pleteness dissuades from farther ambition to extend it, and its rounded symmetry discourages all attempts to dismember it. No division into greatly unequal parts would be tolerable to either. No imaginable union of interests or passions, large enough to include one-half the country, but must embrace much more. The madness of partition into numerous and feeble fragments could proceed only from the hopeless degradation of the people, and would form but an incident in general ruin. The spirit of the nation is at the highest-its triumph over the inborn, inbred perils of the Constitution has chased away all fears, justified all hopes, and with universal joy we greet this day. We have not proved unworthy of a great ancestry; we have had the virtue to uphold what they so wisely, so firmly established. With these proud possessions of the past, with powers matured, with principles settled, with habits formed, the nation passes as it were from preparatory growth to responsible development of character, and the steady performance of duty. What labors await it, what trials shall attend it, what triumphs for human nature, what glory for itself, are prepared for this people in the coming century, we may not assume to foretell. "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever," and we reverently hope that these our constituted liberties shall be maintained to the unending line of our posterity, and so long as the earth itself shall endure.

In the great procession of nations, in the great march of humanity, we hold our place. Peace is our duty, peace is our policy. In its arts, its labors, and its victories, then, we find scope for all our energies, rewards for all our ambitions, renown enough for all our love and fame. In the august presence of so many nations, which, by their representatives, have done us the honor to be witnesses of our commemorative joy and gratulation, and in sight of the collective evidences of the greatness of their own civilization with which they grace our celebration, we may well confess how much we fall short, how much we have to make up, in the emulative competitions of the times. Yet, even in this presence, and with a just deference to the age, the power, the greatness of the other nations of the earth, we do not fear

to appeal to the opinion of mankind whether, as we point to our land, our people, and our laws, the contemplation should not inspire us with a lover's enthusiasm for our country.

Time makes no pauses in his march. Even while I speak the last hour of the receding is replaced by the first hour of the coming century, and reverence for the past gives way to the joys and hopes, the activities and the responsibilities of the future. A hundred years hence the piety of that generation will recall the ancestral glory which we celebrate to-day, and crown it with the plaudits of a vast population which no man can number. By the mere circumstance of this periodicity our generation will be in the minds, in the hearts, on the lips of our countrymen at the next Centennial commemoration in comparison with their own character and condition, and with the great founders of the nation. What shall they say of us? How shall they estimate the part we bear in the unbroken line of the nation's progress? And so on, in the long reach of time, forever and forever, our place in the secular roll of the ages must always bring us into observation and criticism. Under this double trust, then, from the past and for the future, let us take heed to our ways, and while it is called to-day, resolve that the great heritage we have received shall be handed down through the long line of the advancing generations, the home of liberty, the abode of justice, the stronghold of faith among men, "which holds the moral elements of the world together," and of faith in God, which binds that world to His throne.

THE GENIUS OF AMERICA.

AN ADDRESS BY HON. FELIX R. BRUNOT,

DELIVERED AT PITTSBURGH, PA., JULY 4TH, 1876.

FELLOW CITIZENS AND FRIENDS: Yesterday I stood in the Hall of Independence, on the banks of the Delaware, and looked upon the immortal Declaration which an hundred years ago proclaimed the birth of the nation. To-day I join with you, on the banks of the Ohio, to celebrate with appropriate ceremonies the Centennial of the Nation's birth. Space and time in the progress of those hundred years seem well nigh obliterated between the ends of our good old Commonwealth; so let space and time stand aside whilst we mingle the august memories of the past with the glories of the present, and cement the foundations of a still more imperishable and noble future. Were I a sculptor charged with the study of embodying in marble the idea of this occasion, I would represent the Genius of America-glancing backwards at monuments upon whose foundations would be inscribed the principles of our forefathers, upon which the national institutions have been builded, and out of which the prosperity of the nation has grown—and with firm, advancing step, and right arm raised she should point onward and upward to a pyramid grander than those Egypt inscribed on every stone from foundation to apex with the same principles. An individual cannot abandon principles of truth, justice, and virtue which have guided him from youth to manhood, without danger to himself. Neither can a nation without danger, if not destruction.

What are some of these principles which have made us to prosper, and without which we cannot live? Ask the Pilgrim Fathers, and the reply comes from the articles of government they solemnly signed on the day before they landed from the Mayflower: "In the name of God! Amen. We whose names are underwritten having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith a voyage, ***

** *

solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, combine ourselves into a body politic for our better ordering and jurisdiction; and furthermore, in pursuance of the ends aforesaid, and by virtue hereof, to enact and found such just and equal laws, * * unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."

*

Ask the colonies, and old Roger Williams replies, "that every man is permitted to worship God according to his own conscience." Ask the fathers of the Republic, and the immortal words of their declaration ring out the self-evident truths that by "Nature's God" and the endorsement of "their Creator" all men have certain inalienable rights, among which are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The religious conscience in the New World was born free-civil liberty was bought with revolutionary blood. Out of the sturdy birthfreedom of religious liberty grew the consciousness of the right to civil liberty, and they are inseparable as sun and sunlight. Take away the sun and the beauties of earth are lost in darkness-destroy religious liberty and civil liberty dies. As civil liberty established by the founders of the Republic did not mean freedom from law, so neither did religious liberty mean freedom from religion. the Continental and Federal Congress opened daily with prayer to Almighty God, maintained the sanctity of the Christian Sabbath and appointed days of national feasts or thanksgiving. The first official act of the first President was the public acknowledgement of the religious obligation of the nation in thanks to Almighty God, and the first thing Congress did after the inauguration was to attend in a body religious service in St. Paul's Church for the same purpose.

"While just Government," wrote Washington in 1789, "protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support," and said that incomparable statesman in his farewell address:

"Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles."

John Adams, his successor in the Presidency, was still more

emphatic in expressing these foundation facts in the nation's life, and the records of the times are prolific in proof that the statesman expressed the universal sentiment of the people.

When the Congress of 1787-the same Congress which ordered the convention which formed our Federal Constitutionmade a law for the government of the territory north and west of the Ohio, and the States to be created out of it, that law defined the connection between religion and the State in words of priceless value: "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and education shall forever be encouraged."

There were no modern legislators who had forgotten or never learned the grand truths of the Declaration which will be read in our hearing to-day. Some of them were the signers of that immortal title deed of liberty to mankind, and every noble heart of them throbbed with the very blood which had been periled in its defence. They knew what the Prussians have long since discovered and reduced to a State Maxim: "Whatever you would have appear in the life of a nation, you must put into your schools." [Applause.]

They had imbided the principles of civil and religious liberty from Bible Christianity; they believed religion to be necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, it was taught in the schools of their childhood and they handed it down to their children's children. Under this teaching the thirteen original States have been well nigh multiplied by three, and the three million of people of a hundred years ago multiplied by thirteen! What want we with new doctrines and devices of government in this our Centennial year? As in the further proceedings of the day we recall principles and patriotic spirit of the founders of the Republic, and recount their deeds of honor and sacrifice to win and perpetuate the civil and religious liberty we enjoy, let their old rallying cry of God and Liberty be ours, my fellow-citizens, and "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, let us mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honors" to hand down to the world of 1976 the institutions of Govern. ment, religious, educational and political as we have received them from the patriot fathers of 1776. [Applause.]