Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
We come together to-day, by the Governor's proclamation, to give thanks to God for our welfare, not merely for our happiness as individuals or as families, but for our welfare as a people. How can we better improve this opportunity, than by looking a little into the condition of the people? And accordingly I invite your attention to a Sermon of the State of this Nation. I shall try to speak of the Condition of the nation itself, then of the Causes of that condition, and, in the third place, of the Dangers that threaten, or are alleged to threaten, the nation.
First, of our Condition. Look about you in Boston. Here are a hundred and forty thousand souls, living in peace and in comparative prosperity. I think, without doing injustice to the other side of the water, there is no city in the old world, of this population, with so much intelligence, activity, morality, order, comfort, and general welfare, and, at the same time, with so little of the opposite of all these. I know the faults of Boston, and I think I would not disguise them; the poverty, unnatural poverty, which shivers in the cellar; the unnatural wealth which bloats in the parlor; the sin which is hid in the corners of the jail; and the more dangerous sin which sets up Christianity for a pretence; the sophistry which lightens in the newspapers, and thunders in the pulpit:—I know all these things, and do not pretend to disguise them; and still I think no city of the old world, of the same population, has so much which good men prize, and so little which good men deplore.
See the increase of material wealth; the buildings for trade and for homes; the shops and ships. This year Boston will add to her possessions some ten or twenty millions of dollars, honestly and earnestly got. Observe the neatness of the streets, the industry of the inhabitants, their activity of mind, the orderliness of the people, the signs of comfort. Then consider the charities of Boston; those limited to our own border, and those which extend further, those beautiful charities which encompass the earth with their sweet influence. Look at the schools, a monument of which the city may well be proud, in spite of their defects.
But Boston, though we proudly call it the Athens of America, is not the pleasantest thing in New England to look at; it is the part of Massachusetts which I like the least to look at, spite of its excellence. Look further, at the whole of Massachusetts, and you see a fairer spectacle. There is less wealth at Provincetown, in proportion to the numbers, but there is less want; there is more comfort; property is more evenly and equally distributed there than here, and the welfare of a country never so much depends upon the amount of its wealth, as on the mode in which its wealth is distributed. In the State, there are about one hundred and fifty thousand families—some nine hundred and seventy-five thousand persons, living with a degree of comfort, which, I think, is not anywhere enjoyed by such a population in the old world. They are mainly industrious, sober, intelligent, and moral. Every thing thrives; agriculture, manufactures, commerce. "The carpenter encourages the goldsmith; he that smites the anvil, him that smootheth with the hammer." Look at the farms, where intelligent labor wins bread and beauty both, out of the sterile soil and climate not over-indulgent. Behold the shops all over the State; the small shops where the shoemaker holds his work in his lap, and draws his thread by his own strong muscles; and the large shops where machines, animate with human intelligence, hold, with iron grasp, their costlier work in their lap, and spin out the delicate staple of Sea Island cotton. Look at all this; it is a pleasant sight. Look at our hundreds of villages, by river, mountain, and sea; behold the comfortable homes, the people well fed, well clad, well instructed. Look at the school-houses, the colleges of the people; at the higher seminaries of learning; at the poor man's real college further back in the interior, where the mechanic's and farmer's son gets his education, often a poor one, still something to be proud of. Look at the churches, where, every Sunday, the best words of Hebrew and of Christian saints are read out of this Book, and all men are asked, once in the week, to remember they have a Father in heaven, a faith to swear by, and a heaven to live for, and a conscience to keep. I know the faults of these churches. I am not in the habit of excusing them; still I know their excellence, and I will not be the last man to acknowledge that. Look at the roads of earth and iron which join villages together, and make the State a whole. Follow the fisherman from his rocky harbor at Cape Ann; follow the mariner in his voyage round the world of waters; see the industry, the intelligence, and the comfort of the people. I think Massachusetts is a State to be thankful for. There are faults in her institutions and in her laws, that need change very much. In her form of society, in her schools, in her colleges, there is much which clamors loudly for alteration,—very much in her churches to be christianized. These changes are going quietly forward, and will in time be brought about.
I love to look on this State, its material prosperity, its increase in riches, its intelligence and industry, and the beautiful results that are seen all about us to-day. I love to look on the face of the people, in halls and churches, in markets and factories; to think of our great ideas; of the institutions which have come of them; of our schools and colleges, and all the institutions for making men wiser and better; to think of the noble men we have in the midst of us, in every walk of life, who eat an honest bread, who love mankind, and love God, who have consciences they mean to keep, and souls which they intend to save.
The great business of society is not merely to have farms, and ships, and shops,—the greater shops and the less,—but to have men; men that are conscious of their manhood, self-respectful, earnest men, that have a faith in the living God. I do not think we have many men of genius. We have very few that I call great men; I wish there were more; but I think we have an intelligent, an industrious, and noble people here in Massachusetts, which we may be proud of.
Let us go a step further. New England is like Massachusetts in the main, with local differences only. All the North is like New England in the main; this portion is better in one thing; that portion worse in another thing. Our ideas are their ideas; our institutions are the same. Some of the northern States have institutions better than we. They have added to our experience. In revising their constitutions and laws, or in making new ones, they go beyond us, they introduce new improvements, and those new improvements will give those States the same advantage over us, which a new mill, with new and superior machinery, has over an old mill, with old and inferior machinery. By and by we shall see the result, and take counsel from it, I trust.
All over the North we find the same industry and thrift, and similar intelligence. Here attention is turned to agriculture, there to mining; but there is a similar progress and zeal for improvement. Attention is bestowed on schools and colleges, on academies and churches. There is the same abundance of material comfort. Population advances rapidly, prosperity in a greater ratio. Everywhere new swarms pour forth from the old hive, and settle in some convenient nook, far off in the West. So the frontier of civilization every year goes forward, further from the ocean. Fifty years ago it was on the Ohio; then on the Mississippi; then on the upper Missouri: presently its barrier will be the Rocky Mountains, and soon it will pass beyond that bar, and the tide of the Atlantic will sweep over to the Pacific—yea, it is already there! The universal Yankee freights his schooner at Bangor, at New Bedford, and at Boston, with bricks, timber, frame-houses, and other "notions," and by and by drops his anchor in the smooth Pacific, in the Bay of St. Francis. We shall see there, ere long, the sentiments of New England, the ideas of New England, the institutions of New England; the school-house, the meeting-house, the court-house, the town-house. There will be the same industry, thrift, intelligence, morality, and religion, and the idle ground that has hitherto borne nothing but gold, will bear upon its breast a republic of men more precious than the gold of Ophir, or the rubies of the East.