and their posterity. Here, at the head of all these objects, stands, in bold and prominent relief, the great, noble object, To FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION among the people of the United States.

And I will take the liberty to refer to another passage in the letter to which I have just alluded, from the Federal Convention to Congress, in submitting to them the plan of the Constitution:

"In all our deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our UNION, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence."

You will please to observe, that this language is not applied to the powers of government; it does not say that they aim at consolidation in the general government, nor of all the powers of government; it does not at all usurp the local authorities of the States, nor interfere with any thing that belongs to the local legislation and administration. But the consolidation of which Washington and his associates spoke was a consolidation of the Union, for the just purposes of a Union, of a strong Union, for those purposes for which the Union itself ought to exist.

I have said, and I beg leave to repeat, because it lies at the foundation of all just conceptions of the Constitution of the country, that the Union created by the Constitution was a union among the people in every thing which regards their diplomatic and foreign relations and concerns, and the intercourse between the world and themselves. The Union created by the old Confederation was imperfect; indeed, it hardly existed at all, certainly with no efficiency and productive of no good. This was the object, as stated by the members of the Convention themselves, in the document to which I have referred, and distinctly announced on the face of the Constitution itself.

In pursuance of these purposes, the Constitution proceeded to institute a general government, with such powers and authority as would accomplish the object intended. The Constitution assigned to the general government the power of war and peace, the power of making treaties, and that other important, and, as it has turned out, absolutely indispensable power, the regulation of commerce.

Government has attempted to perform all these duties. It

has exercised the power of regulating commerce. So has it sought to establish justice, another of its objects. It has done so especially in the great matter of paying off the debt of the Revolution. It has enacted laws to insure domestic tranquillity, and it has effected that object. It has provided for the common defence, by organizing armies, equipping navies, and such other preparations as the exigencies of our position have rendered necessary. In these and other ways it has endeavored to promote the public welfare; and it has not neglected any means for securing the blessings of liberty.

Such being the objects of the Constitution, you and I and our contemporaries throughout the country, who have a part to act, a vote to give, an opinion to express,-you and I, and all of us, after the experience of half a century, are bound to put it to ourselves and to our consciences, whether these objects have been accomplished by that instrument. Because if they have not, if the Constitution has shown itself, under the best administrations, inefficient and useless, it is time to revert to that great power inherent in the people, of reforming the govern ment, and establishing a system more suited to their purposes and desires. But if the Constitution, on the whole, upon this conscientious examination, shall prove to have accomplished its ends, to have subserved the public prosperity, carried the nation forward in wealth, in business, in enterprise, and to have raised us to a pitch of glory and renown, of which you and I and all of us are proud, - then, I say, we are bound to it by every tie of gratitude, by every feeling of patriotism. We are bound to support it with all our hearts, for all our lives, and to transmit it unimpaired to our children.

Now, I say, in my humble but conscientious judgment, and I say it under a mixed sense of gratitude to God and of profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, making all reasonable allowances for the frailties which beset all men and the misfortunes which sometimes betide all governments, I say to you as my judgment, I say it to the country, and would to Heaven I could say it to the whole human race, and in tones which would echo to the last generation of men, that this Constitution has prosperously, greatly, and gloriously answered the ends of its establishment. And if there be any one among you, or if there be in the country a man, who doubts or denies this, he

is a man for whose judgment I have no great respect, and with whose feelings I have no manner of sympathy.

Gentlemen, this government was established at one of the most fearful periods in the history of the human race in modern times, just at the breaking out of that tremendous convulsion which so terribly shook Europe to her foundation, in all her interests and all her concerns, all her thrones and all her dynasties, the French Revolution. We had just entered upon the first administration of the government under the great leader of the Revolution, who had been chosen to be our great leader in the times which succeeded, the times of peace. When the French Revolution broke out, we had just commenced our national being under the present Constitution. It proved the ark of our safety. It proved competent to preserve our neutrality. It proved competent, under his administration, to keep us clear from the overwhelming and submerging Maelstrom of European war and European conquest. In its progress it covered every sea with our flag. It replenished the treasury. It paid the debt of the Revolution. Above all, it gave us name and fame, it gave us character and standing. It made the flag E Pluribus Unum known wherever any thing could be water-borne. In the northern and southern, the eastern and western seas, wherever our navy went, the stars and stripes went with it, and they made known that the United States of America had become one in all that related to their intercourse with foreign nations. It gave a general significance, a new respect, to the powerimporting name of America: and on that foundation we still

rest.

Under this Constitution we have attained the rank of the second commercial nation in the world. We have risen from a population of three millions to one of twenty millions. Every interest, in my judgment, has been successfully maintained, sustained, cherished, and nourished by a wise and paternal govern

ment.

And now, Gentlemen, is there a man among you, or in the country, who, in a just and candid examination of this history, is not ready to stand by the Constitution? or are there those who prefer another form of government? I put it to you to-day, whether, in the history of the past, which we have briefly scanned, you see any thing which you wish reversed. Do you

wish to revolutionize the history of the past? Do you wish to blot it out? Is there any thing in the history of your country thus far which makes you ashamed that you are Americans? I put it to the elderly men assembled here to-day, whose career of life is fast drawing to a close, - do they know any better government, any better political system, to which they would wish to intrust the lives and property of their children? I put it to you, men in middle life, engaged in the concerns and business of life, do you wish for, can you conceive, have you a notion of, any system better calculated to secure industry, to maintain liberty, to protect property, and to enable you to provide for yourselves and for those who are near and dear to you? And you, young men, full of the aspirations of ingenuous youth, full, I know, of patriotic feeling, and eagerly desirous to enjoy, to honor, and to serve your country, do you wish to render public service under any other banner?

Then, Gentlemen, then, fellow-Americans, then, friends, if it be true that the Constitution of the United States, under the various and successive administrations that have taken place since 1789, has fulfilled all the just hopes, and more than even the most sanguine hopes, of the country, is there a question that it is the part of gratitude to God, of respect to our ancestors, the part of regard for every interest that is dear to us and to ours, to cleave to it as to the ark of our political salvation? that, however it may be with others, however others may stray from the great object of national regard, for us and ours we will adhere to it, we will maintain, we will defend it, to our dying day?

If this be so, if the Constitution of the country has been, in fact, proved eminently useful, the next question is, Upon what system of general policy, according to what measures relating to the great interests of the country, has the Constitution, on the whole, been administered? How did it commence? What measures were deemed necessary, if I may so say, from its cradle?

Gentlemen, this leads us back to that interesting and important epoch, the commencement of Washington's administration, in the city of New York, under the present Constitution of the United States.

For myself, I always revisit those scenes with delight. I refresh myself by going back to this spring-time of the republic,

to contemplate the characters of the men, and, above all, to admire the purity of their patriotism and the elevation of their principles. In idea I love to gather round me the circle of Washington and his great compatriots, not in the field of battle, but in a greater field, the field of political wisdom, the field of patriotism, the field where prudence, and discretion, and firmness are as necessary as in the greatest conflict in arms. I carry myself back to the halls of the Congress which sat in the spring of 1789. I can present to myself a sort of living image of that great assembly of wise men. In the centre you may see Washington himself, and his immediate advisers, Mr. Jay, who had not yet ceased to be Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the authority of the old Confederation, Mr. Hamilton, and General Knox. In the House of Representatives were Ames, and Goodhue, and Benson, and Lawrence, and Boudinot, and Fitzsimmons, and Madison, and Huger. In the Senate were King, and Schuyler, and Strong, and Robert Morris, and Baldwin of Georgia, and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, he who had moved the resolution of Independence in 1776 then in the Senate, and he* who had proved himself the champion in debate of that resolution then presiding over the Senate. In one department or another were the warriors of many a well-fought field; and civilians and statesmen, who had been tried in the fiery ordeal of the Revolution, and come forth like burnished gold, surrounded the great chief of the government.

Gentlemen, I can realize the scene when General Washington assembled these houses of the legislature before him, and made to them his first speech, and paid to them the tribute due to their character, and laid before them and before the country those great principles of public and private virtue, on which he wished and desired to see the administration of the government established.

"It will be more consistent," he says, "with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable quali fications I behold the surest pledges, that as, on one side, no local preju

VOL. II.

* John Adams, Vice-President of the United States.

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