ons not
only maintain their highest efficacy, but are sanctioned by the
express injunctions of the Divine Legislator to his chosen people.

The revolutions of time furnish no previous example of a nation
shooting up to maturity and expanding into greatness with the
rapidity which has characterized the growth of the American people.
In the luxuriance of youth, and in the vigor of manhood, it is
pleasing and instructive to look backwards upon the helpless days of
infancy; but in the continual and essential changes of a growing
subject, the transactions of that early period would be soon
obliterated from the memory but for some periodical call of
attention to aid the silent records of the historian. Such
celebrations arouse and gratify the kindliest emotions of the bosom.
They are faithful pledges of the respect we bear to the memory of
our ancestors and of the tenderness with which we cherish the rising
generation. They introduce the sages and heroes of ages past to the
notice and emulation of succeeding times; they are at once
testimonials of our gratitude, and schools of virtue to our
children.

These sentiments are wise; they are honorable; they are virtuous;
their cultivation is not merely innocent pleasure, it is incumbent
duty. Obedient to their dictates, you, my fellow-citizens, have
instituted and paid frequent observance to this annual solemnity.
And what event of weightier intrinsic importance, or of more
extensive consequences, was ever selected for this honorary
distinction?

In reverting to the period of our origin, other nations have
generally been compelled to plunge into the chaos of impenetrable
antiquity, or to trace a lawless ancestry into the caverns of
ravishers and robbers. It is your peculiar privilege to
commemorate, in this birthday of your nation, an event ascertained
in its minutest details; an event of which the principal actors are
known to you familiarly, as if belonging to your own age; an event
of a magnitude before which imagination shrinks at the imperfection
of her powers. It is your further happiness to behold, in those
eminent characters, who were most conspicuous in accomplishing the
settlement of your country, men upon whose virtue you can dwell with
honest exultation. The founders of your race are not handed down to
you, like the father of the Roman people, as the sucklings of a
wolf. You are not descended from a nauseous compound of fanaticism
and sensuality, whose onl