The most powerful motives call on us for those efforts which our common country demands of all her children. Most of us are of that class who owe whatever of knowledge has shone into our minds, to the free and popular institutions of our native land. There are few of us, who may not be permitted to boast, that we have been reared in an honest poverty or a frugal competence, and owe everything to those means of education which are equally open to all.
We are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in Providence to make, and the grandeur of the theatre on which it is to be performed. When the Old World afforded no longer any hope, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun, and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant prospects; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society, to settle, and that forever, that momentous question—whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system?
One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good of all places and times are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us; that they who lavished their treasures and their blood of old, who labored and suffered, who spake and wrote, who fought and perished, in the one great cause of freedom and truth, are now hanging from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity.
As I have wandered over the spots, once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages; from the sepulchers of the nations, which died before the sight. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust.
They implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity, by the blessed memory of the departed; by the dear faith, which has been plighted by pure hands, to the holy cause of truth and man; by the awful secrets of the prison houses, where the sons of freedom have been immured; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block; by the wrecks of time, by the eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us, by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us, in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.
THE PEOPLE ALWAYS CONQUER.
BY EDWARD EVERETT.
As a finished scholar and eloquent speaker, Mr. Everett gained the highest distinction. His silvery tones and flowery periods held multitudes spellbound. His orations were always prepared with the greatest care, delivered from memory, and are models of elevated thought and sentiment and brilliant diction. He was the finished orator, noted for the classic beauty of his writings.
