Library Collections: Document: Full Text

THE ORATION.

Reason, an emanation of the Divinity that pervades creation, sheds around its radiance, and invests with the habilaments of glory or of shame, every member of the human family.

It is represented as a throned monarch whose sway is despotic, whose power is sought, whose influence is universal, and whose dethronement is attended with most unhappy consequences.

Essentially all the devotees of reason are monarchists, and the unreasonable ones are the opposites, who are exclusively anarchists or republicans. While the one are the strict constructionists, the others are of that liberal class of politicians, some of whom are here present, and who on this Sabath-Day of Freedom, like all good patriots meet to express their respect for the Institutions their fathers founded, and to offer an oblation on the altar of God and Freedom.

While the friends of reason have their devoted attachments, and Thomas Paine promulged an age of reason, yet if reasons were as plenty as blackberries at Taney, no reason is required for a recurrence to some of those events, which although as familiar as our prayers, are still as often neglected and committed in their remembrance to the contingencies of haste, convenience or caprice.

Pardon us, if we beg you to approach sacred altar, on this occasion, with unusual devotion, to cast up your prayers for the health, happiness and prosperity of America, and for the extended utility of her interests, and for the permanency of those in particular that nurture the domestic affections and aims, and to remember the expense at which they were instituted.

From the Tea patty in Boston to the shedding of blood at Lexington, Bunker-Hill Princeton, and the burnings of Norwalk and Fairfield, and the conflicts of Monmouth and Yorktown, with the innumerable places of resort and contest during the seven years war of the Colonies, we are constantly reminded of inconceivable agonies, endured for a relief from the oppression arising from a throne which was occupied by a monarch dethroned of the essential attributes of good government and human rights.

A long line of illustrious persons pass athwart the vision in a panoramic effulgence, irradiated from those principles of immortal virtue, for which our fathers contended with so much effect, and the value of which is constantly exhibited in the routine of this powerful republic.

The engagements of those who laid the foundation of this Republic, were of a peculiar and an exalted cast, and were accompanied by numerous duties, the performance of which were attended by imminent perils, and almost continuous privations, showing what a noble nature they possessed. How like the Martyrs of Religion who could rejoice in it above the flames and tortures of their foes. So they, through persecutions and oppressions, laid down the glove, and engaged in a conflict of unparalleled chivalry for doctrines that had long slumbered amid the ruins of Athens and Rome.

How, think you, did our Continentals compare with the polished Grecian and noble Roman? They might have lacked the exterior polish. But oh! their hearts, their minds were far above and beyond the ancients. The heathenish inculcations of a more refined age mingled not with the Heaven inspiring examples of Washington and Hamilton, and the wisdom of our Franklin and Sherman puts to the blush the rude patriotism of a Solon and Lycurgus.

If there were an echoing gallery of departed times. If the voices of the myriads who have fallen in battle, or endured the privations and miseries could now salute your ears, what would be their say?

Just what the page of History, by the hand of faithfulness relates, and the end still kept more distinctly in view, by a careful perusal of those records of antiquity, transmitting as heir-looms the deeds of our valorous ancestors, in which will be woven the fabric of continuity in the forms of interest exhibited in a Republican Country.

We have ever the romantic idea of a halo of patriots, surrounding the former scenes of action, and holding an indirect influence on the conduct of mankind.

Even if the spirits of Washington, Hamilton, LaFayette, Montgomery, McDonough, Greene, Pickens, or Graham, do not hover over us, one thing is certain, that their God and Creator as well as ours still exists in the same most glorious field of majesty, and penetrates with his unerring wisdom the abodes of oppression and determined misrule, instituting means whereby the people sustain themselves in the primary assemblies as well as in the perfected and more exalted congregations, and chiefly in those ornaments of hearth and home, which are the inspirations of men's exertions to personal accomplishments, and thus "in the aggregate" forming an union of societies affiliated and constant.

Does it afford exultation to the heart of an American, as he beholds this vastly extended empire branching forth into innumerable avenues of splendor and intelligence?