eeches,
extensive correspondence, and whatever other mode could be adopted for
the purpose of exposing the encroachments of the British Parliament and
animating the people to a manly resistance. Both were not only decided,
but early, friends of Independence. While others yet doubted, they were
resolved; where others hesitated, they pressed forward. They were both
members of the committee for preparing the Declaration of Independence,
and they constituted the sub-committee appointed by the other members to
make the draft. They left their seats in Congress, being called to other
public employments, at periods not remote from each other, although one
of them returned to it afterwards for a short time. Neither of them was
of the assembly of great men which formed the present Constitution, and
neither was at any time a member of Congress under its provisions. Both
have been public ministers abroad, both Vice-Presidents and both
Presidents of the United States. These coincidences are now singularly
crowned and completed. They have died together; and they died on the
anniversary of liberty.

When many of us were last in this place, fellow-citizens, it was on the
day of that anniversary. We were met to enjoy the festivities belonging
to the occasion, and to manifest our grateful homage to our political
fathers. We did not, we could not here, forget our venerable neighbor of
Quincy. We knew that we were standing, at a time of high and palmy
prosperity, where he had stood in the hour of utmost peril; that we saw
nothing but liberty and security, where he had met the frown of power;
that we were enjoying every thing, where he had hazarded every thing;
and just and sincere plaudits rose to his name, from the crowds which
filled this area, and hung over these galleries. He whose grateful duty
it was to speak to us,[1] on that day, of the virtues of our fathers,
had, indeed, admonished us that time and years were about to level his
venerable frame with the dust. But he bade us hope that "the sound of a
nation's joy, rushing from our cities, ringing from our valleys, echoing
from our hills, might yet break the silence of his aged ear; that the
rising blessings of grateful millions might yet visit with glad light
his decaying vision." Alas! that vision was then closing for ever. Alas!
the silence which was then settling on that aged ear was an everlasting
silence! For, lo! in the very moment of our festivities, his freed
spirit ascende