tinuance of English authority.

It is vain to search for the particular cause, or even occasion, of the
Revolution. It is not contained in any act of Parliament, or
declaration of rights, or assertion of authority. The truth is, the
colonies had reached that point of conscious strength when they must
become an integral part of the British Empire, or be separated entirely
from it. If there ever had been, there was no longer a feeling of
dependence: they were capable of self-support and protection. There
could be no allegiance except upon principles of equality--and this
England refused. The connection was unnatural and burdensome--the
separation was natural and beneficial. It is not a declaration of the
law alone which limits the control of the father over the son, but in
the order of nature there is a time when the son is capable of self-
judgment, and thereafter as regards rights they are on terms of
equality, and all civil and social arrangements proceed upon that
theory.

But had Great Britain proposed union in 1775 to us, as in 1800 she did
to Ireland, the obstacles were so serious that a separation must
ultimately have taken place. One was the breadth of ocean between the
two parts of the empire--then, and for sixty years, a more serious
obstacle than at present. Another was the peerage--a part of the
British system which could not have been abolished without the
overthrow of the government, and yet incapable of introduction here.
The proposition would have shocked the moral sentiment and the
political principles of the whole people. And finally, our growing
commerce, uneasy under monopolizing restraints and rival domination,
demanded the freedom of the sea. Therefore it is evident that a union
could not have been formed with any hope of permanence and power. Nor
could the separation have taken place at a more fortunate time. The
whole world would have had cause to regret our participation in the
wars of Napoleon, and from them we were saved by independence.

Although the existence of these natural sources of alienation and
disunion must be admitted, they furnish no justification for the
general policy of England--first negligent, then jealous, then
oppressive, and finally reckless and sanguinary.

But we have come together from our various pursuits to contemplate the
virtue and power of the American Revolution in itself and in its
consequences, to show that the sentiment of gratitude is not dead