own eyes, and often by his own hands, all things necessary for the life of man.

He was the monarch of all he surveyed. He felt himself free from all subjection, from all dependence. And individual liberty is a most powerful incentive to civil independence.

He was a true lord. He might hunt, fowl, and fish whenever he pleased. There were no poacher laws to restrain his will. His parks, and pleasure grounds, and reservoirs were boundless forests, vast and numerous lakes and rivers, and the sea unrestricted and inexhaustible in fish of every species. How could this man feel himself otherwise than a lord of the soil, as free as the winds and the eagles that flew above him? How could he feel otherwise than free? Independence was as much a part of the emotions and passions of his bosom, as of his unrestricted footsteps among the unfenced hills and vallies of the boundless continent around

him.

The eagle that soared from peak to peak over all this wilderness realm, was not more free.

And it was with something more than a metaphor, that our forefathers adopted the eagle as the fitting emblem of American Liberty.

They regarded this proud native of these forests with as sacred, and almost as superstitious a reverence, as William Tell, the immortal hero of Switzerland, who, in Sheridan Knowles' inimitable drama of his name, is made to say :

"Scaling yonder peak,
I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow;
O'er the abyss, his broad-expanded wings
Lay calm and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there without their aid,

By the sole act of his unlorded will,

That buoy'd him proudly up. Instinctively
I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still
His airy circle, as in the delight

Of measuring the ample range beneath,

And round about-absorbed, he heeded not
The death that threaten'd him. I could not shoot.
'Twas liberty. I turned my bow aside,
And let him soar away.

The land was free! O! with what pride I used
To walk these hills, and look up to my God,
And bless him that it was so. It was free-
From end to end, from cliff to lake, 'twas free!
Free as our torrents are that leap our rocks,
And plough our vallies, without asking leave:
Or, as our peaks, that rear their caps of snɔw,
In very presence of the regal sun!

In my boat at night, when midway o'er the the lake,
The stars went out, and down the mountain gore,
The wind came roaring! I have sat and eyed
The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled
To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head,
And think I had no master, save his own!

I have thought of other lands, whose storms

Are summer flaws to those of mine, and just

Have wished me there-the thought that mine was free
Has check'd that wish, and I have raised my head,
And cried in thraldom to that furious wind,

Blow on!

This is the land of liberty!"

Such were the freedom-inspiring surroundings of our forefathers, who laid the foundations of civil liberty, and of local independence on this continent. The cradle of liberty was here rocked by the untrammeled winds of heaven.

Man's soul was made free by ten thousand procla mations issued by the voice of Nature and Providence, which spoke by the authority of charters older than the records of human governments, and diviner than the statutes of legislative enactments.

Every man's bosom was a kingdom! Every man's soul was a king! Vast forests, hills, vallies, rivers, lakes, fields, were his subjects.

He commanded them, and they obeyed. Each in its turn paid tribute to his wants, and in due time poured wealth and plenty into his lap.

Here he grew in greatness and power, becoming progressively more free and independent, as he subjugated the continent to his will, until at length the institutions of government grew under his hand into a temple of liberty that commanded the wonder and admiration of the world.

That was the Union!

LECTURE II.

HISTORY OF THE UNION.

THE Union was not made-it grew. It came not out of unity, but disunity. It was formed by thirteen distinct and independent colonies, which, with extreme caution, even with reluctant steps, approached each other whenever the subject of forming a General Government was started.

They had known the independence of states, and the liberties of the people, to fall so often under the central power of general governments, that they heard with dread and distrust the very name.

The first effort at colonial combination on this continent was made among the New England colonies as early as 1643-144 years before a union of all the colonies was effected.

This early New England confederacy was formed as much from distrust of the Dutch settlement upon the Hudson, as it was for mutual protection against the hostile Indians upon their frontiers

This confederacy, which was called "The United Colonies of New England," purported to be "a perpetual league of friendship and amity."

It lasted thirty years.

It contained provisions for enlargement by receiving other English colonies to its communion. But it was never enlarged.

Limited as it was in its members, and cautiously restricted as it was in its powers, five years were con

sumed in perfecting it. And when, at last, the organization was completed, it was purely federal in its nature each colony retaining entire jurisdiction within its territorial limits.

No such thing as a general government was permitted to exercise the least control over the separate colonial sovereignties.

No other colony was ever added to this confederacy, and as the dangers which at first suggested its formation passed away, it gradually faded out itself with the abrogation of the New England charter, in the reign of James II.

The old Saxon principle of local independence was such a predominating element within the narrow limits of these kindred Puritan colonies, that a perpetual" confederacy was dissolved in a little more than thirty years.

To the doors of Massachusetts was laid the chief blame of the breaking up of this first little American confederacy, which, according to its articles of confederation, was designed to be perpetual.

At the formation of the confederacy, Rhode Island was kept out by the influence of Massachusetts, simply because the Rhode Island colonies were dissenters from the Puritan religion.

And it was almost entirely through the vigilant intolerance of Massachusetts, that sectarian animosity made burning lines of division between the colonists on this continent, and for a long time kept back the natural progress of the elements of affinity which were ultimately to form the Union.

And it is a remarkable fact, that we are indebted to the colony of Maryland for the first legislative act of religious toleration on this continent, which it passed

while the Massachusetts colonists were drowning the Baptists, as if to commit a pun upon their doctrine of immersion, and boring holes through Quaker's tongues with red-hot irons, and whipping dissenting women naked from Boston to Dedham.

But, while at this period it seemed impossible that there should ever be any general union between these colonies, possessed of so many divergent passions and interests-there was, still progressing at the same time, a strong tendency to military colonial combination, which, as we shall see, was planting the seeds of the future Union.

On repeated occasions, the authorities of the various colonies-that is, the governors and commissionerswere brought together for conference respecting hostilities, offensive and defensive.

It was at such a military conference, held at New York in 1790, that the word “ Congress" was for the first time used in America.

Not only were the members of the different colonies gradually brought together by these occasional conferences, but they at last came to know still more of each other by joint military service.

"This kind of association may be traced as an influence of union, more or less operative on different occasions, from the times of what were called King William's war,' and Queen Anne's war,' at the close of the seventeenth century, down to the peace of Paris, in 1763, at the close of the old French war."

As this old French war brought a proposition from England for a union of all the colonies, it is important that we pause here for a moment to consider the causes that led to that war. A year after the peace of Aix-laChapelle in 1749, a grant was made by the Government of Great Britain of six hundred thousand acres of land