Theirs was the task (and
nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and, through
themselves, us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills
and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis
ours only to transmit these--the former unprofaned by the foot of
an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by
usurpation--to the latest generation that fate shall permit the
world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to
ourselves, duty to posterity, all imperatively require us
faithfully to perform.

How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the
approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military
giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the
armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure
of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a
Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from
the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a
thousand years! At what point, then, is the approach of danger to
be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, _it must spring up
amongst ourselves_. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be
our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation
of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. I
hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now
something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard
for law which pervades the country, the growing disposition to
substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober
judgment of the courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the
executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful
in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to
our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an
insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts of outrages committed
by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded
the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither
peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun of
the latter. They are not the creature of climate; neither are they
confined to the slaveholding or non-slaveholding States. Alike they
spring up among the pleasure-hu