ce at the combining
terrors of human malice and of elemental strife. These, in the
accomplishment of your undertaking, you were summoned to encounter
in their most hideous forms; these you met with that fortitude, and
combated with that perseverance, which you had promised in their
anticipation; these you completely vanquished in establishing the
foundations of New England, and the day which we now commemorate is the
perpetual memorial of your triumph.

It were an occupation peculiarly pleasing to cull from our
early historians, and exhibit before you every detail of this
transaction; to carry you in imagination on board their bark at the
first moment of her arrival in the bay; to accompany Carver, Winslow,
Bradford, and Standish, in all their excursions upon the desolate coast;
to follow them into every rivulet and creek where they endeavored to
find a firm footing, and to fix, with a pause of delight and exultation,
the instant when the first of these heroic adventurers alighted on the
spot where you, their descendants, now enjoy the glorious and happy
reward of their labors. But in this grateful task, your former orators,
on this anniversary, have anticipated all that the most ardent industry
could collect, and gratified all that the most inquisitive curiosity
could desire. To you, my friends, every occurrence of that momentous
period is already familiar. A transient allusion to a few characteristic
instances, which mark the peculiar history of the Plymouth settlers, may
properly supply the place of a narrative, which, to this auditory, must
be superfluous.

One of these remarkable incidents is the execution of that instrument of
government by which they formed themselves into a body politic, the day
after their arrival upon the coast, and previous to their first landing.
That is, perhaps, the only instance in human history of that positive,
original social compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined
as the only legitimate source of government. Here was a unanimous
and personal assent, by all the individuals of the community, to
the association by which they became a nation. It was the result of
circumstances and discussions which had occurred during their passage
from Europe, and is a full demonstration that the nature of civil
government, abstracted from the political institutions of their native
country, had been an object of their serious meditation. The settlers
of all the former European colonies h