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.

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 System. 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

play because of the firm structure of these ancient strongholds of religion and law, which you now desert and refuse to build anew.

Our fathers had formed their opinions upon wiser and deeper views of man and Providence than these, and they had the courage of their opinions.

Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, enlightenment, and moral and intellectual culture, they found that the Divine ordinance of government, in every stage of the ascent, was adjustable on principles of common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the Divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality. They found the origin of castes and ranks, and principalities and powers, temporal or spiritual, in this conception. They recognized the people as the structure, the temple, the fortress, which the great Artificer all the while cared for and built up. As through the long march of time this work advanced, the forms and fashions of government seemed to them to be but the scaffolding and apparatus by which the development of a people's greatness was shaped and sustained. Satisfied that the people whose institutions were now to be projected had reached all that measure of strength and fitness of preparation for self-government which old institutions could give, they fearlessly seized the happy opportunity to clothe the people with the majestic attributes of their own sovereignty, and consecrate them to the administration of their own priesthood.

The repudiation by England of the spiritual power of Rome at the time of the Reformation was by every estimate a stupendous innovation in the rooted allegiance of the people, a profound disturbance of all adjustments of authority. But Henry VIII., when he displaced the dominion of the Pope, proclaimed himself the head of the Church. The overthrow of the ancient monarchy of France by the fierce triumph of an enraged people was a catastrophe that shook the arrangements of society from center to circumference. Napoleon, when he pushed aside the royal line of St. Louis, announced, "I am the people crowned," and set up a plebian Em

peror as the impersonation and depositary in him and his line forever of the people's sovereignty. The founders of our Commonwealth conceived that the people of these colonies needed no interception of the supreme control of their own affairs, no conciliations of mere names and images of power from which the pith and vigor of authority had departed. They, therefore, did not hesitate to throw down the partitions of power and right and break up the distributive shares in authority of ranks and orders of men which indeed had ruled and advanced the development of society in civil and religious liberty, but might well be neglected when the protected growth was assured and all tutelary supervision for this reason henceforth could only be obstructive and incongruous.

Republics.

V

A glance at the fate of the English essay at a commonwealth, English and French which preceded, and to the French experiment at a republic, which followed our own institution "of a new State of a new species," will show the marvelous wisdom of our ancestors, which struck the line between too little and too much; which walked by faith, indeed, for things invisible, but yet by sight for things visible; which dared to appropriate everything to the people which had belonged to Cæsar, but to assume for mortals nothing that belonged to God.

No doubt it was a deliberation of prodigious difficulty, and a decision of infinite moment, which should settle the new institutions of England after the execution of the King, and determine whether they should be popular or monarchial. The problem was too vast for Cromwell and the great men who stood about him, and, balting between the only possible opinions they simply robbed the throne of stability, without giving to the people the choice of their rulers. Had Cromwell assumed the state and style of King, and assigned the Constitutional limits of prerogative, the statesmen of England would have anticipated the establishment of 1688, and saved the disgraces of the intervening record. If, on the other hand, the ever-recurring consent of the people in vesting the Chief Magistracy had been accepted for the Constitution of the State, the revolution would have been intelli