sand dollars in Portsmouth, in
1812, was certainly equal, in purchasing power, to six thousand of the
ineffectual things that now pass by the name of dollars; and upon such
an income large families in a country town contrive to live, ride, and
save.

He was a strenuous Federalist at Portsmouth, took a leading part in
the public meetings of the party, and won great distinction as its
frequent Fourth-of-July orator. All those mild and economical measures
by which Mr. Jefferson sought to keep the United States from being
drawn into the roaring vortex of the great wars in Europe, he opposed,
and favored the policy of preparing the country for defence, not by
gunboats and embargoes, but by a powerful navy of frigates and ships
of the line. His Fourth-of-July orations, if we may judge of them by
the fragments that have been found, show that his mind had
strengthened more than it had advanced. His style wonderfully improved
from eighteen to twenty-five; and he tells us himself why it did. He
discovered, he says, that the value, as well as the force, of a
sentence, depends chiefly upon its meaning, not its language; and that
great writing is that in which much is said in few words, and those
words the simplest that will answer the purpose. Having made this
notable discovery, he became a great eraser of adjectives, and toiled
after simplicity and directness. Mr. Everett quotes a few sentences
from his Fourth-of-July oration of 1806, when he was twenty-four,
which shows an amazing advance upon the effort of his eighteenth year,
quoted above:--

"Nothing is plainer than this: if we will have commerce, we
must protect it. This country is commercial as well as
agricultural. _Indissoluble bonds connect him who ploughs
the land with him who ploughs the sea_. Nature has placed us
in a situation favorable to commercial pursuits, and no
government can alter the destination. Habits confirmed by
two centuries are not to be changed. An immense portion of
our property is on the waves. Sixty or eighty thousand of
our most useful citizens are there, and are entitled to such
protection from the government as their case requires."

How different this compact directness from the tremendous fulmination
of the Dartmouth junior, who said:--

"Columbia stoops not to tyrants; her spirit will never
cringe to France; neither a supercilious, five-headed
Directory nor the gasconading p