meeting, as a pledge of good will between the distant sections of the Union, to which we respectively belong. That Union, gentlemen, resting as it does on a political basis, must derive much of its strength and value from harmony and cordiality between the distant members. In a despotic government, resting on the principle of the immediate subordination of all the parts to one head, this harmony among the subjects is not necessary. It may even be the interest of the sovereign to play off the jealousies of the different parts of the state against each other; thus preventing them from combining against himself. But in a popular government, where every thing is ultimately referred to the will of the citizens, mutual good will between them is all-important.

It is therefore most fortunate for us, that the basis, on which our Union rests, is natural, broad, and stable. The several parts of which it is composed, have not been bound to each other, by the measures of a preponderating political power, exerted by the stronger members to attach the weaker to their sovereignty. Nor do we owe our gathering together into this family of States, to the intermarriage of northern Ferdinands with southern Isabellas.— Our Union was not cemented by the sealing wax of diplomatic congresses,-where foreign statesmen sit in judgment, to parcel out reluctant provinces among rival empires;-nor by the blood of disastrous battle fields. Had such been the origin of our association, we might have expected, that incurable antipathies would exist between the discordant members, and that a union, commenced in power, violence, or intrigue, would continue in disgust. while it lasted, and end in civil war. On the contrary, among numerous instructive aspects, in which our political system presents itself to the contemplation of the friends of Liberty, none is more important than that, in which it teaches the most auspicious mode of extending a popular government over a vast region of country, filled by a rapidly increasing population, by means of a confederation of States. The superficial observer, not merely abroad, but at home, may regard the multiplication of States, with their different local interests, as an alarming source of dissension, threatening eventual destruction to the Republic. But had the sagacity of the most profound politician been exercised, to contrive a mode in which the continent of North America should become one broad theatre, for the exercise

of the rights and the enjoyment and perpetuation of the privileges of republican government and rational liberty, it may well be doubted, whether any other so effectual, so prompt, and at the same time so simple, could have been devised by him, as the creation of a number of separate States, successively formed, as a population becoming dense in the older settlements, had poured itself into the newer fields of adventure and promise; united by a confederacy in the pursuit of all objects of common and general interest; and separate, independent, and sovereign, as to all of individual concern. It is thus, that our Union is extending itself, not as a mere matter of political arrangement, still less by compulsion and power, but by the choice and act of the individual citizens.

What have we seen in all the newly settled portions of the Union? The hardy and enterprising youth finds society in the older settlements comparatively filled up. His portion of the old family farm is too narrow to satisfy his wants or his desires, and he goes forth, with the paternal blessing, and generally with little else, to take up his share of the rich heritage, which the God of nature has spread before him in this western world. He quits the land of his fathers, -the scenes of his early days,-with tender regret glistening in his eye, though hope mantles on his cheek. He does not, as he departs, shake off the dust of the venerated soil from his feet; but he goes on the bank of some distant river, to perpetuate the remembrance of the home of his childhood. He piously bestows the name of the spot where he was born, on the spot to which he has wandered; and while he is laboring with the difficulties, struggling with the privations, languishing perhaps under the diseases incident to the new settlement and the freshly opened soil, he remembers the neighborhood whence he sprang; the roof that sheltered his infancy; the spring that gushed from the rock by his father's door; where he was wont to bathe his heated forehead, after the toil of his youthful sports; the village school-house; the rural church; the graves of his father and his mother. In a few years a new community has been formed; the forest has disappeared, beneath the sturdy arm of the emigrant; his children have grown up, the hardy offspring of the new clime; and the rising settlement is already linked in all its partialities and associations with that from which its fathers and founders had wandered. Such, for the most

part, is the manner in which the new States have been built up; and in this way a foundation is laid, by nature herself, for peace, cordiality, and brotherly feeling, between the ancient and recent settlements of the country.

It is, however, the necessary course of things, that as the newly settled portion of the country is organized into States, possessing each the local feeling and local interests of separate political communities, some prejudices,-like the domestic dissensions of the members of the same family,-should spring up among them, or between them and the older States. These may owe their origin to the more exclusive settlement of some of the new States, from some of the old ones respectively; to supposed inconsistency of the interests of different sections of the country; to the diversity of manners incident to the peculiarity of geographical and social position, and the leading pursuits of life; or to the conflicts of party politics, which are of necessity, in a free country, often capricious, and as violent as they are uncertain. From these and other causes, on which I need not dwell, and without any impeachment of the prosperous operation of our system, prejudices may arise between the different sections of the country, calculated to disturb that harmony, for which a deep foundation is laid in nature, and which it is all-important to preserve, and if possible to increase. To remove these prejudices, to establish kind feelings, to promote good will between the different members of the political family, appears to me, without exception, the most important object at which a patriotic citizen, in any portion of the country, can aim. Our union is our strength, and our weakness too: Our strength, so long as it exists unimpaired and cherished; our weakness, whenever discord shall expose a vulnerable point to hostile art or power. Even the separate prosperity of the States, supposing they could prosper separately, which they cannot, is not enough: I had almost said, is to be deprecated. They ought, for their perfect safety, to owe their prosperity, in some degree, to each other; to mutual dependence; to common interest, and the common feeling derived from it, or strengthened by it.

It is with these sentiments, (if I may be permitted to allude to my own public conduct before a company of gentlemen of various political opinions, and on an occasion consecrated to the oblivion

of every topic of party strife,) that since I have been a member of Congress, I have supported the policy, which aims to open or to perfect the communication between the distant sections of the country, particularly by the extension and preservation of the National Road. The State of which I am a citizen, has already paid between one and two hundred thousand dollars toward the construction and repair of that road; and I doubt not she is prepared to contribute her proportion towards its extension to the place of its destination, as well as toward the completion of the full design, by constructing a lateral branch, through this State, and the States south of Kentucky, to the gulf of Mexico. The friends of internal improvement in the Atlantic States, do not pretend to be indifferent to their own interest. They know that the National Road is a highway for the products of their factories, their fisheries, and their commerce. But I trust also they act upon higher principles,—a regard to the national Union; that they perceive what Washington perceived, and began to inculcate, in the very moment of cessation from war,—almost before he had put off his harness,— that nothing is more essential to the strength of this Union, than an easy communication from East to West.

Subsidiary, in no small degree, to this, and every other measure of legislative enactment aiming at the same end, is that interchange of the courtesies of social life, by which kind feelings are to be awakened or fostered. As between individuals, so between States, which are composed of individuals, there is a temper and a feeling, as important to be rightly directed as the course of legislation or the public policy. On this topic, although perhaps more appropriate to the occasion, I could not, within any reasonable limits, nor without going beyond the bounds of delicacy towards the audience I address, express all that I feel; all that has been inspired in my bosom, by what I have witnessed of the courtesy, the cordiality, the hospitality of the West. I would not, to be sure, be thought to have been so uninformed of any part of the country, as to be wholly ignorant of the state of public sentiment prevailing in it, on any important point. But it will not, I hope, be thought impertinent, if I say, that it has been, not without some surprise, as well as the highest gratification, that I have made a journey of between three and four thousand miles in the West, in the public

conveyances by land and water, always without a companion, often unknown; and without having heard a syllable, which could give pain to the feelings of (what I trust I shall ever show myself,) a dutiful son of New-England. I cannot but cherish the hope, that improving means of communication between the States, will put it in the power of increasing numbers of our brethren in other parts of the Union, to give as good an account of that portion of it, to which I belong, and from an experience as agreeable.

Gentlemen, there is no place in the West, I have taken a greater interest in visiting, than your hospitable town; an interest strengthened by the former residence of a beloved and lamented brother among you, and his connexion with the university here established, which has already done so much, and is destined, I am sure, to do so much more, for the public good in this part of the country. Every patriot, every reflecting man, who considers that useful knowledge, widely diffused, is the only sure basis of enlightened freedom, sympathizes with you in your regret for that disaster, which has reduced its well provided apartments and stately walls to melancholy ruins. The public spirit, which raised, will, I doubt not, speedily restore those walls, and infuse new energy into an institution, justly ranked among the most respectable in the country, an honor to this town and to the State, and a public benefit to the West. Indeed, in the early care, which in this and some of the neighboring States, has been had for the establishment of places of education, though much is naturally still to be done, I recognize the spirit which animated the pilgrim fathers of New-England, (never to be mentioned by their descendants without praise,) in the same cause. You have had your Morrison, as we had our Harvard. As a community, you have already given pledges, that you are determined your posterity shall have cause to bless your memory, as we have to bless the memory of our ancestors. Let but the foundations be deeply laid in a liberal public and private patronage, and the intellectual edifice, the solid fabric of an enlightened community, will stand firm, though the brick and the marble may, for a time, sink beneath the devouring flames, and the scientific treasures they contained, be reduced to dust and ashes.

There is one association recalled to my mind, in visiting this place, to which it would be unpardonable, were I insensible; an