dream of old age concerning the
events of early life. As rivers, hills, mountains, roads, and towns, are
all magnified by the visions of childhood, it is not strange that men
should be also. Hence comes, in part, the popular belief in the superior
physical strength and greater longevity of the people who lived fifty or
a hundred years ago. Each generation is familiar with its predecessor;
but of the one next remote it knows only the marked characters. Those
who possessed great physical excellences remain; but they are not so
much the representatives of their generation as its exceptions. The
weak, the diseased, have fallen by the way; and, as there is an intimate
connection between physical and intellectual power, the remnant of any
generation, whatever its common character, will retain a
disproportionate number of strong-minded men. Hence it is not safe to
judge a generation as a whole by those who remain at the age of sixty or
seventy years; especially if we reflect that public opinion and
tradition are most likely to preserve the names and qualities of those
who were distinguished for physical or mental power. Yet, after making
due allowance for these exaggerations, I cannot escape the conclusion
that we have, as a people, deteriorated in average sound political
learning; and I proceed to mention some of the causes and evidences of
our degeneracy, and of the superiority of our ancestors.

I. _The political condition of the country has been essentially
changed._--General personal and family comfort, according to the ideas
now entertained, was not a feature of American society for one hundred
and seventy years from the settlement at Plymouth. Life was a continual
contest--a contest with the forest, with the climate, with the Indians,
and especially was it a continual contest with the mother country. The
colonists sought to maintain their own rights without infringement,
while they accorded to the sovereign his constitutional privileges.
Conflicts were frequent, and apprehensions of conflict yet more
frequent. Hence those who had the conduct of public affairs were
compelled to give some attention to English history, and to the
constitutional law of Great Britain. Moreover, it was always important
to secure and keep a strong public sentiment on the side of liberty; and
there were usually in every town men who thoroughly investigated
questions of public policy. There was one topic, more absorbing than any
other, that inv