en they make them, are their own; and this commerce is
encouraged and regulated by wise laws, and defended, when need be, by
the valor and patriotism of the country. Look to that fair city, the
abode of so much diffused wealth, so much general happiness and comfort,
so much personal independence, and so much general knowledge, and not
undistinguished, I may be permitted to add, for hospitality and social
refinement. She fears no forced contributions, no siege or sacking from
military leaders of rival factions. The hundred temples in which her
citizens worship God are in no danger of sacrilege. The regular
administration of the laws encounters no obstacle. The long processions
of children and youth, which you see this day, issuing by thousands from
her free schools, prove the care and anxiety with which a popular
government provides for the education and morals of the people.
Everywhere there is order; everywhere there is security. Everywhere the
law reaches to the highest and reaches to the lowest, to protect all in
their rights, and to restrain all from wrong; and over all hovers
liberty,--that liberty for which our fathers fought and fell on this
very spot, with her eye ever watchful, and her eagle wing ever wide
outspread.

The colonies of Spain, from their origin to their end, were subject to
the sovereign authority of the mother country. Their government, as well
as their commerce, was a strict home monopoly. If we add to this the
established usage of filling important posts in the administration of
the colonies exclusively by natives of Old Spain, thus cutting off for
ever all hopes of honorable preferment from every man born in the
Western hemisphere, causes enough rise up before us at once to account
fully for the subsequent history and character of these provinces. The
viceroys and provincial governors of Spain were never at home in their
governments in America. They did not feel that they were of the people
whom they governed. Their official character and employment have a good
deal of resemblance to those of the proconsuls of Rome, in Asia, Sicily,
and Gaul; but obviously no resemblance to those of Carver and Winthrop,
and very little to those of the governors of Virginia after that Colony
had established a popular House of Burgesses.

The English colonists in America, generally speaking, were men who were
seeking new homes in a new world. They brought with them their families
and all that was most dear to t