"Vast happiness enjoy the gay allies!
A youth of follies, an old age of cares,
Young yet enervate, old yet never wise;
Vice wastes their vigor and their mind impairs.
Vain, idle, dissolute, in thoughtless ease,
Reserving woes for age, their prime they spend;
All wretched, hopeless to the evil days,
With sorrow to the verge of life they tend;
Grieved with the present, of the past ashamed;
They live and are despised, they die, no more are named."
If to every bounty of Providence there be annexed, as assuredly there is, some obligations as a condition for its enjoyment, on us, blest as we have been, and as we now are, with the choicest gifts of heaven here below—with freedom, peace, order, civilization and social virtue—there are unquestionably imposed weighty obligations. You whom I now address will, in a few years, be among the men of the succeeding age. In a country like ours, where the public will is wholly unfettered, and every man is a component part of that country, there is no individual so humble who has not duties of a public kind to discharge. His views and actions have an influence on those of others, and his opinions, with theirs, serve to make up that public will. More especially is this the case with those who, whatever may be their pursuits in life, have been raised by education to a comparative superiority in intellectual vigor and attainments. On you, and such as you, depends the fate of the most precious heritage ever won by the valor, preserved by the prudence, or consecrated by the virtue of an illustrious ancestry—illustrious, not because of factitious titles, but nature's nobles, wise, good, generous, and brave! To you, and such as you, will be confided in deposit the institutions of our renowned and beloved country. Receive them with awe, cherish them with loyalty, and transmit them whole, and, if possible, improved, to your children. Yours will, indeed, be no sinecure office. As the public will is the operative spring of all public action, it will be your duty to make and to keep the public will enlightened. There will always be some error to dispel, some prejudice to correct, some illusion to guard against, some imposition to detect and expose. In aid of these individual efforts, you must provide, by public institutions, for diffusing among the people that general information, without which, they cannot be protected from the machinations of deceivers. As your country grows in years, you must also cause it to grow in science, literature, arts, and refinement. It will be for you to develop and multiply its resources, to check the faults of manners as they rise, and to advance the cause of industry, temperance, moderation, justice, morals, and religion all around you. On you too, will devolve the duty which has been long neglected, but which cannot with impunity be neglected much longer, of providing for the mitigation, and (is it too much to hope for in North Carolina?) for the ultimate extirpation of the worst evil that afflicts the southern part of our confederacy. Full well do you know to what I refer, for on this subject there is, with all of us, a morbid sensitiveness which gives warning even of an approach to it. Disguise the truth as we may, and throw the blame where we will, it is slavery which, more than any other cause, keeps us back in the career of improvement. It stifles industry and represses enterprise—it is fatal to economy and providence, it discourages skill, impairs our strength as a community, and poisons morals at the fountain-head. How this evil is to be encountered, how subdued, is indeed a difficult and delicate inquiry which this is not the time to examine nor the occasion to discuss. I felt, however, that I could not discharge my duty without referring to this subject, as one which ought to engage the prudence, moderation, and firmness of those who, sooner or later, must act decisively upon it.
I would not depress your buoyant spirits with gloomy anticipations, but I should be wanting in frankness if I did not state my convictions that you will be called to the performance of other duties unusually grave and important. Perils surround you, and are imminent, which will require clear heads, pure intentions and stout hearts to discern and overcome. There is no side on which danger may not make its approach, but from the wickedness and madness of factions it is most menacing. Time was, indeed, when factions contended amongst us with virulence and fury, but they were, or affected to be, at issue on questions of principle; now Americans band together under the names of men, and wear the livery and put on the badges of their leaders; then the individuals of the different parties were found side by side, dispersed throughout the various districts of our confederated republic, but now the parties that distract the land are almost identified with our geographical distinctions. Now, then, has come the period foreseen and dreaded by our Washington—by him, "who more than any other individual, founded this, our wide-spreading empire, and gave to our western world independence and freedom"—by him, who with a father's warning voice, bade us beware of "parties founded on geographical discriminations." As yet, the sentiment so deeply planted in the hearts of our honest yeomanry, that union is strength, has not been uprooted. As yet, they acknowledge the truth and feel the force of the homely but excellent aphorism, "United we stand, divided we fall." As yet, they take pride in the name of "the United States"—in the recollection of the fields that were won, the blood which was poured forth, and the glory which was gained in the common cause, and under the common banner of a united country. May God, in His mercy, forbid that I or you, my friends, should live to see the day when these sentiments and feelings shall be extinct! Whenever that day comes, then is the hour at hand when this glorious republic, this once national and confederated Union, which for nearly half a century has presented to the eyes, the hopes and the gratitude of man a more brilliant and lovely image than Plato or More or Harrington ever feigned or fancied, shall be like a tale that is told, like a vision that hath passed away. But these sentiments and feelings are necessarily weakened, and in the end must be destroyed, unless the moderate, the good, and the wise unite to "frown indignantly upon the first dawnings of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together its various parts." Threats of resistance, secession, separation have become common as household words in the wicked and silly violence of public declaimers. The public ear is familiarized with and the public mind will soon be accustomed to the detestable suggestion of disunion! Calculations and conjectures, what may the East do without the South, and what may the South do without the East, sneers, menaces, reproaches, and recriminations, all tend to the same fatal end! What can the East do without the South? What can the South do without the East? They may do much; they may exhibit to the curiosity of political anatomists, and the pity and wonder of the world the disjecta membra, the sundered, bleeding limbs of a once gigantic body instinct with life and strength and vigor. They can furnish to the philosophic historian another melancholy and striking instance of the political axiom that all republican confederacies have an inherent and unavoidable tendency to dissolution. They will present fields and occasion for border wars, for leagues and counter-leagues, for the intrigues of petty statesmen, the struggles of military chiefs, for confiscations, insurrections, and deeds of darkest hue. They will gladden the hearts of those who have proclaimed that men are not fit to govern themselves, and shed a disastrous eclipse on the hopes of rational freedom throughout the world. Solon in his code proposed no rational punishment for parricide, treating it as an impossible crime. Such with us ought to be the crime of political parricide—the dismemberment of our "fatherland." Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere, si ei sit profuturus? Quo est detestabilior istorum immanitas qui lacerarunt omni scelere patriam, et in ea funditus delenda occupati et sunt et fuerunt.
If it must be so, let parties and party men continue to quarrel with little or no regard to the public good. They may mystify themselves and others with disputations on political economy, proving the most opposite doctrines to their own satisfaction, and perhaps to the conviction of no one else on earth. They may deserve reprobation for their selfishness, their violence, their errors, or their wickedness. They may do our country much harm. They may retard its growth, destroy its harmony, impair its character, render its institutions unstable, pervert the public mind, and deprave the public morals. These are indeed evils, and sore evils, but the principle of life remains, and will yet struggle with assured success over these temporary maladies. Still we are great, glorious, united, and free, still we have a name that is revered abroad and loved at home—a name which is a tower of strength to us against foreign wrong and a bond of internal union and harmony, a name which no enemy pronounces but with respect, and which no citizen hears but with a throb of exultation. Still we have that blessed Constitution which, with all its pretended defects and all its alleged violations, has conferred more benefit on man than ever yet flowed from any other human institution—which has established justice, insured domestic tranquillity, provided for the common defense, promoted the general welfare, and which, under God, if we be true to ourselves, will insure the blessings of liberty to us and to our posterity. Surely such a country and such a Constitution have claims upon you, my friends, which cannot be disregarded. I entreat and adjure you, then, by all that is near and dear to you on earth, by all the obligations of patriotism, by the memory of your fathers who fell in the great and glorious struggle, for the sake of your sons whom you would not have to blush for your degeneracy, by all your proud recollections of the past and all your fond anticipations of the future renown of our nation, preserve that country, uphold that Constitution. Resolve that they shall not be lost while in your keeping, and may God Almighty strengthen you to fulfill that vow!
GEORGE E. BADGER.