work of 1776.

II.

Philosophy has divined the secrets of all this power, and eloGrandeur of the quence emblazoned the magnificence of all its results. The heroic war which fought out the acquiescence of the Old World in the independence of the New; the manifold and masterly forms of noble character and of patient and serene wisdom which the great influences of the times begat; the large and splendid scale on which these elevated purposes were wrought out, and the majestic proportions to which they have been filled up; the unended line of eventful progress, casting ever backward a flood of light upon the sources of the original energy, and ever forward a promise and a prophecy of unexhausted power-all these have been made familiar to our people by the genius and the devotion of historians and orators. The greatest statesmen of the Old World for this same period of 100 years have traced the initial step in these events, looked into the nature of the institutions thus founded, weighed by the Old World wisdom, and measured by recorded experience, the probable fortunes of this new adventure on an unknown sea. This circumspect and searching survey of our wide field of political and social experiment, no doubt, has brought them a diversity of judgment as to the past and of expectation as to the future. But of the magnitude and the novelty and the power of the forces set at work by the event we commemorate, no competent authorities have ever greatly differed. The cotemporary judgment of Burke is scarcely an overstatement of the European opinion of the immense import of American independence. He declared: "A great revolution has happened-a revolution made, not by chopping and changing of power in any of the existing States, but by the appearance of a new State, of a new species, in a new part of the globe. It has made as great a change in all the relations and balances and gravitations of power as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar world."

It is easy to understand that the rupture between the Colonies and the mother country might have worked a result of political independence that would have involved no such mighty consequences as are here so strongly announced by the most

philosophic statesman of his age. The resistance of the Colonies, which came to a head in the revolt, was led in the name and for the maintenance of the liberties of Englishmen, against Parliamentary usurpation and a subversion of the British Constitution. A triumph of those liberties might have ended in an emancipation from the rule of the English Parliament, and a continued submission to the scheme and system of the British monarchy, with an American Parliament adjusted thereto, upon the true principles of the English Constitution. Whether this new political establishment should have maintained loyalty to the British sovereign, or should have been organized under a crown and throne of its own, the transaction would, then, have had no other importance than such as belongs to a dismemberment of existing empire, but with preservation of existing institutions. There would have been, to be sure, a new state," but not "of a new species," and that it was "in a rew part of the globe" would have gone far to make the dismemberment but a temporary and circumstantial disturbance in the old order of things.

Indeed, the solidity and perpetuity of that order might have been greatly confirmed by this propagation of the model of the European monarchies on the boundless regions of this continent. It is precisely here that the Declaration of Independence has its immense importance. As a civil act, and by the people's decree-and not by the achievement of the army, or through military motives-at the first stage of the conflict it assigned a new nationality, with its own institutions, as the civilly preordained end to be fought for and secured. It did not leave it to be an after-fruit of triumphant war, shaped and measured by military power, and conferred by the army on the people. This assured at the outset the supremacy of civil over military authority, the subordination of the army to the unarmed people.

This deliberative choice of the scope and goal of the Revolution made sure of two things, which must have been always greatly in doubt, if military reasons and events had held the mastery over the civil power. The first was, that nothing less than the independence of the nation, and its separation from the system of Europe, would be attained if our arms were prosper

ous; and the second, that the new nation would always be the mistress of its own institutions. This might not have been its fate had a triumphant army won the prize of independence, not as a task set for it by the people, and done in its service, but by its own might, and held by its own title, and so to be shaped and dealt with by its own will.

III.

There is the best reason to think that the Congress which deObjects of the clared our independence gave its chief solicitude, not Revolution to the hazards of military failure, not to the chance of miscarriage in the project of separation from England, but to the grave responsibility of the military success-of which they made no doubt—and as to what should replace, as government to the new nation, the monarchy of England, which they considered as gone to them forever from the date of the Declaration.

Nor did this Congress feel any uncertainty, either in disposition or expectation, that the natural and necessary result would preclude the formation of the new Government out of any other materials than such as were to be found in society as established on this side of the Atlantic. These materials they foresaw were capable of, and would tolerate, only such political establishment as would maintain and perpetuate the equality and liberty always enjoyed in the several colonial communities. But all these limitations upon what was possible still left a large range of anxiety as to what was probable, and might become actual. One thing was too essential to be left uncertain, and the founders of this nation determined that there never should be a moment when the several communities of the different colonies should lose the character of component parts of one nation. By their plantation and growth up to the day of the Declaration of Independence they were subjects of one sovereignty, bound together in one political connection, parts of one country, under one constitution, with one destiny. Accordingly the Declaration, by its very terms, made the act of separation a dissolving by "one people" of "the political bands that have connected them with another," and the proclamation of the right and of the fact of independent nationality was, "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States."

It was thus that, at one breath, "independence and union" were declared and established. The confirmation of the first by war, and of the second by civil wisdom was but the execution of the single design which it is the glory of this great instrument of our National existence to have framed and announced. The recognition of our independence, first by France and then by Great Britain, the closer union by the Articles of Confederation, and the final unity by the Federal Constitution were all but muniments of title of that "liberty and union, one and inseparable," which were proclaimed at this place and on this day 100 years ago, which have been our possession from that moment hitherto, and which we surely avow shall be our possession forever.

Seven years of revolutionary war, and twelve years of consummate civil prudence brought us, in turn, to the conclusive peace of 1783, and to the perfected Constitution of 1787. Few chapters of the world's history covering such brief periods, are crowded with so many illustrious names, or made up of events of so deep and permanent interest to mankind. I cannot stay to recall to your attention these characters, or these incidents, or to renew the gratitude and applause with which we never cease to contemplate them. It is only their relation to the Declaration of Independence itself, that I need to insist upon, and to the new State which it brought into existence. In this view these progressive processes were but the articulation of the members of the State, and the adjustment of its circulation to the new centres of its vital power. These processes were all implied and included in this political creation, and were as necessary and as certain, if it were not to languish and to die, as in any natural creature.

Within the hundred years whose flight in our national history we mark to-day, we have had occasion to corroborate by war both the independence and the unity of the nation. In our war against England for neutrality, we asserted and we established the absolute right to be free of European entanglements in time of war as well as in time of peace, and so completed our independence of Europe. And by the war of the Constitution —a war within the nation-the bonds of our unity were tried

and tested, as in a fiery furnace, and proved to be dependent upon no shifting vicissitudes of acquiescence, no partial dissents or discontents, but, so far as is predicable of human fortunes, irrevocable, indestructible, perpetual. Casibus hæc nullis, nullo delebilis ævo.

System.

IV.

We may be quite sure that the high resolve to stake the fuOur New Political ture of a great people upon a system of society and of polity that should dispense with the dogmas, the experience, the traditions, the habits, and the sentiments upon which the firm and durable fabric of the British Constitution had been built up, was not taken without a solicitous and competent survey of the history, the condition, the temper, and the moral and intellectual traits of the people for whom the decisive step was taken.

It may, indeed, be suggested that the main body of the elements, and a large share of the arrangements, of the new government were expected to be upon the model of the. British system, and that the substantials of civil and religious liberty and the institutions for their maintenance and defense were already the possession of the people of England and the birthright of the colonists. But this consideration does not much disparage the responsibility assumed in discarding the correlative parts of the British Constitution. I mean the Established Church and Throne; the permanent power of a hereditary peerage; the confinement of popular representation to the wealthy and educated classes; and the ideas of all participation by the people in their own government coming by gracious concession from the royal prerogative and not by inherent right in themselves. Indeed, the counter consideration, so far as the question was to be solved by experience, would be a ready one. The foundation, and the walls, and the roof of this firm and noble edifice, it would be said, are all fitly framed together in the substantial institutions you propose to omit from your plan and model. The convenience, and safety, and freedom, the pride and happiness which the inmates of this temple and fortress enjoy, as the rights and liberties of Englishmen, are only kept in place and