uated
for its own destruction. Every blow aimed at the union of the States
strikes on the tenderest nerve of her interest and her happiness. To
bring the Union into debate is to bring her own future prosperity into
debate also. To speak of arresting the laws of the Union, of interposing
State power in matters of commerce and revenue, of weakening the full
and just authority of the general government, would be, in regard to
this city, but another mode of speaking of commercial ruin, of abandoned
wharfs, of vacated houses, of diminished and dispersing population, of
bankrupt merchants, of mechanics without employment, and laborers
without bread. The growth of this city and the Constitution of the
United States are coevals and contemporaries. They began together, they
have flourished together, and if rashness and folly destroy one, the
other will follow it to the tomb.

Gentlemen, it is true, indeed, that the growth of this city is
extraordinary, and almost unexampled. It is now, I believe, sixteen or
seventeen years since I first saw it. Within that comparatively short
period, it has added to its number three times the whole amount of its
population when the Constitution was adopted. Of all things having power
to check this prosperity, of all things potent to blight and blast it,
of all things capable of compelling this city to recede as fast as she
has advanced, a disturbed government, an enfeebled public authority, a
broken or a weakened union of the States, would be most efficacious.
This would be cause efficient enough. Every thing else, in the common
fortune of communities, she may hope to resist or to prevent; but this
would be fatal as the arrow of death.

Gentlemen, you have personal recollections and associations, connected
with the establishment and adoption of the Constitution, which are
necessarily called up on an occasion like this. It is impossible to
forget the prominent agency exercised by eminent citizens of your own,
in regard to that great measure. Those great men are now recorded among
the illustrious dead; but they have left names never to be forgotten,
and never to be remembered without respect and veneration. Least of all
can they be forgotten by you, when assembled here for the purpose of
signifying your attachment to the Constitution, and your sense of its
inestimable importance to the happiness of the people.

I should do violence to my own feelings, Gentlemen, I think I should
offend yours, i