at the expense of emancipating slaves
or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that some man
possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to
push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And
when such an one does it will require the people to be united with each
other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent,
to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as
willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet,
that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of
building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.

Here then is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such an one as could
not have well existed heretofore.

Another reason which once was, but which, to the same extent, is now no
more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the
powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had
upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By
this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature,
and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength,
were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive,
while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of
revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed
exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of
circumstances, the basest principles of our nature were either made to
lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of
the noblest of causes--that of establishing and maintaining civil and
religious liberty.

But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the
circumstances that produced it.

I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever
will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must
fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the
lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted,
so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will,
their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they
cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the
generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly
every adult male had been a participator in some of