And again: "It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free govern ment. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric. Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to publie opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."

My friends, let us cherish the heavenly principle of "Peace on earth, good will to man," and by word and example endeavor to cultivate in the hearts of those who are taking our places in the active scenes of life a love for law and liberty-a respect for the institutions of others, while preferring our ownand the enforcement of the duty of elevating the best men only to office, those who will see that the Republic suffers no detriment, for the acts of the public agent should be the reflex of the will of the constituency. A few should not plunder the many. To permit such practices is to sanction them. And let all wrongdoers be punished either by public opinion or by the criminal court, and public agents remember that the Government is for the people and not for themselves.

It was said aforetime, "Power is always stealing from the many to the few;" therefore if we would continue free we must guard against every encroachment on our liberties. And then there can be no doubt the Republic will endure, strengthened in population with the corresponding prosperity, presenting an example to the world at large for emulation, and conferring the richest blessings on the entire human race!

ADDRESS,

BY HON. DANIEL ROBERTS,

DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT BURLINGTON, VT.,

JULY 4TH, 1876.

FELLOW-CITIZENS :-The citizens of Burlington have invited to this festal gathering the civil authorities of the several towns of the county, with their civic societies and all their people, and they have deputed me, in their behalf, to bid you all welcome to a participation in the appointed doings and appropriate enjoyments of the day.

One hundred years of national life! a hundred years of liberty, guarded by constitution and law; a cycle completed this day which includes in it the first establishment of the American Union and its later vindication: the first proclamation of universal human freedom and equality, and their later crystalization in an amended constitution, and the consummation in historic fact of the self-evident truths of the Great Declara tin.

As in the first Continental Congress, on the motion of Benjamin Franklin, prayer was offered to Almighty God for guidance and strength for the great work then in hand, so now, having entered into the labors of the fathers, it is befitting the occasion that we lift up our eyes to the hills from whence cometh our help -to the good God and Father of us all-and that we offer devout praises and adoration to Him whose kind hand has led us for a hundred years as a nation, and our people always, and has brought us to this day in assured peace, confirmed unity and established liberty-for, of a truth, hitherto hath the Lord helped us.

THE CHARACTER OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF VERMONT-ITS INFLUENCE UPON POSTERITY.

AN ORATION BY HON. LUCIUS E. CHITTENDEN.

DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT BURLINGTON, VT., JULY 4TH, 1876.

MR. PRESIDENT AND CITIZENS OF CHITTENDEN COUNTY:-An apology seems out of place on such an occasion as the present. But I must excuse myself for the disappointment I am about to cause you, of which I gave your committee timely warning. From their vote and from the published accounts of the preparations for the centennial celebrations throughout the country you had the right to expect from me an address which should present the principal events of the last hundred years in your county in their proper historical succession, in accordance with the suggestion of the President of the United States and of the proprieties of the occasion. Such an address I cannot give you for several reasons. I shall mention only one. Had I been equal to the labor of gathering the facts-of collating and compressing them within the brief hour here allowed me- -I should then have threshed a harvest which has been gathered by others; I should have opened no new field of enquiry, contributed no new fact to the sum of historical knowledge. For be it known that among the other treasures which you have preserved are all the materials for a history of your county, and every township it comprises. So thoroughly has the field been gleaned, that no sheaf has been left for me. That centennial orator who shall stand here after another hundred years will find ready to his hand every fact, circumstance and particular in the history of Chittenden county for the first hundred years which I could have gathered had my time and industry both been unlimited. He will then, I hope, find in every township a public library, such as you have in this city. In each of them there will be new editions of the histories of

Williams, Allen, Hoskins, Thompson, the two Halls, and that wonderful repository of fact and incident, the "Vermont Historical Gazetteer." After he has exhausted these he will never think of hunting in the obscurity of the past for any poor address of mine.

I think earnest students of the early history of Vermont will find one inquiry difficult to answer. It is this: How was it possible that a few scattered settlers, deficient in resources and poor in purse, could accomplish the results which they did accomplish? In 1774 they numbered scarcely more than 1,500 families. They were dispersed from the Winooski and the Great Bend of the Connecticut to the Massachusetts line. They had no means of assessing taxes, no organization which was not purely voluntary. They had already maintained themselves against the Power of New York through a struggle of nearly ten years. They sprang to arms at the summons of revolution. They captured Ticonderago, raised a regiment which made the name of Green Mountain Boys historical, joined in the invasion of Canada, saved the remnant's of Wooster's army, and barred their long frontier against invasion. Relieved for a space from arms, they came into convention to form a constitution. The news of Burgoyne's invasion and St. Clair's retreat, arrested their deliberations. Again they hurried to the frontier, fought the battle of Bennington, raised another regiment and paid its expenses out of Tory property. Again they kept an invading army idle for many months which almost outnumbered their population, and sent them back to the place from whence they came. Once more we find them in convention at Windsor, finishing the first constitution, the most democratic, free and just ever yet adopted in any American State. They adopted it without even the form of a vote, and having launched the independent State of Vermont in defiance of New York, New Hampshire, King George, and I might say of all the evil powers of earth and air, they entered upon that singular struggle with Congress and the other States, which did not end until 1791, when all opposition worn out or overcome, Vermont took her seat at the national board in a Federal Union.

Such is a mere outline of their work.

Its details are supplied

by history. Where upon all the earth shall we find any like number of men with the ability to plan, the courage to execute, such an enterprise as they carried out? Surely it will be to our advantage if we can find out the causes of their success. In those causes we may find the secrets of some of our failures. I propose to examine some of these causes, to set before you a few of the prominent traits in the character of our ancestors, through which they secured the inheritance now enjoyed by a fortunate posterity. The subject upon which I shall attempt to address you will be "The Conditions of Success in Civil and Military Life in Vermont One Hundred Years Ago."

Looking back now to the work of our fathers, the first great fact that meets the eye is the ability and skill with which they appropriated individual resources to the common good. They never wasted a useful man. They knew how to utilize each other. They improved not only every natural quality or acquired ability, but even personal defects and peculiarities for the cause of the people. In this respect they were far wiser than their posterity, and herein, beyond doubt, lay one of the great secrets of their power. They understood the value of union, of united action everywhere, in the family, the community, the township and the state. What union did for them we shall see. A pyramid of granite block with no cementing material topples down. You may build a tower of willows and so bind them together that an earthquake will not overthrow it. Unite a people perfectly and no blow struck from without can injure them, no external enemy overcome them. The power of Spain has not sufficed to suppress an insurrection in a single province of Cuba. Unite the people of the island as Vermonters were united and they might defy the armies and navies of the world.

We cannot organize success because of individual peculiarities. A. and B. are both strong men, but they are so unlike that they repel each other. Bring them in contact and they will fight. Look now at the men whose characters our fathers could assimilate, whose diversities they could make an element of strength. Let us name a few of the leaders, who resembled each other in one respect only-they were all patriots.