, its blessings can never be wholly
withdrawn from the human race.

It is not to be concealed, however, that the affections of the people
have been alienated from the American Union during the last seven years,
as they were from the union with Great Britain during the years of our
colonial life immediately previous to the Massacre in King-street, in
1770. This solemn personal and public experience is fraught with a great
lesson. It should teach those who are intrusted with the administration
of public affairs to translate the language of the constitution into the
stern realities of public policy, in the light of the Declaration of
Independence, and of Liberty; and it should warn those who constitute
the government, and who judge it, not to allow their opposition to men
or to measures to degenerate into indifference or hostility to the
institutions of the country.

A little distrust of ourselves, who see not beyond our own horizon,
might sometimes lend charity to our judgment, and discretion to our
opposition; for, in the turmoil of politics, and the contests of
statesmanship, even, it is not always

"----the sea that sinks and shelves,
But ourselves,
That rook and rise
With endless and uneasy motion,
Now touching the very skies,
Now sinking into the depths of ocean."

And, as there must be in every society of men something of evil that can
be traced to the government, and something of good neglected that a wise
and efficient government might have accomplished, it is easy to build up
an argument against an existing government, however good when compared
with others. This is a narrow, superficial, unsatisfactory, dangerous
view to take of public affairs.

We should seek to comprehend the relations of the government, the
principles on which it is founded; and, while we justly complain of its
defects, and seek to remedy them, we ought also to compare it with other
systems that exist, or that might be established. This proposition
involves an intelligent realization by the people of the character of
their institutions; and I am thus led to express the apprehension that
the popular political education of our day is inferior to that of the
revolutionary era, and of the age that immediately succeeded it.

There is, no doubt, a disposition and a tendency to extol the recent
past. The recollections of childhood are quite at variance with the real
truth, and tradition is often the