peace. Among these Mr. Wheaton's place is conspicuous. His
name is already inscribed on the same tablet with those of Grotius,
Pufendorf, and Vattel.

    [239] Ovid, Epist. ex Ponto, Lib. IV. Ep. v. 43.

It were wrong to close this imperfect tribute without a renewed
testimony to the purity of his life. From youth to age his career was
marked by integrity, temperance, frugality, modesty, industry. His
quiet, unostentatious manners were fit companions of his virtues. His
countenance, which is admirably preserved in the portrait by Healy, had
the expression of thoughtfulness and repose. Nor station nor fame made
him proud. He stood with serene simplicity in the presence of kings. In
the social circle, when he spoke, all drew near to listen,--sure that
what he said would be wise, tolerant, and kind.

    UNION AMONG MEN OF ALL PARTIES AGAINST THE SLAVE POWER AND THE
                         EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

     SPEECH BEFORE A MASS CONVENTION AT WORCESTER, JUNE 28, 1848.

The effort to establish a political test in the Whig party in
opposition to the extension of Slavery failed; but the Antislavery
sentiment was constantly active. Those who coöperated in the movement
were denounced as disturbers, and finally obtained an epithet, applied
often in sarcasm, which may be considered their highest praise. They
were called _Conscience_ Whigs, in contradistinction to _Cotton_
Whigs. The contest was continued in the newspapers, and also in the
Legislature of Massachusetts. The course of the two great political
parties compelled a final break.

General Cass, who had abandoned the Wilmot Proviso, which he once
maintained, was nominated by the Democrats as their candidate for the
Presidency. General Taylor, who was a considerable slaveholder, was
nominated by the Whigs, without any platform. It seemed impossible
for persons earnest against Slavery to sustain either. Already, in
New York, a considerable portion of the Democratic party, known as
"Barn-burners," had refused to support General Cass, and nominated
Martin Van Buren, adopting at the same time resolutions asserting the
power of Congress to prohibit Slavery in the Territories, and calling
for the exercise of this power.

At the nomination of General Taylor, Hon. Charles Allen and Hon. Henry
Wilson, of Massachusetts, delegates to the National Convention, both
refused to support the candidate. This was the signal for movement. A
call was issued for a convention to found a new party. It was signed by
Mr. Sumner and those with whom he was in the habit of acting. This was
the beginning of the separate Free-Soil organization in Massachusetts,
which afterwards grew into the Republican party. The call, which was
extensively signed, concluded by inviting "fellow-citizens throughout
the Commonwealth, who are opposed to the nomination of Cass and Taylor,
to meet in convention at Worcester, on Wednesday, the 28th day of June
current, to take such steps as the occasion shall demand in support
of the PRINCIPLES to which they are pledged, and to coöperate with
the other Free States in a convention for this purpose." It will be
observed that the people were summoned to support _principles_ and
also to coöperate with the Free States generally in this behalf. The
response was prompt and enthusiastic. As many as five thousand persons
appeared at Worcester, quickened by hostility to Slavery. The City
Hall was not large enough, and the excited multitude adjourned to the
Common, where they were called to order by Alexander DeWitt, of Oxford.
Samuel F. Lyman, of Northampton, was chosen Chairman _pro tem._, and
W.S. Robinson, of Lowell, Secretary _pro tem._ A committee, of which
Hon. E.L. Keyes, of Dedham, was chairman, reported the following list
of officers: Hon. Samuel Hoar, of Concord, President; David Heard, of
Wayland, Alanson Hamilton, of North Brookfield, Joseph L. Richardson,
of Medway, Dr. S.G. Howe, of Boston, John Wells, of Chicopee, Joseph
Stevens, of Warwick, and R.P. Waters, of Salem, Vice-Presidents;
William S. Robinson, of Lowell, William A. Wallace, of Worcester, Allen
Shepard, of Ashland, William A. Arnold, of Northampton, Secretaries. On
motion of Hon. S.C. Phillips, of Salem, a committee was appointed to
draft an address and resolutions, consisting of Mr. Phillips, Erastus
Hopkins, of Northampton, D.W. Alvord, of Greenfield, M.M. Fisher, of
Medway, A.C. Spooner, of Boston, A. Bangs, of Springfield, and E.
Rockwood Hoar, of Concord.

The Convention was first addressed by Samuel Hoar, on taking the
chair,--then by Charles Allen, Henry Wilson, Abraham Payne, of Rhode
Island, Charles Hart, of Rhode Island, J.C. Woodman, of Maine, Amasa
Walker, Lott Poole, Joshua Leavitt, Lewis D. Campbell, of Ohio, Joshua
R. Giddings, of Ohio, J.C. Lovejoy, Charles Francis Adams, Charles
Sumner, Edward L. Keyes, and E. Rockwood Hoar. The speeches were
earnest and determined, and they were received in a corresponding
spirit. No great movement ever showed at the beginning more character
and power. It began true and strong.

All the speakers united in renouncing old party ties. None did
this better than C.F. Adams, who concluded his remarks by saying:
"Forgetting the things that are behind, I propose that we press forward
to the high calling of our new occupation; and, fellow-citizens,
whatever may be the fate of you or me, all I can now add is to repeat
the words of one with whom I take pride in remembering that I have been
connected: 'Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,' to go with
the liberties of my country is my fixed determination." To these words
Mr. Sumner alluded at the beginning of his speech.

MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:--

At the close of a day crowded with exciting interest and full of best
auguries, I feel that I can add little to what you have already heard.
What can I say that shall enforce the great cause so successfully
commended by my friend from Ohio [Mr. GIDDINGS], and, lastly,
by my friend [Mr. ADAMS] who has just spoken, with the voice
of the American Revolution on his lips? One thing, at least, I can
do: I can join them in renunciation of party relations, so plainly
inconsistent with the support of Freedom. They have been Whigs; and
I, too, have been a Whig, though "not an ultra Whig." I was a Whig
because I thought this party represented the moral sentiments of the
country,--that it was the party of Humanity. It has ceased to sustain
this character. It represents no longer the moral sentiments of the
country. It is not the party of Humanity. A party which renounces its
sentiments must expect to be renounced. In the coming contest I wish it
understood that I belong to the party of Freedom,--to that party which
plants itself on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
of the United States.

The transactions in which we are now engaged recall an incident of
French history. It was late in the night, at Versailles, that a
courtier of Louis the Sixteenth, penetrating the bed-chamber of his
master, and arousing him from slumber, communicated the intelligence,
big with destiny, that the people of Paris, smarting under wrong and
falsehood, had risen in their might, and, after a severe conflict
with hireling troops, destroyed the Bastile. The unhappy monarch,
turning upon his couch, said, "It is an _insurrection_." "No, Sire,"
answered the honest courtier, "it is a _revolution_." And such is our
movement to-day. It is a REVOLUTION,--not beginning with the
destruction of a Bastile, but destined to end only with the overthrow
of a tyranny differing little in hardship and audacity from that
which sustained the Bastile of France,--I mean the Slave Power of our
country. Do not start at this similitude. I intend no unkindness to
slaveholders, many of whom are doubtless humane and honest. Such also
was Louis the Sixteenth; and yet he sustained the Bastile, with the
untold horrors of its dungeons, where human beings were thrust into
companionship with toads and rats.

By the Slave Power I understand that combination of persons, or,
perhaps, of politicians, whose animating principle is the perpetuation
and extension of Slavery, with the advancement of Slaveholders. That
such a combination exists is apparent from our history. It shows
itself in the mildest, and perhaps the least offensive form, in the
undue proportion of offices held by Slaveholders under the National
Constitution. It is still worse apparent in a succession of acts by
which the National Government has been prostituted to Slavery. Mindful
of the Missouri Compromise, with its sanction of Slavery,--mindful of
the annexation of Texas, with its fraud and iniquity,--mindful also
of the war against Mexico, in itself a great crime, where wives and
sisters have been compelled to mourn sons, husbands, and brothers
untimely slain,--as these things, dark, dismal, atrocious, rise before
us, may we not brand their unquestionable source as a tyranny hateful
as that which sustained the Bastile? The Slave Power is the criminal.

This combination is unknown to the Constitution; nay, it exists in
defiance of that instrument, and of the recorded opinions uttered
constantly by its founders. The Constitution was the crowning labor of
the men who gave us the Declaration of Independence. It was established
to perpetuate, in organic law, those rights which the Declaration had
promulgated, and which the sword of Washington had secured. "We hold
these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
_among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness_." Such
are the emphatic words which our country took upon its lips, as it
first claimed its place among the nations of the earth. These were its
baptismal vows. And the preamble of the Constitution renews them, when
it declares its objects, among other things, to "establish justice,
promote the general welfare, and _secure the blessings of liberty_ to
ourselves and our posterity." Mark: not to establish _injustice_, not
to promote the welfare of a class, or of a few slaveholders, but the
_general_ welfare; not to foster the curse of slavery, but to secure
the blessings of _liberty_. And the declared opinions of the fathers
were all in harmony with these two charters. "I can only say," said
Washington, "that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely
than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery; but there
is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished,
and that is by legislative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage
will go, shall never be wanting."[240] Patrick Henry, while confessing
that he was the master of slaves, said: "I will not, I cannot justify
it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to Virtue
as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament
my want of conformity to them. I believe a time will come, when an
opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil."[241]
And Franklin, as President of the earliest Abolition Society of the
country, signed a petition to the first Congress, in which he declared
himself "bound to use all justifiable endeavors to loosen the bands
of slavery, and promote a general enjoyment of the blessings of
freedom."[242] Thus the soldier, the orator, and the philosopher of the
Revolution, all unite in homage to Freedom. Washington, wise in council
and in battle, Patrick Henry, with tongue of flame, Franklin, with
heaven-descended sagacity and humanity, all bear testimony to the times
in which they lived, and the institutions they helped to establish.

    [240] Letter to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786: Writings of
    Washington, ed. Sparks, Vol. IX. p. 159.

    [241] Letter to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1779: Goodloe's
    Southern Platform, p. 79.

    [242] Annals of Congress, 1st Cong. 2d Sess., 1198.

It is plain that our Constitution was formed by lovers of Human
Freedom,--that it was animated by their divine spirit,--that Slavery
was regarded by them with aversion, so that, if covertly alluded to,
it was not named in the instrument,--and that they all looked forward
to an early day when this evil and shame would be obliterated from the
land. Surely, then, it is right to say that the combination which seeks
to perpetuate and extend Slavery is unknown to the Constitution,--that
it exists in defiance of that instrument, and also of the recorded
opinions uttered constantly by its founders.

Time would fail me to dwell on the perpetual influence, growing with
time, which the Slave Power has exerted from the foundation of the
government. In the earlier periods of our history it was moderate
and reserved. The spirit of the founders still prevailed. But with
the advance of years, and as these early champions passed from the
scene, it became more audacious, aggressive, and tyrannical, till
at last it obtained the control of the government, and caused it to
be administered, not in the spirit of Freedom, but in the spirit of
Slavery. Yes! the government of the United States is now (let it
be said with shame), not, as at the beginning, a government merely
permitting, while it regretted Slavery, but a government openly
favoring and vindicating it, visiting also with its displeasure all who
oppose it.

During late years the Slave Power has introduced a new test for
office, which would have excluded Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.
It applies an arrogant and unrelenting ostracism to all who express
themselves against Slavery. And now, in the madness of tyranny, it
proposes to extend this curse over new soil not yet darkened by its
presence. It seeks to make the flag of our country the carrier of
Slavery into distant lands,--to scale the mountain fastnesses of
Oregon, and descend with its prey upon the shores of the Pacific,--to
cross the Rio Grande, and there, in broad territories, recently wrested
from Mexico by robber hands, to plant a shameful institution which that
republic has expressly abolished.

In the prosecution of its purposes, the Slave Power has obtained the
control of both the great political parties. Their recent nominations
were made to serve its interests, to secure its supremacy, and
especially to promote the extension of Slavery. Whigs and Democrats,--I
use the old names still,--professing to represent conflicting
sentiments, concur in being representatives of the Slave Power. General
Cass, after openly registering his adhesion to it, was recognized as
the candidate of the Democrats. General Taylor, who owns slaves on a
large scale, though observing a studious silence on Slavery, as on all
other things, is not only a representative of the Slave Power, but an
important constituent part of the Power itself.

I will not dwell upon the manner in which General Taylor was forced
upon the late Whig party. This has been amply done by others. But you
will pardon me, if I allude to the aid his nomination derived from a
quarter of the country where it should have encountered inexorable
opposition,--I refer to New England, and especially to Massachusetts.
I speak only what is now too notorious, when I say that it was the
secret influence which went forth from among ourselves that contributed
powerfully to this consummation. Yes! it was brought about by an
unhallowed union--conspiracy let it be called--between two remote
sections: between the politicians of the Southwest and the politicians
of the Northeast,--between the cotton-planters and flesh-mongers of
Louisiana and Mississippi and the cotton-spinners and traffickers of
New England,--between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom.

And now the question occurs, What is the true line of duty with
regard to these two candidates? Mr. Van Buren--and I honor him for
his trumpet call to the North--sounded the true note, when he said
he could not vote for either. Though nominated by opposite parties,
they represent substantially the same interest. The election of either
would be a triumph of the Slave Power, entailing upon the country the
sin of extending Slavery. How, then, shall they be encountered? To
my mind the way is plain. The lovers of Freedom, from both parties,
and irrespective of all party associations, must unite, and by a new
combination, congenial to the Constitution, oppose both candidates.
This will be the FREEDOM POWER, whose single object will be to resist
the SLAVE POWER. We will put them face to face, and let them grapple.
Who can doubt the result?

I hear the old political saw, that "we must take the least of two
evils." My friend from Ohio [Mr. GIDDINGS] has already riddled
this excuse, so that I might well leave it untouched; but I cannot
forbear a brief observation. It is admitted, then, that Cass and Taylor
both are _evils_. For myself, if two evils are presented to me, I will
take neither. There are occasions of political difference, I admit,
when it may become expedient to vote for a candidate who does not
completely represent our sentiments. There are matters legitimately
within the range of expediency and compromise. The Tariff and the
Currency are of this character. If a candidate differs from me on these
more or less, I may yet vote for him. But the question before the
country is of another character. This will not admit of compromise. It
is not within the domain of expediency. _To be wrong on this is to be
wholly wrong._ It is not merely expedient for us to defend Freedom,
when assailed, but our duty so to do, unreservedly, and careless of
consequences. Who in this assembly would help to fasten a fetter upon
Oregon or Mexico? Who that would not oppose every effort to do this
thing? Nobody. Who is there, then, that can vote for either Taylor or
Cass?

But it is said that we shall throw away our votes, and that our
opposition will fail. Fail, Sir! No honest, earnest effort in a good
cause can fail. It may not be crowned with the applause of men; it
may not seem to touch the goal of immediate worldly success, which
is the end and aim of so much in life. But it is not lost. It helps
to strengthen the weak with new virtue,--to arm the irresolute with
proper energy,--to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end
conquers all. Fail! Did the martyrs fail, when with precious blood they
sowed the seed of the Church? Did the discomfited champions of Freedom
fail, who have left those names in history that can never die? Did the
three hundred Spartans fail, when, in the narrow pass, they did not
fear to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened
the sun? Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they left an example
greater far than any victory. And this is the least we can do. Our
example will be the main-spring of triumph hereafter. It will not be
the first time in history that the hosts of Slavery have outnumbered
the champions of Freedom. But where is it written that Slavery finally
prevailed?

Assurances here to-day show that we need not postpone success. It seems
already at hand. The heart of Ohio beats responsive to the heart of
Massachusetts, and all the Free States are animated with the vigorous
breath of Freedom. Let us not waste time in vain speculations between
two candidates. Both are bad. Both represent a principle we cannot
sanction.

Whatever may be said to the contrary by politicians, Freedom is the
only question now before the American people. The Bank is not alone
an "obsolete idea." All the ideas put forward in the controversies
of party are now practically obsolete. Peace has come to remove the
question of the Mexican War. We are no longer obliged to consider if an
unnecessary and unconstitutional war shall be maintained by supplies.
There is no question with regard to the Sub-Treasury. This is now
firmly established. Then comes the cause of Internal Improvements. This
is not unimportant, but happily it is removed from the domain of party.
The Chicago Convention for the express consideration of this subject
was composed of various political opinions, and I understand that its
recommendations are now sustained by opposite parties.

Of the past issues, that of the Tariff excites the most interest. This,
it will be remembered, did not find a place in the early history of
the country. Only in recent times has it occupied the attention of
politicians, and been the occasion of vehement popular appeals. Regret
is often expressed that it is the subject of party strife. It will be
in the recollection of most persons that Mr. Webster made a vigorous
effort to remove it from the list of party questions. What he was
unable to do directly has been accomplished indirectly by the Mexican
War. The debt of millions now entailed upon the country renders it
necessary to impose a tariff which will satisfy the demands of all. Of
course the debt must be paid; nor should we lose time in paying it, nor
postpone it to the next generation. The people are not ready to meet
it by direct taxation,--though, for one, I should be well pleased to
see such a corrective applied to war. It can be paid only through the
agency of a tariff, which, for this purpose, if for no other, must be
supported by all parties. The Tariff, then, like the others, is no
longer a political issue. If not obsolete, it is at least in abeyance.

These questions being out of the way, what remains for those who, in
casting their votes, regard _principles_ rather than _men_? It is clear
that the only question of present practical interest arises from the
usurpations of the Slave Power and the efforts to extend Slavery. This
is the vital question at this time. It is _the question of questions_.
It was lately said in the Convention of the New York Democracy at Utica
(and I am glad to quote that most respectable body of men), that the
movement in which we are now engaged is the most important since the
American Revolution. Something more may be said. _It is a continuance
of the American Revolution._ It is an effort to carry into effect the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to revive in the
administration of our government the spirit of Washington, Franklin,
and Jefferson,--to bring back the Constitution to the principles and
practice of its early founders,--to the end that it shall promote
Freedom, and not Slavery, and shall be administered in harmony with the
spirit of Freedom, and not with the spirit of Slavery.

In the last will and testament of Washington are emphatic words, which
may be adopted as the motto for the present contest. After providing
for the emancipation of his slaves, to take place on the death of
his wife, he says, "And I do hereby expressly forbid the sale or
transportation out of the said Commonwealth of any slave I may die
possessed of, _under any pretence whatsoever_."[243] So, at least,
should the people of the United States expressly forbid the sale or
transportation of any slave beyond their ancient borders, under any
pretence whatsoever.

    [243] Writings of Washington, ed. Sparks, Vol. I. p. 570.

Returning to our forefathers for their principles, let us borrow also
something of their courage and union. Let us summon to our sides the
majestic forms of those civil heroes whose firmness in council was
equalled only by the firmness of Washington in war. Let us again awake
to the eloquence of the elder Adams, animating his associates in
Congress to independence; let us listen anew to the sententious wisdom
of Franklin; let us be enkindled, as were the men of other days, by the
fervid devotion to Freedom which flamed from the heart of Jefferson.

Instructed even by our enemies, let us be taught by the Slave Power
itself. The few slaveholders are always united. Hence their strength.
Like sticks in a fagot, they cannot be broken. Thus far the friends of
Freedom have been divided. _Union_, then, must be our watchword,--union
among men of all parties. By such union we consolidate an opposition
which must prevail.

Let me call upon you, then, men of all parties, Whigs and Democrats,
or howsoever named, to come forward and join in a common cause. Let
us all leave the old organizations, and come together. In the crisis
before us, it becomes us to forget past differences, and those names
which have been the signal of strife. Only remembering our duties,
when the fire-bell rings at midnight, we ask not if it be Whigs or
Democrats who join us to extinguish the flames; nor do we make any such
inquiry in selecting our leader then. To the strongest arm and the most
generous soul we defer at once. To him we commit the direction of the
engine. His hand grasps the pipe to pour the water upon the raging
conflagration. So must we do now. Our leader must be the man who is
the ablest and surest representative of the principles to which we are
pledged.

Let Massachusetts, nurse of the men and principles that made our
earliest revolution, vow herself anew to her early faith. Let
her once more elevate the torch which she first held aloft, or,
if need be, pluck fresh coals from the living altars of France,
proclaiming, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,"--Liberty to the captive,
Equality between master and slave, Fraternity with all men,--the
whole comprehended in that sublime revelation of Christianity, the
Brotherhood of Man.

In the contemplation of these great interests, the intrigues of party,
the machinations of politicians, the combinations of office-seekers,
all seem to pass from sight. Politics and morals, no longer divorced
from each other, become one and inseparable in the holy wedlock of
Christian sentiment. Such a union elevates politics, while it gives
a new sphere to morals. Political discussions have a grandeur which
they never before assumed. Released from topics which concern only the
selfish squabble for gain, and are often independent of morals, they
come home to the heart and conscience. A novel force passes into the
contests of party, breathing into them the breath of a new life,--of
Hope, Progress, Justice, Humanity.

From this demonstration to-day, and the acclaim wafted to us from
the Free States, it is easy to see that the great cause of Liberty,
to which we now dedicate ourselves, will sweep the heart-strings of
the people. It will smite all the chords with a might to draw forth
emotions such as no political struggle ever awakened before. It will
move the young, the middle-aged, and the old. It will find a voice in
the social circle, and mingle with the flame of the domestic hearth. It
will touch the souls of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, until
the sympathies of all swell in one irresistible chorus of indignation
against the deep damnation of lending new sanction to the enslavement
of our brother man.

Come forward, then, men of all parties! let us range together. Come
forth, all who thus far have kept aloof from parties! here is occasion
for action. Men of Peace, come forth! All who in any way feel the wrong
of Slavery, take your stand! Join us, lovers of Truth, of Justice,
of Humanity! And let me call especially upon the young. You are the
natural guardians of Freedom. In your firm resolves and generous souls
she will find her surest protection. The young man who is not willing
to serve in her cause, to suffer, if need be, in her behalf, gives
little promise of those qualities which secure an honorable age.

                      THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

    AN ORATION BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF UNION COLLEGE,
                      SCHENECTADY, JULY 25, 1848.

     Secta fuit servare modum, finemque tenere,
     Naturamque sequi, patriæque impendere vitam,
     Nec sibi, sed toti genitum se credere mundo.

                              LUCAN, _Pharsalia_, Lib. II. 381-383.

Plus les lumières se répandent, plus les écarts de la moyenne vont en
diminuant; plus, par conséquent, nous tendons à nous rapprocher de
ce qui est beau et de ce qui est bien. La perfectibilité de l'espèce
humaine résulte comme une conséquence nécessaire de toutes nos
recherches.--QUETELET, _Sur l'Homme_, Tom. II. p. 326.

       But at my back I always hear
       Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
       And yonder all before us lie
       Deserts of vast eternity.

                              MARVELL, _To his Coy Mistress_.

                               ORATION.

From opposite parts of the country, from various schools of sentiment,
we have come together, at this happy anniversary, to interchange
salutations, to mingle in friendly communion, and to catch such words
of cheer as the occasion shall convey. Here are the young, with
freshest laurel of Alma Mater, with joy brightening and hope elevating
the countenance, still unconscious of the toils which enter into the
duties of the world. Here are they, too, of middle life, on whose
weary foreheads the sun now pours his meridian ray, resting for a
moment in these pleasant retreats to renew their strength. Here, also,
are the fathers, crowned with length of days, and rich with ripened
wisdom, withdrawn from active struggle, and dwelling much in meditation
upon the Past. The Future, the Present, and the Past, all find their
representatives in our Fraternity.

I speak of _our_ Fraternity; for, though a stranger among you, yet,
as a member of this society in a sister University, and as a student
of letters in moments snatched from other pursuits, I may claim
kindred here. Let me speak, then, as to my own brethren. Invited by
your partial kindness, it is my privilege to unfold some subject,
which, while claiming your attention during this brief hour, may not
improperly mingle with the memories of this anniversary. I would, if
I could, utter truth which, while approved by the old, should sink
deep into the souls of the young, filling them with strength for all
good works. Mindful, then, of the occasion, deeply conscious of its
requirements, solicitous of the harmony which becomes our literary
festivals, I cannot banish from my thoughts a topic which is intimately
connected with the movements of the present age,--nay, which explains
and controls these movements, whether in the march of science, the
triumphs of charity, the widespread convulsions of Europe, or the
generous uprising of our own country in behalf of Freedom.

Wherever we turn is Progress,--in science, in literature, in knowledge
of the earth, in knowledge of the skies, in intercourse among men, in
the spread of liberty, in works of beneficence, in the recognition
of Human Brotherhood. Thrones, where Authority seemed to sit secure,
with the sanction of centuries, are shaken, and new-made constitutions
come to restrain the aberrations of unlimited power. Men everywhere,
breaking away from the Past, are pressing on to the things that are
before.

Recall for one moment what has taken place during a brief span of time,
hardly exceeding a year. I do not dwell on that mighty revolution in
France, with whose throes the earth still shakes, and whose issues
are yet unrevealed; I do not pause to contemplate the character of
that Pontifical Reformer who has done so much to breathe into Europe
the breath of a new life; I can only point to Sicily and Naples,
rising against a besotted tyranny,--to Venice and Lombardy, claiming
long-lost rights,--to all Italy, filled with the thought of Unity,--to
Hungary, flaming with republican fires,--to Austria, roused at last
against a patriarchal despotism,--to Prussia, taking her place among
constitutional states,--to Germany, in its many principalities,
throbbing with the strong pulse of Freedom. These things are present to
your minds.

Other events, of a different character, are not less signs of the age.
Discovery has achieved one of its most brilliant, as also one of its
most benign results. The genius of Leverrier, traversing the spaces of
the heavens, has disclosed a new planet. By the application of ether,
the dreaded pain of the surgical knife, and even the pangs of Nature,
are soothed or removed, while Death is disarmed of something of its
terrors.

These latter times have witnessed two spectacles of another nature
and less regarded, which are of singular significance,--harbingers, I
would call them, of those glad days of promise which we almost seem
to touch. I would not exaggerate, and yet I must speak of them as
they impress my own mind. To me they are of a higher order than any
discovery in science, or any success in the acquisition of knowledge,
or any political prosperity, inasmuch as they are the tokens of that
moral elevation, and of that Human Brotherhood, without distinction
of condition, nation, or race, which it is the supreme office of all
science, all knowledge, and all politics to serve. I refer to the
sailing of the Jamestown from Boston with succor to the starving
poor of Ireland, and to the meeting of the Penitentiary Congress at
Frankfort. All confess the beauty of that act, where prophecy seems
fulfilled, by which a Ship of War was consecrated to a purpose of
charity. Hardly less beautiful is the contemplation of that assembly
at Frankfort (perhaps it is new to some whom I have the honor
of addressing), where were delegates from most of the Christian
nations,--from military France, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, the
States of Germany, England, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Poland, distant
Russia, and frozen Norway,--convened for no purpose of war or
diplomacy,--not to agitate selfish coalitions, not to adjust or disturb
the seeming balance of Europe, not to exalt or abase the vaulting
ambition of potentate or state, but calmly and in fraternal council
to consider what could be done for those who are in prison, to hear
the recital of efforts in their behalf among all the nations, and to
encourage each other in this work. Such a Congress forms a truer epoch
of Christian Progress--does it not?--than the Congress of Vienna, with
the bespangled presence of great autocrats distributing the spoils of
war, as the sailing of the Jamestown is a higher Christian triumph than
any mere victory of blood.

Profoundly penetrated by these things, you will confess the Progress
of Man. The earnest soul, enlightened by history, strengthened by
philosophy, nursed to childish slumber by the simple prayer, "Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," confident
in the final, though slow, fulfilment of the daily fulfilling promises
of the Future, looks forward to the continuance of this Progress during
unknown and infinite ages, as a _law_ of our being.

It is of this that I shall speak to-day. My subject is THE LAW OF
HUMAN PROGRESS. In selecting this theme, I would not minister to
the pride or gratulation of the Present, nor would I furnish motives
for indifference or repose. Rather would I teach how small is the
Present and all it contains, compared with the Future, and how duties
increase with the grandeur upon which we enter, while we derive new
encouragement from knowledge of the law which is our support and guide.

The subject is vast as it is interesting and important. It might well
occupy a volume, rather than a brief discourse. In unfolding it, I
shall speak _first_ of the history of this law, as seen in its origin,
gradual development, and recognition,--and _next_ of its character,
conditions, and limitations, with the duties it enjoins and the
encouragements it affords.

                                  I.

And, first, of its history. The recognition of this law has been
reserved for comparatively recent times. Like other general laws
governing the courses of Nature, it was unknown to Antiquity. The
ignorance and prejudice which then prevailed with regard to the earth,
the heavenly bodies, and their relations to the universe, found fit
companionship with the wild speculations concerning the Human Family.
The ignorant live only in the Present, whether of time or place. What
they see and observe bounds their knowledge. Thus to the early Greek
the heavens were upborne by the mountains, and the sun traversed daily
in fiery chariot from east to west. So things seemed to him. But the
true Destiny of the Human Family was as little comprehended.

Man, in his origin and history, was surrounded with fable; nor was
there any correct idea of the principles determining the succession
of events. Revolutions of states were referred sometimes to chance,
sometimes to certain innate elements of decay. Plutarch did not
hesitate to ascribe the triumphs of Rome, not to the operation of
immutable law, but to the fortune of the Republic. And Polybius, whom
Gibbon extols for wisdom and philosophical spirit, said that Carthage,
being so much older than Rome, felt her decay so much the sooner;
and the survivor, he announced, carried in her bosom the seeds of
mortality. The image of youth, manhood, and age was applied to nations.
Like mortals on earth, they were supposed to have a period of life,
and a length of thread spun by the Fates, strong at first, but thinner
and weaker with advancing time, till at last it was cut, and another
nation, with newly twisted thread, commenced its career.

In likening the life of a nation to the life of an individual man,
there was error, commended by seeming truth, not yet entirely banished.
It prevails still with many, who have not received the Law of Human
Progress, teaching that all revolutions and changes are but links in
the chain of development, or, it may be, turns in the grand _spiral_,
by which the unknown infinite Future is connected with the Past.
Nations have decayed, but never with the imbecility of age.

The ancients saw that there were changes, but did not detect the
principles governing them, while a favorite fable and popular
superstition conspired to turn attention back upon the Past, rather
than forward to the Future. In the dawn of Greece, Hesiod, standing
near the Father of Poetry, sang the descending mutations through
which Mankind had seemed to travel. First came the Golden Age, so
he fabled, when men lived secure and happy in pleasant association,
without discord, without care, without toil, without weariness, while
good of all kinds abounded, like the plentiful fruits which the earth
spontaneously supplied. This was followed by the Silver Age, with
a race inferior in form and disposition. Next was the Brazen Age,
still descending in the scale, when men became vehement and robust,
strong in body and stern in soul, building brazen houses, wielding
brazen weapons, prompt to war, but not yet entirely wicked. Last,
and unhappily his own, according to the poet, was the Iron Age, when
straightway all evil raged forth; neither by day nor yet by night, did
men rest from labor and sorrow; discord took the place of concord; the
pious, the just, and the good were without favor; the man of force and
the evil-doer were cherished; modesty and justice yielded to insolence
and wrong. War now prevailed, and men lived in wretchedness.[244]

    [244] Hesiod, Opera et Dies, 109-201.

Such, according to the Greek poet, was the succession of changes
through which mankind had passed. This fable found a response. It was
repeated by philosophy and history. Plato adorned and illustrated it.
Strabo and Diodorus imparted to it their grave sanction. It was carried
to Rome, with the other spoils of Greece. It was reproduced by Ovid,
in flowing verses that have become a commonplace of literature. It was
recognized by the tender muse of Virgil, the sportive fancy of Horace,
and the stern genius of Juvenal. Songs and fables have ever exerted a
powerful control over human opinion; nor is it possible to estimate
the influence of this story in shaping unconsciously the thoughts of
mankind. It is easy to understand that the youth of Antiquity,--let me
say, too, the youth of later ages,--nay, of our own day, in our own
schools and colleges,--nurtured by this literature, should learn to
neglect the Future, and rather regard the Past. The words of Horace
have afforded a polished expression to this prejudice of education:--

    "Damnosa quid non imminuit dies?
     Ætas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
       Nos nequiores, mox daturos
          Progeniem vitiosiorem."[245]

    [245] Hor., Carm. III. vi. 45-48.

Barren as is classical literature in any just recognition of the
continuity of events, any true appreciation of the movement of history,
or any well-defined confidence in the Future, it were wrong to say
that it never found a voice which seemed, in harmony with the Prophets
and the Evangelists, to proclaim the advent of a better age. Virgil,
in his Eclogue to Pollio,--the exact meaning of which is still a
riddle,--breaks forth in words of vague aspiration, which have been
sometimes supposed to herald the coming of the Saviour. The blessings
of Peace are here foreshadowed, while the Golden Age seems to be not
only behind, but also before. Thus, notwithstanding the prejudice of
superstition and the constraint of ignorance, has the human heart, in
longings for a better condition on earth, gone forward as the pioneer
of Humanity.

To the superstition of Heathenism succeeded that of the Christian
Church. The popular doctrine of an immediate millennium, inculcated by
a succession of early fathers, took the place of ancient fable; and a
Golden Age was placed in advance to animate the hope and perseverance
of the faithful. It was believed that the anxieties and strifes
filling the lives of men were all to be lost in a blissful Sabbath of
a thousand years, when Christ with the triumphant band of saints would
return to reign upon earth until the last and general resurrection.
Vain and irrational as was the early form of this anticipation, it was
not without advantage. It filled the souls of all who received it with
aspirations for the Future, while it rudely prefigured that promised
period--then, alas! how distant!--when the whole world will glow in the
illumination of Christian truth. Among the means by which the Law of
Human Progress has found acceptance, it is only just to mention this
prophetic vision of the ancient Church.

All the legitimate influences of Christianity were in the same
direction. Christianity is the religion of Progress. Here is a
distinctive feature, which we vainly seek in any Heathen faith
professed upon earth. Confucius, in his sublime morals, taught us not
to do unto others what we would have them not do unto us; but the
Chinese philosopher did not declare the ultimate triumph of this law.
It was reserved for the Sermon on the Mount to reveal the vital truth,
that all the highest commands of religion and duty, drawing in their
train celestial peace, and marking the final goal of all Progress among
men, shall one day be obeyed. "For verily I say unto you," says the
Saviour, "till heaven and earth pass, _one jot or one tittle shall in
no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled_."

There is nothing of good so vast or beautiful, nothing so distant or
seemingly inaccessible, as to fall beyond the reach of these promises.
Though imperfectly understood, or recognized, in the night of ignorance
and prejudice, they were heralds of the dawn. In the advance of Modern
Europe, they led the way, whispering, _Onward forever!_ Long before
Philosophy deduced the Law of Human Progress from the history of man,
the Gospel silently planted it in the human heart. There it rested,
influencing powerfully, though gently, the march of events.

Slowly did it pass from the formularies of devotion into the
convictions of reason and the treasury of science. Strange blindness!
They, who, repeating the Lord's Prayer, daily called for _the coming
of his kingdom on earth_, who professed implicit faith in the final
fulfilment of the Law, still continued in Heathen ignorance of the
significance and spirit of the Prayer they daily uttered and of the
Law they daily recognized. They did not perceive that the kingdom of
the Lord was to come, and the Law to be fulfilled by a continuity of
daily labor. As modern civilization gradually unfolded itself amidst
the multiplying generations of men, they witnessed the successive
manifestations of power,--but perceived no Law. They looked upon the
imposing procession of events, but did not discern the rule which
guided the mighty series. Ascending from triumph to triumph, they saw
dominion extended by the discoveries of intrepid navigators,--saw
learning strengthened by the studies of accomplished scholars,--saw
universities opening their portals to ingenuous youth in all corners
of the land, from Aberdeen and Copenhagen to Toledo and Ferrara,--saw
Art put forth new graces in the painting of Raffaelle, new grandeur
in the painting, the sculpture, and the architecture of Michel
Angelo,--caught the strains of poets, no longer cramped by ancient
idioms, but flowing sweetly in the language learned at a mother's
knee,--received the manifold revelations of science in geometry,
mathematics, astronomy,--beheld the barbarism of the barbarous Art of
War changed and refined, though barbarous still, by the invention of
gunpowder,--witnessed knowledge of all kinds springing to unwonted
power through the marvellous agency of the printing-press,--admired
the character of _the Good Man of Peace_, as described in that work
of unexampled circulation, translated into all modern languages, the
"Imitation of Christ," by Thomas à Kempis,--listened to the apostolic
preaching of Wyckliffe in England, Huss in Bohemia, Savonarola in
Florence, Luther at Worms; and yet all these things, the harmonious
expression of _progressive_ energies belonging to Man, token of an
untiring advance, earnest of a mightier Future, seemed to teach no
certain lesson.

The key to this advance had not been found. It was not seen that the
constant desire for improvement implanted in man, with the constant
effort consequent thereon in a life susceptible of indefinite Progress,
caused, naturally, under the laws of a beneficent God, an indefinite
advance,--that the evil passions of individuals, or of masses, while
retarding, could not permanently restrain this divine impulse,--and
that each generation, by irresistible necessity, added to the
accumulations of the Past, and in this way prepared a higher Future. To
all ignorant of this tendency, history, instead of a connected chain,
with cause and effect in natural order, is nothing but a disconnected,
irregular series of incidents, like separate and confused circles
having no common bond. It is a dark chaos, embroiled by "chance, high
arbitress," or swayed by some accidental man, fortunate in position or
power. Even Macchiavelli, the consummate historian and politician of
his age,--Bodin, the able speculator upon Government,--Bossuet, the
eloquent teacher of religion and history,--Grotius, the illustrious
founder of the Laws of Nations,--whose large intelligence should have
grasped the true philosophy of events,--all failed to recognize in
them any prevailing law or governing principle.

It was reserved for a professor at Naples, Giambattista Vico, in
the early part of the last century, to review the history of the
Past, analyze its movements, and finally disclose the existence of a
primitive rule or law by which these movements were effected. His work,
entitled "The Principles of a New Science concerning the Common Nature
of Nations,"[246] first published in 1725, constitutes an epoch in
historical studies. Recent Italian admirers vindicate for its author
a place among great discoverers, by the side of Descartes, Galileo,
Bacon, and Newton.[247] Without undertaking to question, or to adopt,
this lofty homage to a name little known, it will not be doubted, that,
as author of an elaborate work devoted expressly to the philosophy
of history, at a period when history was supposed to be without
philosophy, he deserves honorable mention.

    [246] Principj di una Scienza nuova d'intorno alla comune Natura
    delle Nazioni. The fourth book is entitled _Del corso che fanno
    le nazioni_; the fifth book, _Del ricorso delle cose humane nel
    risurgere che fanno le nazioni_.

    [247] Cataldo Jannelli, Cenni sulla Natura et Necessità della
    Scienza delle Cose et delle Storie Umane. Cap. 3, sec. 6.

Vico taught regard not merely for the individual and the nation, but
the race, and showed, that, whatever the fortunes of individuals,
Humanity advances,--that no blind or capricious chance controls the
course of human affairs, but that whatever is done proceeds directly,
under God, from the forces and faculties of men, and thus can have no
true cause except in the nature of things,--excluding, of course, the
idea of chance. He recognized three principles at the foundation of
civilization: first, the existence of Divine Providence; secondly, the
necessity of moderating the passions; and, thirdly, the immortality of
the soul: three primal truths, answering to three historical facts of
universal acceptance,--religion, marriage, and sepulture. Three stages
marked the history of mankind: first, the divine, or theocratic; next,
the heroic; and, lastly, the human. These appeared in Antiquity, and
were reproduced, as he fancied, in modern times. Ingenuity and novelty
are stamped upon this exposition, which is elevated by the exclusion of
chance and the recognition of God.

While recognizing Humanity as governed by law, and with a common
dependence, the Neapolitan professor failed to perceive that this same
law and this common dependence promise to conduct it through unknown
and infinite stages. Believing monarchy a perfect government, he did
not see beyond the time of kings. Like others before him, and even
in our own day, he was perplexed by the treacherous image of youth,
manhood, and age, which he applied to nations, as to the individual
man. No discovery is complete, and that of Vico, while most ingenious
and fruitful, failed to grasp the whole law of the Future.

Meanwhile a gigantic genius in Germany,--whose vision, no less
comprehensive than penetrating, embraced the whole circumference
of knowledge and reached into the undiscovered Future, to whom the
complexities of mathematics, the subtilties of philology, the mazes of
philosophy, the courses of history, the rules of jurisprudence, and the
heights of theology were all equally familiar,--Leibnitz, that more
than imperial conqueror in the realms of universal knowledge,--the
greatest, perhaps, of Human Intelligences,--enunciated the Law of
Progress in all the sciences and all the concerns of life. The Present,
born of the Past, he said, is pregnant with the Future. It is by a
sure series that we advance, using and enjoying all our gifts for
health of body and improvement of mind. Everything, from the simplest
substance up to man, progresses towards God, the Infinite Being, Source
of all other beings; and in bold words, which may require explanation,
he says, "Man seems able to arrive at perfection": _Videtur homo ad
perfectionem venire posse_.[248]

    [248] Leibnitz, Opera Omnia (ed. Dutens), Tom. VI. p. 309:
    _Leibnitiana_, Art. LXXIV.--"Ut semper _certa serie progredi_
    valeamus." Opera Philosophica, p. 85, Art. XI., _De Scientia
    Universali_.--See also _Théodicée_, § 341.

Leibnitz saw the Law of Progress by intuition, and became its herald.
But there is no reason to believe that he appreciated its transcendent
importance as a rule of conduct, and submitted his great powers to its
influence. He saw more than Vico, but he did not discern the practical
guide he had discovered. And yet, recognizing this law, the gates of
the Future were open to him, and he saw Man in distant perspective,
arrived at heights of happiness which he cannot now conceive. The
vision of Universal Peace was to him no longer a vision, but the
practical idea of humane statesmen, while he bent his incomparable
genius to the discovery of a new agent of intercourse among men,--the
aspiration of other philosophers since his day,--a Universal Language,
where the confusion of tongues will be forgotten, and the union of
hearts be consummated in the union of speech.

Close upon Leibnitz came Lessing, whose genius, less universal, but
more exquisite, made him the regenerator of German literature. His
soul was touched by sympathy for all mankind, and he saw its sure
advance. Almost by his side was Herder, gifted among a gifted people,
who in his "Philosophy of History" portrays Humanity in its incessant
progress from small beginnings of ignorance and barbarism, when wrong
and war and slavery prevail, to the recognition of reason and justice
as the rule of life. "There is nothing enthusiastical," he says in that
work, which is a classic of German prose, "in the hope, that, wherever
men dwell, at some future period will dwell men rational, just, and
happy,--happy, not through the means of their own reason alone, but of
the common reason of their whole fraternal race."[249] In these last
words the Law of Progress is announced, with all its promises.

    [249] Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, tr. Churchill,
    Book XV. ch. 5, § 12.

In France we trace this law through a succession of master
minds,--first of whom in time, as in authority, is Descartes, the chief
of French philosophy. His life was crowded with triumphs of intellect,
and after death his spirit seemed for a time to rule all departments
of study. Like the universal soul of the Stoics, it was everywhere.
Though not formally enunciating the Law of Progress, his "Discourse on
Method," first published in 1637, acknowledged its influence in natural
science. "The experience which I have in physics," he says, "teaches
me that it is possible to arrive at a knowledge of many things which
will be very useful to life, and that we may yet discover methods by
which man, comprehending the force and the action of fire, water, air,
stars, skies, and all the other bodies which environ us, as distinctly
as we comprehend the different trades of our artisans, shall be able
to employ them in the same fashion for all the uses to which they
are appropriate, and thus shall render himself master and possessor
of Nature." In these new triumphs of knowledge, he says, "men may
learn to enjoy the fruits of the earth without trouble; their health
will be preserved, and they will be able to exempt themselves from an
infinitude of ills, as well of body as of mind, and even, perhaps, from
the weakness of old age." As I repeat these words, uttered long before
the steam-engine, the railroad, the electric telegraph, and the use of
ether, I seem to hear a prophecy, the prophecy of Science, which each
day helps to fulfil. "Without intending any slight," he continues, "I
am sure that even those engaged in these matters will confess that all
that they know is almost nothing in comparison with what remains to be
known."[250] There is grandeur in the assurance with which the great
philosopher announces the Future.

    [250] Descartes, Discours de la Méthode, Part. 6: OEuvres, Tom.
    I. pp. 192, 193.

From Descartes I come to Pascal, never to be mentioned without a
tribute to the early genius which, though removed from life at the age
of thirty-nine, left an ineffaceable trace upon the religion, science,
and literature of his time. The Law of Progress received from him its
earliest and most distinct statement as a rule of philosophy applicable
to all the sciences depending upon experience and reason. This is to
be found in that posthumous work of eloquent piety and sentiment,
_Les Pensées_, first published by his companions of Port Royal, in
1669, some time after his death; and it is not a little curious, as
an illustration of the prejudices this truth has encountered, that
the chapter where it is set forth, entitled _Of Authority in Matters
of Philosophy_, was in this early edition suppressed. Not until the
next century was the testimony of Pascal disclosed to the world. "By
a special prerogative of the human race," says he, "not only each
man advances day by day in the sciences, but all men together make
continual progress therein, as the universe grows old; because the
same thing happens in the succession of men which takes place in the
different ages of an individual. So that the whole succession of men in
the course of so many ages may be regarded as _one man who lives always
and who learns continually_. From this we see with what injustice we
respect Antiquity in its philosophers; for, since old age is the period
most distant from infancy, who does not see that the old age of this
_universal man_ must not be sought in the times nearest his birth, but
in those which are the most remote? They whom we call the Ancients
were indeed new in all things, and properly formed the infancy of
mankind; and since to their knowledge we have joined the experience of
the ages which have followed, it is in ourselves that is to be found
that Antiquity which we revere in the others."[251] We cannot admire
too much this splendid inspiration, where the expression is in harmony
with the thought. When it was said that mankind may be regarded "as one
man who lives always and who learns continually," there was indeed a
new discovery, as great as if a new continent or a new planet had been
disclosed.

    [251] Pascal, Pensées, Part. I. Art. 1, _De l'Autorité en Matière
    de Philosophie_: OEuvres (ed. Bossut, 1779), Tom. II.

The age enlightened by the genius of Pascal was ready to discuss
the question then at hand, on the comparative merits of Ancients
and Moderns, involving an inquiry into the principles of Progress,
particularly in art and literature. The close of the seventeenth
century witnessed this memorable debate, which extended from France to
England. French critics, under the lead of Boileau, espoused the cause
of the Ancients. Against them was Charles Perrault, conspicuous at the
time among academicians, and still remembered as author of those Fairy
Tales, including "Cinderella" and "Bluebeard," which have given him a
fame not inferior to that of his brother, Claude Perrault, with whom he
is sometimes confounded, to whom France is indebted for that perpetual
triumph in architecture, the unsurpassed front of the Louvre. In an
elaborate work, published in 1688-92, entitled "Parallel between the
Ancients and Moderns in regard to the Arts and Sciences,"[252] where
the debate is in the form of dialogue, he vindicates the Moderns in
comparison with the Ancients, and insists, that, notwithstanding the
perfection at which the latter arrived, the Moderns have an advantage
from prolonged experience and its necessary accumulations. Like Pascal,
whose remarkable words were still unpublished, he, too, sees the life
of Humanity _as the life of an individual man eternal_, and, though
recognizing epochs of retrogression in history, asserts the continuous
progress of the race, not only in the sciences, but also in morals and
the arts, not forgetting the art of the kitchen.

    [252] Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes, en ce qui regarde les
    Arts et les Sciences.

This sentiment found similar utterance in a lively contemporary,
Fontenelle, an honored academician, whose life extended to a length
of days unequalled in the history of literature, having accomplished
one hundred years, after devoting that century of existence to the
exclusive pursuit of letters. "A good mind cultivated," says this
exceptional veteran, "is, so to speak, composed of all the minds of
the preceding ages: it is but one and the same mind that has been
cultivated during all this period. So that this man, who has lived from
the beginning of the world to the present time, has had his infancy,
when he was occupied only with the more pressing wants of life,--his
youth, when he has succeeded pretty well in matters of imagination,
such as poesy and eloquence, and when he has even begun to reason, but
with less solidity than fire. He has now reached the age of manhood,
when he reasons with more force and more intelligence than ever; but
he would be yet further advanced, if the passion for war had not for
a long time possessed him, and given him a contempt for the sciences,
to which he has at last returned.... _This man will have no old age_;
he will be ever equally capable of the things to which his youth was
fitted, and ever more and more so of those which belong to the age
of manhood: that is to say,--to quit the allegory,--men will never
degenerate, but the sound views of the entire succession of good minds
will always be added to one another."[253]--Titian, like Fontenelle,
was remarkable for unusual length of days; but the consummate artist,
among his immortal pictures, has left hardly one more worthy of
immortality than this brilliant statement, where the discovery of
Pascal is affirmed and presented with singular clearness and precision.

    [253] Fontenelle, Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes:
    OEuvres, Tom. II. p. 249.

Thus, in France, was the Law of Progress confessed in the sciences by
Descartes and Pascal,--in literature, in arts, and even in morals,
by Perrault and Fontenelle. This was before the expiration of the
seventeenth century. It remained that it should be announced, not only
as a special law applicable to certain departments, but as a general
Law of Humanity, universal in application, guiding men in all their
labors, and erecting before them a goal of aspiration and of certain
triumph. This was done by another, who was not philosopher only, nor
statesman only, nor philanthropist only, but in whom this triumvirate
of characters blended with rare success,--Turgot, the well-loved
minister of Louis the Sixteenth. It was said of him by Voltaire, that
"he was born wise and just"; and this tribute has especial point, when
it is considered that his acceptance of this law was first announced
in an essay[254] written in 1750, at the age of twenty-three, while he
was yet at the Sorbonne. Let it be mentioned in his praise, that, as
he grew in years, in power, and in fame, he did not depart from the
happy intuitions of early life, or forget the visions which, as a young
man, he had seen. Perceiving clearly the advance already made, he drew
from it the assurance of yet further advance. In reason, knowledge, and
virtue he did not hesitate to place his own age before preceding ages.
"The corrupt of to-day," he was accustomed to say, "would have been
Capuchins a hundred years ago." He declared the capacity for indefinite
improvement a distinctive quality of the human race, belonging to the
race in general, and to each individual in particular. He did not doubt
that the progress of the physical sciences, of education, of method in
the sciences, or the discovery of new methods, would enlarge the powers
of man, rendering him capable of preserving a larger number of ideas in
the memory, and of multiplying their relations. Nor did he doubt that
the moral sense was equally capable of improvement,--that man would
become constantly better in proportion as he was enlightened,--that
the advance of society would necessarily keep pace with the advance of
morals,--that politics, founded, like other sciences, upon observation
and reason, would advance also,--that all useful truths must be finally
known and adopted, while ancient errors are by degrees annihilated, or
give place to new truths,--and that this Progress, increasing always
from age to age, has no term, or none at least which can be assigned in
the present state of human intelligence.

    [254] Sur les Progrès successifs de l'Esprit Humain: OEuvres (ed.
    Daire), Tom. II. pp. 697-611.

The early testimony of Turgot was repeated at a later day in his
precious fragment on Universal History, which, when compared with
the Introductory Discourse of Bossuet on the same theme, shows how
superior in the philosophy of history was the layman to the bishop.
All ages, says Turgot, are enchained by a succession of causes and
effects uniting the present with what has preceded, and all accumulated
knowledge is a common treasure, transmitted from generation to
generation, as an inheritance, augmented by the discoveries of each
age. In this spirit he inaugurates Universal History, giving to it a
just elevation, as the exhibition of Human Progress in all its epochs,
with all its hindrances, and crowned by all its triumphs.[255]

    [255] Plan de Deux Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle: OEuvres,
    Tom II. pp. 626-667.

Such testimony, commended by the earnestness of conviction, was not
without influence on the great movement which culminated in the earlier
revolution of France, or rather it was part of that movement. It
found welcome in many bosoms, and helped stir the vast mass. Among
those especially penetrated by it was the friend and biographer of
Turgot, who was not behind his master in this loyalty: I refer to
Condorcet. This unfortunate nobleman, conspicuous for learning and
genius, particularly in mathematics, and for honest devotion to the
principles of the Revolution, when at last proscribed, and compelled
to flee for life,--pursued by the very dogs he had helped to arouse,
but was impotent to restrain,--sought shelter with a friend, where,
in concealment, he passed the last eight months before his mournful
death. His first thought was, to send forth a vindication of himself,
addressed to his fellow-citizens; but soon renouncing this design, he
devoted what remained to him of life--during that most hateful passage
of human history, the Reign of Terror--to the preparation of a work
in which he brought his various powers to the development of the Law
of Human Progress. It is entitled "Sketch of an Historical Table of
the Progress of the Human Mind,"[256] and reviews human society in its
different stages, unfolding the order of its changes and the influences
transmitted from age to age, pointing out the different steps in the
march towards truth and happiness. From observation of man as he has
been, and as he is to-day, the author passes naturally to those new
triumphs which are his certain destiny, so long as he continues to
possess the faculties with which he is endowed, and to be governed by
the same universal laws.

    [256] Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l'Esprit
    Humain.

Thus wrote Condorcet, while the hand of Death yet waited. He died;
but the return to reason in France was signalized by unaccustomed
homage to the victim. The Committee of Public Instruction reported,
that the sketch was "a classical work offered to republican schools by
an unfortunate philosopher, that everywhere in it the improvement of
society was recognized as the object most deserving the activity of
the human intelligence, and that pupils studying here the history of
the sciences and the arts would learn to cherish liberty and to detest
and vanquish all tyrannies"; and thereupon the National Convention
ordered three thousand copies to be distributed at the expense of the
nation.[257] And here properly closes this branch of our subject.

    [257] Rapport fait à la Convention Nationale, au Nom du Comité
    d'Instruction Publique, etc.: OEuvres de Condorcet (ed. O'Connor
    et Arago, Paris, 1847-49), Tom. VI. pp. 3-5.

The high lineage and authority of this law I have traced, not by the
enthusiasts of Humanity, not by Fénelon or Saint-Pierre, not by Diderot
or Rousseau, but by a succession of masters who are our acknowledged
guides in science, philosophy, and history. In Italy the torch was held
aloft by Vico; in Germany, by Leibnitz, Lessing, and Herder; in France
it passed through the hands of Descartes, Pascal, Perrault, Fontenelle,
Turgot, and Condorcet:--

    "Et quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt,"[258]

till at last, at the close of the eighteenth century, its flame was
seen from afar. To England we seem little indebted; and yet, when I
think of Lord Bacon, I am disposed to say that we are much indebted.
This law inspired his great work on the "Advancement of Learning,"
and is expressed in its very title. It entered into his aspiration to
deliver man from present weakness by extending his power over Nature.
It is foreshadowed in his great declaration, antedating Pascal, that
Antiquity was the youth of the world,--"_Antiquitas sæculi, juventus
mundi_."[259] For a time Bacon had no successors in England. At a later
day this law was cordially embraced by Dr. Price,[260] the friend and
correspondent of Turgot. Dr. Johnson, who surely did not accept it,
shows an unconscious sympathy with it, when he says of life in pastoral
countries, that it "knows nothing of progression or advancement."[261]
Unhappy people, thus without visible Future on earth!

    [258] Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Lib. II. 78.

    [259] De Augmentis Scientiarum, Lib. I.: Works, Vol. IV. p. 34.

    [260] There is a sermon by Dr. Price, published in 1787, on _The
    Evidence of a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind_.

    [261] Journey to the Hebrides: Works (Oxford, 1825), Vol. IX. p. 98.

To the eighteenth century belongs the honor--signal honor I venture to
call it--of first distinctly acknowledging and enunciating that Law of
Human Progress, which, though preached in Judea eighteen hundred years
ago, failed to be received by men,--nay, still fails to be received by
men. Writers in our own age, of much ability and unexampled hardihood,
while adopting this fundamental law, proceed to arraign existing
institutions of society. My present purpose does not require me to
consider these, whether for censure or praise,--abounding as they do in
evil, abounding as they do in good. It is my single aim to trace the
gradual development and final establishment of that great law which
teaches that "there is a good time coming,"--a Future even on earth, to
arouse the hopes, the aspirations, and the energies of Man.

                                  II.

The way is now prepared to consider the character, conditions, and
limitations of this law, the duties it enjoins, and the encouragements
it affords.

Let me state the law as I understand it. Man, as an individual, is
capable of indefinite improvement. Societies and nations, which are
but aggregations of men, and, finally, the Human Family, or collective
Humanity, are capable of indefinite improvement. And this is the
destiny of man, of societies, of nations, and of the Human Family.

Restricting the proposition to the capacity for indefinite improvement,
I believe I commend it to the candor and intelligence of all who have
meditated upon this subject. And this brings me to the remarkable
words of Leibnitz. He boldly says, as we have already seen, that man
seems able to arrive at perfection. Turgot and Condorcet also speak of
his "perfectibility,"--a term adopted by recent French writers. If by
this is meant simply that man is capable of indefinite improvement,
then it will not be questioned. But whatever the heights of virtue
and intelligence to which he may attain in future ages, who can doubt
that to his grander vision new summits will ever present themselves,
provoking him to still grander aspirations? God only is perfect.
Knowledge and goodness, his attributes, are infinite; nor can man hope,
in any lapse of time, to comprehend this immensity. In the infinitude
of the universe, he will seem, like Newton, with all his acquisitions,
only to have gathered a few pebbles by the seaside. In a similar
strain Leibnitz elsewhere says that the place which God assigns to man
in space and time necessarily limits the perfections he is able to
acquire. As in Geometry the asymptote constantly approaches its curve,
so that the distance between them is constantly diminishing, and yet,
though prolonged indefinitely, they never meet, so, according to him,
are infinite souls the asymptotes of God.

There are revolutions in history seeming on a superficial view
inconsistent with this law. From early childhood attention is directed
to Greece and Rome; and we are sometimes taught that these two powers
reached heights which subsequent nations cannot hope to equal, much
less surpass. I would not disparage the triumphs of the ancient mind.
The eloquence, the poetry, the philosophy, the art, of Athens still
survive, and bear no mean sway upon earth. Rome, too, yet lives in her
jurisprudence, which, next after Christianity, has exerted a paramount
influence over the laws of modern communities.

But exalted as these productions may be, it is impossible not to
perceive that something of their present importance is derived from
the early period when they appeared, something from the unquestioning
and high-flown admiration of them transmitted through successive
generations until it became a habit, and something also from the
disposition, still prevalent, to elevate Antiquity at the expense
of subsequent ages. Without undertaking to decide if the genius of
Antiquity, as displayed by individuals, can justly claim supremacy,
it would be easy to show that the ancient plane of civilization never
reached our common level. The people were ignorant, vicious, and poor,
or degraded to abject slavery,--itself the sum of all injustice and all
vice. Even the most illustrious characters, whose names still shine
from that distant night, were little more than splendid barbarians.
Architecture, sculpture, painting, and vases of exquisite perfection
attest an appreciation of beauty in form; but our masters in these
things were strangers to the useful arts, as to the comforts and
virtues of home. Abounding in what to us are luxuries, they had not
what to us are necessaries.

Without knowledge there can be no sure Progress. Vice and barbarism are
the inseparable companions of ignorance. Nor is it too much to say,
that, except in rare instances, the highest virtue is attained only
through intelligence. This is natural; for to do right, we must first
understand what is right. But the people of Greece and Rome, even in
the brilliant days of Pericles and Augustus, could not arrive at this
knowledge. The sublime teachings of Plato and Socrates--calculated in
many respects to promote the best interests of the race--were limited
in influence to a small company of listeners, or to the few who could
obtain a copy of the costly manuscripts in which they were preserved.
Thus the knowledge and virtue acquired by individuals were not diffused
in their own age or secured to posterity.

Now, at last, through an agency all unknown to Antiquity, knowledge
of every kind has become general and permanent. It can no longer be
confined to a select circle. It cannot be crushed by tyranny, or lost
by neglect. It is immortal as the soul from which it proceeds. This
alone renders all relapse into barbarism impossible, while it affords
an unquestionable distinction between ancient and modern times. The
Press, watchful with more than the hundred eyes of Argus, strong
with more than the hundred arms of Briareus, not only guards all the
conquests of civilization, but leads the way to future triumphs.
Through its untiring energies, the meditation of the closet, or the
utterance of the human voice, which else would die away within the
precincts of a narrow room, is prolonged to the most distant nations
and times, with winged words circling the globe. We admire the genius
of Demosthenes, Sophocles, Plato, and Phidias; but the printing-press
is a higher gift to man than the eloquence, the drama, the philosophy,
and the art of Greece.

There is yet another country which presents a problem for the student
of Progress. In vivid phrase Sir James Mackintosh pictures the "ancient
and _immovable_ civilization of China."[262] But in these words he
spoke rather from impressions than from actual knowledge. By the side
of the impulsive movement of modern Europe, the people of this ancient
empire may appear stationary; but it can hardly be doubted that they
have advanced, though according to a scale unlike our own. It is
difficult to assign satisfactory reasons for the seeming inertness of
their national life. Perhaps I shall not err, if I refer it to peculiar
constitutional characteristics,--to inherent difficulties of their
language as an instrument of knowledge,--to national vanity on an
exaggerated scale, making them look down upon others,--to an insulation
excluding all others,--and also to the habit of unhesitating deference
to Antiquity, and of "backward-looking thoughts," cultivated by the
Chinese from the distant days of Confucius. They do not know the Law of
Human Progress.

    [262] Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations, p.
    34.

In receiving this law, two conditions of Humanity are recognized:
first, its unity or solidarity; and, secondly, its indefinite duration
upon earth. And now of these in their order.

1. It is true, doubtless, that there are various races of men; but
there is but one great Human Family, in which Caucasian, Ethiopian,
Chinese, and Indian are all brothers, children of _one_ Father, and
heirs to _one_ happiness. Though variously endowed, they are all
tending in the same direction; nor can the light obtained by one be
withheld from any. The ether discovery in Boston will soothe pain
hereafter in Africa and in Asia, in Abyssinia and in China. So are we
all knit together, that words of wisdom and truth, which first sway the
hearts of the American people, may help to elevate benighted tribes of
the most distant regions. The vexed question of modern science, whether
these races proceeded originally from one stock, does not interfere
with the sublime revelation of Christianity, the Brotherhood of Man. In
the light of science and of religion, Humanity is an organism, complex,
but still one,--throbbing with one life, animated by one soul, every
part sympathizing with every other part, and the whole advancing in one
indefinite career of Progress.

2. And what is the measure of this career? It is common to speak of the
long life already passed by man on earth; but how brief and trivial
is this, compared with the countless ages before him! According to
received chronology, six thousand years have not yet elapsed since his
creation. But the science of Geology, that unimpeached interpreter of
the Past, now demonstrates (and here the geology of New York furnishes
important evidence), that, anterior to the commencement of human
history, this globe had endured for ages upon ages, baffling human
calculation and imagination. Without losing ourselves in the stupendous
speculations with regard to different geological epochs, before the
earth assumed its present figure, and when it was occupied only by
races of animals now extinct, it may not be without interest to glance
at the age of the epoch in which we live. This, happily, we are able to
do.

From the flow of rivers we have a gigantic measure of geological time.
It is supposed that the Falls of Niagara were once at Queenstown, and
that they have gradually worn their way back in the living rock, for
a distance of seven miles, to the place where they now pour their
thunders. An ingenious English geologist, a high authority in his
science, Sir Charles Lyell, assuming that this retreat might have
been at the rate of one foot a year, shows that the cataract must
have poured over that rock for a period of at least 36,960 years. And
the same authority teaches us that the alluvion at the mouth of the
Mississippi, the delta formed by the deposits of that mighty river
(here let it be remarked that alluvions and sand-banks are the most
recent geological formations on the surface of the earth, being nearest
to our own age), could not have been accumulated within a shorter
period than 100,500 years.[263] Even this term, so vast to our small
imagination, is only one of a series composing the present epoch;
and the epoch itself is but a unit in a still grander series. These
measurements, adopted in this branch of knowledge, can be little more
than vague approximations; but they teach, from the lips of Science, as
perhaps nothing else can, the infinite ages through which this globe
has already travelled, and the infinite ages which seem to be its
future destiny.

    [263] Lyell's Principles of Geology (7th ed.), Vol. I. p. 216.
    Lyell's Travels in North America, Ch. 2. Horner's Anniversary
    Address, for 1847, before the London Geological Society, pp. 23-27.
    D'Archiac, Histoire des Progrès de la Géologie, Tom. I. p. 358.

Thus we stand now between two infinities,--the infinity of the Past,
and the infinity of the Future; and the infinity of the Future is equal
to the infinity of the Past. In comparison with these untold spaces
before and after, what, indeed, are the six thousand years of human
history? In the contemplation of Man, what littleness! what grandeur!
how diminutive in the creation! how brief his recorded history! and yet
how vast in hopes! how majestic and transcendent in the Future!

If there be any analogy between his life on earth and that of the
frailest plant or shell-fish, as now seen in the light of science,
he must still be in his earliest and most helpless infancy. In vain
speak of Antiquity in his history; for all his present records are as
a day, an hour, a moment, in the unimaginable immensity of duration
which seems to await the globe and its inhabitants. In the sight of
our distant descendants, successive eras of the brief span which we
call History will melt into one; and as to present vision stars far
asunder seem near together, so Nimrod and Sesostris, Alexander and
Cæsar, Tamerlane and Napoleon, will seem to be contemporaries. Nor
is it any exaggeration to suppose that in the unborn ages, illumined
by a truth now, alas! too dimly perceived, the class of warriors and
conquerors, of which these are signal types, will become extinct,--like
the gigantic land reptiles and monster crocodileans belonging to a
departed period of zoölogical history.

Admitting the Unity of Mankind, and an Indefinite Future on earth, it
becomes easy to anticipate triumphs which else were impossible. Few
will question that Man, as an individual, is capable of indefinite
improvement, so long as he lives. This capacity is inborn. None so
poor as not to possess it. Even the idiot, so abject in condition,
is found at last to be within the sphere of education. Circumstances
alone are required to call this capacity into action; and in proportion
as knowledge, virtue, and religion prevail in a community will that
sacred atmosphere be diffused under whose genial influence the most
forlorn may grow into forms of unimagined strength and beauty. This
capacity for indefinite improvement, which belongs to the individual,
must belong also to society; for society does not die, and through the
improvement of its individuals has the assurance of its own advance. It
is immortal on earth, and will gather constantly new and richer fruits
from the teeming generations, as they stretch through unknown time. To
Chinese vision the period of the present may seem barren, but it is
sure to yield its contribution to the indefinite accumulations which
are the token of an indefinite Progress.

Tables speak sometimes as words cannot. From statistics of life, as
recorded by Science, we learn the capacity for progress in the Human
Family; the testimony is authentic, as it is interesting. A little
more than two centuries have passed since Descartes predicted that
improvement in human health which these figures exhibit. Could this
seer of Science revisit the scene of his comprehensive labors and
divine aspirations, he might well be astonished to learn how, in
the lapse of so short a period in the life of Humanity, his glowing
anticipations have been fulfilled. From the following tables[264] we
learn that even the conqueror Death has been slowly driven back, and
his inevitable triumph postponed.

    [264] Supplied to me by the late Professor H.D. Rogers, from the
    notes of his Lectures.

_Table showing the Diminution of Mortality in different Countries._

  Deaths in England, in 1690, 1 in 33, in 1848, 1 in 47.
      " France, in 1776, 1 in 25½, in 1848, 1 in 42.
      " Germany, in 1788, 1 in 32, in 1848, 1 in 40.
      " Sweden, in 1760, 1 in 34, in 1848, 1 in 41.
      " Roman States, in 1767, 1 in 21½, in 1829, 1 in 28.

_Diminution of Mortality in Cities._

  Deaths in London, in 1690, 1 in 24, in 1844, 1 in 44.
      " Paris, in 1650, 1 in 25, in 1829, 1 in 32.
      " Berlin, in 1755, 1 in 28, in 1827, 1 in 34.
      " Vienna, in 1750, 1 in 20, in 1829, 1 in 25.
      " Rome, in 1770, 1 in 21, in 1828, 1 in 31.
      " Geneva, in 1560, 1 in 18, in 1821, 1 in 40.

Glancing at the cradle of nations and races risen to grandeur, and
observing the wretchedness by which they were originally surrounded,
we learn that no lot is removed from the influence of this law. The
Feejee Islander, the Bushman, the Hottentot, the Congo negro, is not
too low for its care. No term of imagined "finality" can arrest it.
The polished Briton, whose civilization we now admire, traces his
long-descended lineage from one of those painted barbarians whose
degradation still lives in the pages of Julius Cæsar. Slowly, and by
degrees, he has reached the height where he now stands; but this is no
"finality." The improvement of the Past is the earnest of yet further
improvement in the long ages of the Future. And who can doubt, that,
in the lapse of time, as the Christian Law is gradually fulfilled, the
elevation of the Briton will be shared by all his fellow-men?

The tokens of improvement may appear at a special period, in a limited
circle only, among the people, favored of God, enjoying peculiar
benefits of commerce and Christianity; but the happy influence cannot
be narrowed to any time, place, or people. Every victory over evil
redounds to the benefit of all. Every discovery, every humane thought,
every truth, when declared, is a conquest of which the whole Human
Family are partakers, extending by so much their dominion, while it
lessens by so much the sphere of future struggle and trial. Thus, while
Nature is always the same, the power of Man is ever increasing. Each
day gives him some new advantage. The mountains have not diminished in
size; but Man has overcome the barriers they interpose. The winds and
waves are not less capricious now than when they first beat upon the
ancient Silurian rocks; but the steamboat,

    "Against the wind, against the tide,
     Now steadies on with upright keel."

The distance between two points on the surface of the globe is the
same to-day as when the continents were upheaved from their ocean-bed;
but the art of man triumphs over such separation, and distant people
commune together. Much remains to be done; but the Creator did not
speak in vain, when he blessed his earliest children, and bade them
"multiply, and replenish the earth, and _subdue it_."

There will be triumphs nobler than any over inanimate Nature. Man
himself will be subdued,--subdued to abhorrence of vice, injustice,
violence,--subdued to the sweet charities of life,--subdued to all the
requirements of duty,--subdued, according to the Law of Human Progress,
to the recognition of that Gospel Law of Human Brotherhood, by the side
of which the first is only as the scaffolding upon the sacred temple.
To labor for this end was man sent forth into the world,--not in the
listlessness of idle perfections, but endowed with infinite capacities,
inspired by infinite desires, and commanded to strive perpetually after
excellence, amidst the encouragements of hope, the promises of final
success, and the inexpressible delights from its pursuit. Thus does the
Law of Human Progress

            "assert eternal Providence,
    And justify the ways of God to men,"

by showing Evil no longer a gloomy mystery, binding the world in
everlasting thrall, but an accident, under benign Power destined to be
surely subdued, as the Human Family press on to the promised goal of
happiness.

While recognizing Humanity as progressive, it is important to consider
a condition or limitation which may justly temper the ardors of the
reformer. Nothing is accomplished except by time and exertion. Nature
abhors violence and suddenness. Nature does everything slowly and by
degrees. It takes time for the seed to grow into "the bright consummate
flower." It is many years before the slender shoot grows into the tree.
It is slowly that we pass from infancy and imbecility to manhood and
strength. Arrived at this stage, we are still subject to the same
condition of Nature. A new temperature or a sudden stroke of light may
shock us. Our frames are not made for extremes; so that death may come,
according to the poet's conceit, "in aromatic pain."

Gradual change is a necessary condition of the Law of Progress. It is
only, according to the poetical phrase of Tacitus, _per intervalla
ac spiramenta temporum_, "by intervals and breathings of time," that
we can hope to make a sure advance. Men grow and are trained in
knowledge and virtue; but they cannot be compelled into this path. This
consideration teaches candor and charity towards all who do not yet
see the truth as we do. It admonishes us also, while keeping the eye
steadfast on the good we seek, to moderate our expectations, and be
content when the day of triumph is postponed, for it cannot be always.

This essential condition of the Law of Progress serves to reconcile
movement with stability, and to preserve order even in change; as in
Nature all projectile forces are checked and regulated by the law of
inertia, and the centrifugal motion of the planets is restrained by the
attraction of gravitation. In this principle of moderation, honestly
pursued, from proper motives, and promising the "well-ripened fruits
of wise delay," we find a just Conservatism, which, though not always
satisfying our judgment, can never fail to secure our respect.

But there is another Conservatism,--and its treatment belongs to this
occasion,--of a different character, which performs no good office,
and cannot secure respect. Child of indifference, of ignorance, of
prejudice, of selfishness, it seeks to maintain things precisely as
they are, deprecates every change, and, disregarding the _transitory_
condition of all that is human, blindly prays for the _perpetuity_ of
existing institutions. Such an influence is productive of disorder
rather than order, and is destructive rather than justly conservative.
Contrary to the Law of Progress, it plants itself upon ancient ways,
and vainly exalts all that was done by our ancestors, as beyond
addition and above amendment. It is well illustrated in the early
verses,--

    All that is newe, and ever do crye,
    The old is better, awaye with the newe,
    Because it is false and the old is true";

and again, in the conversation between two eminent English
ecclesiastics. "Brother of Winchester," said Cranmer to Lord Chancellor
Gardyner, "you like not anything new, unless you be yourself the
author thereof." "Your Grace wrongeth me," replied the inveterate
Conservative. "I have never been author yet of any one new thing; for
which I thank my God."[265] Such a Conservatism is the bigotry of
science, of literature, of jurisprudence, of religion, of politics. An
example will exhibit its character.

    [265] Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, Vol. II. ch. 40, p.
    51.

When Sir Samuel Romilly proposed to abolish the punishment of death
for stealing a pocket-handkerchief, the Commons of England consulted
certain officials of the law, who assured the House that such an
innovation would endanger the whole criminal law of the realm. And when
afterwards this illustrious reformer and model lawyer (for, of all men
in the history of the English law, Romilly is most truly the model
lawyer) proposed to abolish the obscene punishment for high treason,
requiring the offender to be drawn and quartered, and his bowels to
be thrown into his face, while his body yet palpitates with life,
the Attorney-General of the day, in opposing this humane amendment,
asked, "Are the safeguards, the ancient landmarks, the bulwarks of
the Constitution, to be thus hastily removed?" Which gave occasion
for the appropriate exclamation in reply, "What! to throw the bowels
of an offender into his face, one of the safeguards of the British
Constitution! I ought to confess that until this night I was wholly
ignorant of this bulwark!"[266] An irrational enormity, with a fit
parallel only in our own country, where Slavery is called a "divine
institution," and important to the stability of our Constitution!

    [266] Essays of Basil Montagu, p. 69.

"_Esto perpetua!_" was the dying conservative ejaculation of Paul
Sarpi, the Venetian friar, over the constitution of his atrocious
republic; and this same phrase is invoked by Sir William Blackstone for
the British Constitution, enfolding so many inequalities and so many
abuses. It were well--and here all must agree--to exclaim of Truth, of
Justice, of Peace, of Freedom, _May it be perpetual!_ But is it not
irrational to make this claim for any institutions of human device, and
therefore finite? How can they provide for the Infinite Future? The
Finite cannot measure the Infinite. Nothing from Man's hands--nor laws,
nor constitutions--can be perpetual. It is God alone who builds for
eternity. His laws are everlasting.

Out of this pernicious prejudice have proceeded that persecution
and neglect which are the too frequent lot of the world's pioneers.
Among the ancient Greeks, the wisdom which first assigned the natural
cause of thunder and storm was condemned by conservative savages as
impiety to the gods. In the eighth century, an ignorant conservative
Pope persecuted a priest who declared that the world was round. At
a later day, to the everlasting scandal of mankind, the book of
Copernicus, unfolding the true system of the universe, was branded by
a conservative Papal bull as heretical and false, and Galileo, after
announcing the annual and diurnal motions of the earth, was sentenced
to the dungeons of the conservative Inquisition. This was in Italy;
but in England--and here we come nearer home--Harvey was accustomed
to say, that, after the publication of his book on the circulation of
the blood,--one of the epochs of modern discovery,--"he fell mightily
in his practice, and it was believed by the vulgar that he was
crack-brained, and all the physicians were against his opinion."[267]
According to him, nobody older than forty, at the time of his
discovery, received it as true. The age of forty was the dividing
line of life,--a Mason and Dixon's line,--determining the capacity to
receive that discovery. This little story may admonish all who have
passed that conservative line to be careful how they are inhospitable
to any new truth.

    [267] Aubrey's Letters and Lives, Vol. II. p. 383.

This same undue tenacity to existing things and repugnance to what is
new threw impediments in the way of successive improvements by which
travel and intercourse among men are promoted. Surely stage-coaches,
when first introduced into England, must have been welcome, though
novel, as contributing to the comfort of men. But this was not the
case universally. An early writer calls for their suppression,
breaking forth against them in this wise. "These coaches," he says,
"are one of the greatest mischiefs that hath happened of late years
to the kingdom,--mischievous to the public, destructive to trade, and
prejudicial to lands. First, by destroying the breed of good horses,
the strength of the nation, and making men careless of attaining to
good horsemanship, a thing so useful and commendable in a gentleman:
for, hereby they become weary and listless, when they ride a few miles,
and unwilling to get on horseback, not able to endure frost, snow, or
rain, or to lodge in the fields; and what reason, save only their using
themselves so tenderly, and their riding in these stage-coaches, can
be given for this their inability? Secondly, by hindering the breed
of watermen, who are the nursery for seamen, and they the bulwark of
the kingdom: for, if these coaches were down, watermen, as formerly,
would have work, and be encouraged to take apprentices, whereby their
number would every year greatly increase. Thirdly, by lessening of his
Majesty's revenues: for now four or five travel in a coach together,
without any servants, and it is they that occasion the consumption
of beer and ale on the roads; and all inn-keepers do declare that
they sell not half the drink nor pay the king half the excise they
did before these coaches set up."[268] Such was the conservative
bill of indictment against stage-coaches. The history of canals, of
steamboats, and, lastly, of railways, shows similar prejudices. Even
Mr. Jefferson (and I cannot mention him as an immoderate conservative),
when told that the State of New York had explored the route of a
canal from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and found it practicable,--that
same canal which now, like a thread of silver, winds its way through
your imperial State,--replied, that "it was a very fine project, and
might be executed a century hence." This is only a little better than
the observation of the Greenwich pensioners, who, on first seeing
the steamboat upon the waters of the Thames, as they looked out from
their palatial home, said, "We do not like the steamboat, it is so
contrary to Nature." In our own country, Fitch brought forward the
idea of a steamboat amidst ill-disguised sneers; and at a later day,
Fulton, while building his first experiment at New York, was viewed
with indifference or contempt, as a visionary; and when, at last, he
accomplished the long distance to Albany, distrust of the Future still
prevailed, and it was doubted if the voyage could be accomplished
again, or, if successful again, it was still doubted if the invention
could be of permanent value. Thus did this evil spirit perplex noble
aims! And in England, as late as 1825, railways were pronounced
"altogether delusions and impositions," and the conservative "Quarterly
Review," alluding to the opinion of certain engineers that the railway
engine could go eighteen or twenty miles an hour, says: "These gross
exaggerations may delude for a time, but must end in the mortification
of those concerned.... We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich
to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet
rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at
such a rate."[269]

    [268] The Grand Concern of England, 1673: Harleian Miscellany, Vol.
    VIII. pp. 539, 540.

    [269] Quarterly Review, Vol. XXXI. pp. 361, 362. Illustrations of
    this spirit might be indefinitely extended. One, made familiar
    to the world by Macaulay's History, since this Address was
    delivered, has too much point to be omitted. As late as the close
    of the reign of Charles the Second, the streets of London, with a
    population of half a million, were not lighted at night, and, as
    a natural consequence, became the frequent scene of assassination
    and outrage, perpetrated under the shelter of darkness. At last, in
    1685, it was proposed to place a light, on moonless nights, before
    every tenth door. This projected improvement was enthusiastically
    applauded and furiously attacked. "The cause of darkness," says
    Macaulay, "was not left undefended. There were fools in that age
    who opposed the introduction of what was called the new light, as
    strenuously as fools in our age have opposed the introduction of
    vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as the fools of an age
    anterior to the dawn of history doubtless opposed the introduction
    of the plough and of alphabetical writing."--_History of England_,
    Vol. I. ch. 3.

It is related that the Arve, a river of Switzerland, swollen by floods,
sometimes drives the waters of the Rhone back into the Lake of Geneva;
and the force is sometimes so great as to make the mill-wheels revolve
in a contrary direction. There are too many in the world who by their
efforts would cause the stream to flow back upon the fountain, and even
make the mill-wheels revolve in a contrary direction.

Unhappily, this same bigotry,--conservatism, if you will,--which has
blindly opposed improvement in physical comforts, sets its face more
passionately still against those movements whose direct object is the
elevation of the race. In all times and places it has persecuted the
prophets and stoned the gifted messengers of truth. Of its professors
Milton pictures the boldest type in Satan, who, knowing well the
sins and offences of mortals, would keep them ever in their present
condition, holding them fast in degradation, binding them in perpetual
slavery, nor indulging in any aspiration, except of long dominion over
a captive race, whose sorrows and hopes cannot touch his impenetrable
soul. From a sketch by another hand we learn something of his activity.
With honest plainness, characteristic of himself and his age, the
early English prelate, Latimer, says, in one of his sermons, "The Devil
is the most diligentest bishop and preacher in all England."[270] It
may be said with equal truth,--and none can question it,--that he is
the busiest and most offensive Conservative.

    [270] Of the Plough: Sermons, Vol. I. p. 65.

Time forbids my dwelling longer on the ample illustrations of this
influence: nor need I. One world-renowned example shall suffice. The
early efforts in England for the overthrow of the slave-trade were
encountered by an enmity black as the bad passions of the crime itself.
In Liverpool the excited slave-traders threatened to throw Clarkson
into the dock. But gradually the heart of the nation was touched,
until at last the people of England demanded the abolition of this
Heaven-defying traffic.

Thus ever has Truth moved on,--though opposed and reviled, still mighty
and triumphant. Rejected by the rich and powerful, by the favorites of
fortune and of place, she finds shelter with those who often have no
shelter for themselves. It is such as these that most freely welcome
moral truth, with its new commandments. Not the dwellers in the glare
of the world, but the humble and lowly, most clearly perceive this
truth,--as watchers placed in the depths of a well observe the stars
which are obscured to those who live in the effulgence of noon. Free
from egotism and prejudice, whether of self-interest or of class,
without cares and temptations, whether of wealth or power, dwelling
in the mediocrity or obscurity of common life, they discern the new
signal, and surrender unreservedly to its guidance. The Saviour knew
this. He did not call upon Priest or Levite or Pharisee to follow him,
but upon the humble fishermen by the Sea of Galilee.

Let us, then, be of good cheer. From the great Law of Progress we
derive at once our duties and our encouragements. Humanity has
ever advanced, urged by instincts and necessities implanted by
God,--thwarted sometimes by obstacles, causing it for a time, a moment
only in the immensity of ages, to deviate from its true line, or
seem to retreat, but still ever onward. At last we know the law of
this movement; we fasten our eyes upon that star, unobserved in the
earlier ages, which lights the way to the Future, opening into vistas
of infinite variety and extension. Amidst the disappointments which
attend individual exertions, amidst the universal agitations which
now surround us, let us recognize this law, let us follow this star,
confident that whatever is just, whatever is humane, whatever is good,
whatever is true, according to an immutable ordinance of Providence, in
the sure light of the Future, must prevail. With this faith, we place
our hands, as those of little children, in the great hand of God. He
will guide and sustain us--through pains and perils it may be--in the
path of Progress.

In such a faith there are motives to beneficent activity which will
endure to the last syllable of life. Let the young embrace this law;
it shall be to them an ever-living spring. Let the old cherish this
law; it shall be to them a staff for support. It will give to all,
young and old, a new appreciation of their existence, a new sentiment
of their force, a new revelation of their destiny. It will be as
another covenant, witnessed by the bow in the heavens, not only that
no honest, earnest effort for the welfare of man can be in vain, but
that it shall send a quickening influence through uncounted ages, and
contribute to the coming of that Future of Intelligence, Freedom, Peace
we would now secure for ourselves, but cannot. Though not ourselves
partakers of these brighter days, ours may be the pleasure at least of
foreseeing them, of enjoying them in happy vision, or the satisfaction,
sweeter still, of hastening by some moments the too distant epoch.

A life filled with this thought will have comforts and consolations
else unknown. In the flush of youthful ambition, or in the
self-confidence of success, we may be indifferent to the calls of
Humanity; but history, reason, and religion all speak in vain, if
any selfish works, not helping the Progress of Man, although favored
by worldly smile, can secure that happiness and content so much
coveted as the crown of life. Look at the last days of Talleyrand,
and learn the wretchedness of an old age enlightened by no memory
of generous toil, by no cheerful hope for our fellow-men. When the
weakness of years rendered him no longer able to grasp power or hold
the threads of intrigue, he surrendered himself to discouragement
and despair. By the light of a lamp trimmed in solitude he traced
these lines, the most melancholy ever written by an old man,--think
of them, politician!--"Eighty-three years of life are now passed!
filled with what anxieties! what agitations! what enmities! what
troublous complexities! _And all this with no other result than a
great weariness, physical and moral, and a profound sentiment of
discouragement with regard to the Future and of disgust for the
Past._"[271] Poor old man! Poor indeed! In loneliness, in failing
age, with death waiting at his palace-gate, what to him were the
pomps he had enjoyed? what were titles? what were offices? what the
lavish wealth in which he lived? More precious far at that moment the
consolation that he had labored for his fellow-men, and the joyous
confidence that all his cares had helped the Progress of his race!

    [271] Louis Blanc, Histoire de Dix Ans, Tom. V. ch. 10.

Be it, then, our duty and our encouragement to live and to labor,
ever mindful of the Future. But let us not forget the Past. All
ages have lived and labored for us. From one has come art; from
another jurisprudence; from another the compass; from another the
printing-press; from all have descended priceless lessons of truth
and virtue. The most distant are not without a present influence on
our daily lives. The mighty stream of Progress, though fed by many
tributary waters and hidden springs, derives something of its force
from the earlier currents which leap and sparkle in distant mountain
recesses, over precipices, among rapids, and beneath the shade of the
primeval forest.

Nor should we be too impatient to witness the fulfilment of our
aspirations. The daily increasing rapidity of discovery and
improvement, and the daily multiplying efforts of beneficence,
outstripping the imaginations of the most sanguine, furnish assurance
that the advance of man will be with a constantly accelerating speed.
The extending intercourse among the nations of the earth, and all
the children of the Human Family, gives new promise of the complete
diffusion of Truth, penetrating the most distant places, chasing away
the darkness of night, and exposing the hideous forms of Slavery,
War, and Wrong, which must be hated in proportion as they are seen.
And yet, while confident of the Future, and surrounded by heralds of
certain triumph, it becomes us to moderate our anticipations, nor
imitate those children of the Crusades, who, in their long journey from
Western Europe,

                          "to seek
     In Golgotha him dead who lives in Heaven,"

hailed each city and castle which they approached as the Jerusalem that
was to be the end of their wanderings. Though the goal is distant, and
ever advancing, the march is none the less certain. As well attempt
to make the sun stand still in his course, or restrain the sweet
influences of the Pleiades, as arrest the incessant, irresistible
movement which is the appointed destiny of man.

Cultivate, then, a just moderation. Learn to reconcile order with
change, stability with progress. This is a wise conservatism; this is
a wise reform. Rightly understanding these terms, who would not be a
conservative, who would not be a reformer?--a conservative of all that
is good, a reformer of all that is evil,--a conservative of knowledge,
a reformer of ignorance,--a conservative of truths and principles whose
seat is the bosom of God, a reformer of laws and institutions which are
but the wicked or imperfect work of man,--a conservative of that divine
order which is found only in movement, a reformer of those earthly
wrongs and abuses which spring from a violation of the great Law of
Human Progress? Blending these two in one, may we not seek to be, at
the same time, _Reforming Conservatives and Conservative Reformers_?

And, finally, let a confidence in the Progress of our race be, under
God, a constant faith. Let the sentiment of loyalty, earth-born, which
once lavished itself on King or Emperor, give place to that other
sentiment, heaven-born, of devotion to Humanity. Let loyalty to one man
be exchanged for Love to Man. And be it our privilege to extend these
sacred influences throughout the land. So may we open to our country
new fields of peaceful victory, which shall not want the sympathies and
gratulations of the good citizen or the praises of the just historian.

Go forth, then, my country, "conquering and to conquer!"--not by
brutal violence, not by force of arms, not, oh! not on dishonest fields
of blood,--but in the majesty of Peace, Justice, Freedom, by the
irresistible might of Christian Institutions!

                         THE PARTY OF FREEDOM.

  SPEECH ON TAKING THE CHAIR AS PRESIDING OFFICER OF A PUBLIC MEETING
 TO RATIFY THE NOMINATIONS OF THE BUFFALO CONVENTION, AT FANEUIL HALL,
                           AUGUST 22, 1848.

A Convention of the Free States was held at Buffalo, August 9, 1848,