gh trials of fire, fixed the attention of
mankind.

The establishment of the Republic of the United States of America, is the
most important secular event in the history of the human race. It did not
disentangle the confused theory of the origin of Government, but cut
through the bonds of power existing by prescription, at a blow; and thus
directly and immediately affected the opinions and the actions of men in
every part of the civilized world. It animated them everywhere to seek
freedom from despotic power and aristocratic restraint. Whenever and
wherever they have since moved, either by peaceful agitation or by
physical force, to meliorate systems of government, whether in France at
the close of the last century, or afterward on the second subversion of
the elder branch of the Bourbons, or in the recent overthrow of the
constitutional king, or in Ireland, or in England, or in Italy, or in
Greece, or in South America, whether they succeeded or failed, there, in
the tumult or in the strife, was the spirit of the American Revolution.
"It gave an example of a great people, not merely emancipating themselves,
but governing themselves, without either a monarch to control, or an
aristocracy to restrain them; and it demonstrated, for the first time in
the history of the world, contrary to the predictions and theories of
speculative philosophy, that a great nation, when duly prepared, is
capable of self-government by purely republican institutions."

But the establishment of the American Republic was too great an
achievement to be made all at once. It was a drama of five grand acts,
each of which filled a considerable period, and called upon the stage
actors of peculiar powers and distinguished virtues. Those acts were,
colonization, preparation, revolution, organization, consolidation.

Two of these acts were closed before John Quincy Adams was born. The
third, the revolution, the shortest of them all, dazzles the contemplation
by the rapidity and the martial character of its incidents. The fourth,
the organization of the Government, by the splendors of genius elicited,
and the felicity of the new form of government presented, satisfies the
superficial inquirer that, when the Constitution had been adopted, nothing
remained to perfect the great achievement. But other nations have had
successful revolutions, and have set up free constitutions, and have yet
sunk again under reinvigorated despotism. The CONSOLIDATION of the
Am