Whose name usurps her honors, and the blood,
Through centuries clotted there, has floated down
The tainted flood of ages,'—
that shrine shall stand, unshaken by the beating surge of change, and only washed to purer whiteness by the deluge that overwhelms all other political fabrics.
"To the genius of Bacon the world is indebted for emancipating philosophy from the subtleties of the schoolmen, and placing her securely on the firm basis of ascertained elementary truth, thence to soar the loftiest flights on the unfailing pinions of induction and analogy. To the genius of Jefferson—to the comprehensive reach and fervid patriotism of his mind—we owe a more momentous obligation. What Bacon did for natural science, Jefferson did for political morals, that important branch of ethics which most directly affects the happiness of all mankind. He snatched the art of government from the hands that had enveloped it in sophisms and mysteries that it might be made an instrument to oppress the many for the advantage of the few. He stripped it of the jargon by which the human mind had been deluded into blind veneration for kings as the immediate vicegerents of God on earth; and proclaimed in words of eloquent truth, which thrilled conviction to every heart, those eternal self-evident first principles of justice and reason on which alone the fabric of government should be reared. He taught those 'truths of power in words immortal' you have this day heard; words which bear the spirit of great deeds; words which have sounded the death-dirge of tyranny to the remotest corners of the earth; which have roused a sense of right, a hatred of oppression, an intense yearning for democratic liberty, in myriads of myriads of human hearts; and which, reverberating through time like thunder through the sky, will,
'in the distance far away,
Wake the slumbering ages.'
"To Jefferson belongs exclusively and forever the high renown of having framed the glorious charter of American liberty. This was the grandest experiment ever undertaken in the history of man. But they that entered upon it were not afraid of new experiments, if founded on the immutable principles of right and approved by the sober convictions of reason. There were not wanting then, indeed, as there are not wanting now, pale counsellors to fear, who would have withheld them from the course they were pursuing, because it tended in a direction hitherto untrod. But they were not to be deterred by the shadowy doubts and timid suggestions of craven spirits, content to be lashed forever round the same circle of miserable expedients, perpetually trying anew the exploded shifts which had always proved lamentably inadequate before. To such men the very name of experiment is a sound of horror. It is a spell which conjures up gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire. They seem not to know that all that is valuable in life—that the acquisitions of learning, the discoveries of science, and the refinements of art—are the result of experiment. It was experiment that bestowed on Cadmus those keys of knowledge with which we unlock the treasure-houses of immortal mind. It was experiment that taught Bacon the futility of the Grecian philosophy, and led him to that heaven-scaling method of investigation and analysis on which science has safely climbed to the proud eminence where now she sits, dispensing her blessings on mankind. It was experiment that lifted Newton above the clouds and darkness of this visible diurnal sphere, enabling him to explore the sublime mechanism of the stars and weigh the planets in their eternal rounds. It was experiment that nerved the hand of Franklin to snatch the thunder from the armory of heaven. It was experiment that gave this hemisphere to the world. It was experiment that gave this continent to freedom.
"Let us not be afraid, then, to try experiments merely because they are new, nor lavish upon aged error the veneration due only to truth. Let us not be afraid to follow reason, however far she may diverge from the beaten path of opinion. All the inventions which embellish life, all the discoveries which enlarge the field of human happiness, are but various results of the bold experimental exercise of that distinguishing attribute of man. It was the exercise of reason that taught our sires those simple elements of freedom on which they founded their stupendous structure of empire. The result is now before mankind, not in the embryo form of doubtful experiment; not as the mere theory of visionary statesmen, or the mad project of hot-brained rebels: it is before them in the beautiful maturity of established fact, attested by sixty-two years of national experience, and witnessed throughout its progress by an admiring world! Where does the sun, in all his compass, shed his beams on a country freer, better, happier than this? Where does he behold more diffused prosperity, more active industry, more social harmony, more abiding faith, hope, and charity? Where are the foundations of private right more stable, or the limits of public order more inviolately observed? Where does labor go to his toil with an alerter step, or an erecter brow, effulgent with the heart-reflected light of conscious independence? Where does agriculture drive his team a-field with a more cheery spirit, in the certain assurance that the harvest is his own? Where does commerce launch more boldly her bark upon the deep, aware that she has to strive but with the tyranny of the elements, and not with the more appalling tyranny of man?