"Fellow-Citizens:—As far back towards the infancy of our race, as
history and tradition are able to conduct us, we have found the
custom every where prevailing among mankind, to mark, by some
striking exhibition, those events which were important and
interesting, either in their immediate bearing or in their remote
consequences upon the destiny of those among whom they occurred.
These events are epochs in the history of man—they mark the rise
and fall of kingdoms and of dynasties—they record the movements
of the human mind, and the influence of those movements upon the
destinies of the race; and whilst they frequently disclose to us
the sad and sickening spectacle of innocence bending under the
weight of injustice, and of weakness robbed and despoiled by the
hand of an unscrupulous oppression; they occasionally display, as a
theme for admiring contemplation, the sublime spectacle of the
human mind, roused by a concurrence of circumstances, to vigorous
advances in the career of improvement. To trace the operations of
these circumstances from their first appearance, as effects from
the workings of the human passions, until, as a cause, they revert
with combined and concentrated energy upon those minds from which
they at first evolved, would be at once a most interesting and
difficult task; and, let it be borne in mind, requires far higher
ability and more varied talent than he possesses who this day has
the honour to address you.
"The utility of thus marking the progress of time—of recording the
occurrence of events—and of holding up remarkable personages to
the contemplation of mankind, is too obvious to need remark. It
arises from the instincts of mankind—the irrepressible spirit of
emulation—and the ardent longings after immortality; and this
restless passion to perpetuate their existence, which they find it
impossible to suppress, impels them to secure the admiration of
succeeding generations in the performance of deeds, by which,
although dead, they may yet speak. In commemorating events thus
powerful in forming the manners and sentiments of mankind, and in
rousing them to strenuous exertion and to high and sustained
emulation, it is obvious that such, and such only, should be
selected as virtue and humanity would approve; and that, if any of
an opposite character be held up, they should be displayed only as
beacons, or as a towering Pharos throwing a strong but lurid light
to mark the melancholy grave of mad ambition, and to warn the
inexperienced voyager of the existing danger.
"Thanks to the improved and humanised spirit—or, should I not
rather say, the chastened and pacific civilization of the age in
which we live,—that laurels gathered upon the field of mortal
strife, and bedewed with the tears of the Widow and the Orphan, are
regarded now, not with admiration but with horror—that the armed
warrior, reeking with the gore of murdered thousands, who, in the
age that is just passing away, would have been hailed with noisy
acclamation by the senseless crowd, is now regarded only as the
savage commissioner of an unsparing oppression, or at best as the
ghostly executioner of an unpitying justice.—He who would embalm
his name in the grateful remembrance of coming generations—he who
would secure for himself a niche in the temple of undying fame—he
who would hew out for himself a monument of which his country may
boast—he who would entail upon heirs a name which they may be
proud to wear, must seek some other field than that of battle as
the theatre of his exploits.
"Still, we honour the heroes of the age that has passed. No slander
can tarnish their hard-earned fame—no morbid sentimentalism sully
their peerless glory—no mean detraction abate the
disinterestedness of their conduct. They bowed to the spirit of
their age: and, acting up to the light afforded them, they yielded
to the dictates of an honest conscience. While assembled here
to-day, on this festal occasion, to commemorate the event for which
the founders of our infant Republic toiled, and fought, and bled,
we seem to behold the forms of the departed ones mingling in our
assembly: we seem to behold them taking their seats by the side of
their venerable compeers yet spared among us: watching with intense
anxiety the emotions which agitate our bosoms, and marking the
character of the resolves which the occasion is ripening. Rest in
peace, ye venerable shades! And ye, their living
representatives—calm be the evening of your days. We honour you.
And though no sculptured marble transmit your fame, a nobler
monument shall be yours—the happy hearts of unborn millions shall
be the shrine in which your names will be treasured. In your high
example—in your noble disinterestedness—in your entire
subordination of every thought, and act, and scheme, and interest,
to the heaven-born purpose of human regeneration and human
elevation, we hear the language of encouragement.
"Fellow-citizens,—on this occasion, so big with subjects of
profitable meditation—when it is so natural that the mind should
oscillate between the events of the past and the prospects of the
future, we can conceive of nothing more proper than the enquiry,
how we can best execute the solemn trust committed to our hand—how
we may challenge and secure the admiration and the gratitude of a
virtuous and a happy posterity, by transmitting to them the
patrimony received from our fathers, not only in all its original
entireness, but in vastly augmented beauty, order, and strength. In
a word, how we may best conduct ourselves so as to encite them to
high and sustained exertion in the cause of virtue and humanity.
"In order to impress your minds with the propriety of this enquiry,
there is, I trust, no need that I shall remind you of the
peculiarity of our condition. It will suffice that I remark, that,
should you succeed in rearing upon the foundation already
laid,—or, to drop the figure—should you succeed in establishing a
community of virtuous, orderly, intelligent, and industrious
citizens, this very peculiarity must enter largely into every
consideration on the amount of praise to which you shall be held
entitled.
"Let us, then, for a moment look back, that from the events of the
past we may derive hope for the future.
"We have not yet numbered twenty-six years since he who is the
oldest colonist amongst us was the inhabitant—not the citizen—of
a country—and that too the country of his birth—where the
prevailing sentiment is, that he and his race are incapacitated, by
an inherent defect in their mental constitution, to enjoy that
greatest of all blessings, and to exercise that greatest of all
rights, bestowed by a beneficent God upon his rational
creatures—namely, the government of themselves. Acting upon this
opinion—an opinion as false as it is foul—acting upon this
opinion, as upon a self-evident proposition, those who held it
proceeded with a fiendish consistency to deny the rights of
citizens to those whom they had declared incapable of performing
the duties of citizens. It is not necessary, and therefore I will
not disgust you with the hideous picture of that state of things
which followed upon the prevalence of this blasphemous opinion. The
bare mention that such an opinion prevailed, would be sufficient to
call up in the mind, even of those who had never witnessed its
operation, images of the most sickening and revolting character.
Under the iron reign of this crushing sentiment, most of us who are
assembled here to-day, drew our first breath and sighed away the
years of our youth. No hope cheered us: no noble object looming in
the dim and distant future kindled our ambition. Oppression—cold,
cheerless oppression, like the dreary region of an eternal winter,
chilled every noble passion and fettered and paralysed every arm.
And if among the oppressed millions there were found here and there
one in whose bosom the last glimmer of a generous passion was not
yet extinguished—one, who, from the midst of the inglorious
slumberers in the deep degradation around him, would lift his voice
and demand those rights which the God of nature hath bestowed in
equal gift upon all His rational creatures, he was met at once by
those who had at first denied and then enforced, with the stern
reply, that for him and for all his race—Liberty and Expatriation
are inseparable.
"Dreadful as the alternative was—fearful as was the experiment now
proposed to be tried, there were hearts equal to the task—hearts
which quailed not at the dangers which loomed and frowned in the
distance, but calm, cool, and fixed in their purpose, prepared to
meet them with the watchword—Give me Liberty or give me Death.
"On the 6th day of February, in the year of Our Lord One Thousand
Eight Hundred and Twenty, the ship Elizabeth cast loose from her
moorings at New York, and on the 8th day of March, of the same
year, the pilgrims first beheld the land of their fathers, the
cloud-capped mountains of Sierra Leone, and cast anchor in that
harbour. A few days afterwards they again weighed anchor, stood to
the south, and debarked upon the low and deadly island of Sherbro.
On the character of those who formed her noble company, I deem it
unnecessary to remark. They are sufficiently commended to our
esteem, as being the first to encounter the difficulties and to
face the dangers of an enterprise, which, we trust, is to wipe away
from us the reproach of ages—to silence the calumny of those who
abuse us, and to restore to Africa her long-lost glory. I need not
detain you with a narrative of their privations and sufferings: nor
will I stop to tell you—though it would be a pleasing task to do
so—with what happy hearts they greeted a reinforcement of pilgrims
who joined them in 1821, by the Nautilus. Passing by intermediate
events, which, did the time allow, it would be interesting to
notice, we hasten to that grand event—that era of our separate
existence, the 25th day of April, in the year of Grace 1822, when
the American flag first threw out its graceful folds to the breeze
on the heights of Mesurado, and the pilgrims, relying upon the
protection of Heaven and the moral grandeur of their cause, took
solemn possession of the land in the name of virtue, humanity, and
religion.
"It would discover an unpardonable apathy, were we to pass on
without pausing a moment to reflect upon the emotions which heaved
the bosoms of the pilgrims, when they stood for the first time
where we now stand. What a prospect spread out before them!! They
stood in the midst of an ancient wilderness, rank and compacted by
the growth of a thousand years, unthinned and unreclaimed by a
single stroke of the woodman's axe. Few and far between might be
found inconsiderable openings, where the ignorant native erected
his rude habitation, or, savage as his patrimonial wilderness,
celebrated his bloody rites, and presented his votive gifts, to
Demons. Already the late proprietors of the soil had manifested
unequivocal symptoms of hostility, and an intention to expel the
strangers, as soon as an opportunity to do so should be presented.
The rainy season, that terrible ordeal of foreign constitutions,
was about setting in; the lurid lightning shot its fiery bolt into
the forest around them; the thunder muttered its angry tones over
their head; and the frail tenements, the best which their
circumstances would afford, to shield them from a scorching sun by
day and drenching rains at night, had not yet been completed. To
suppose that at this time, when all things above and around them
seemed to combine their influences against them, to suppose they
did not perceive the full danger and magnitude of the enterprise
they had embarked in, would be to suppose, not that they were
heroes, but that they had lost the sensibility of men. True courage
is equally remote from blind recklessness and unmanning timidity;
and true heroism does not consist in insensibility to danger. He is
a hero who calmly meets, and fearlessly grapples the dangers which
duty and honour forbid him to decline. The pilgrims rose to a full
perception of all the circumstances of their condition. But when
they looked back to that country from which they had come out, and
remembered the degradations in that house of bondage out of which
they had been so fortunate as to escape, they bethought themselves;
and, recollecting the high satisfaction with which they knew
success would gladden their hearts, the rich inheritance they would
entail upon their children, and the powerful aid it would lend to
the cause of universal humanity, they yielded to the noble
inspiration and girded them to the battle, either for doing or for
suffering.
"Let it not be supposed, because I have laid universal humanity
under a tribute of gratitude to the founders of Liberia, that I
have attached to their humble achievements too important an
influence, in that grand system of agencies which is now at work,
renovating human society, and purifying and enlarging the sources
of its enjoyment. In the system of that Almighty Being, without
whose notice not a sparrow falls to the ground:
'Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall:
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world:'
—In the system of the Almighty One, no action of a mortal being is
unimportant. Every action of every rational creature hath its
assigned place in his system of operations, and is made to bear,
however undesigned by the agent, with force upon the end which His
wisdom and goodness have in view to accomplish.
"On the morning of the 1st day of December, in the year of Our Lord
One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty-two; on that morning, just
when the gloom of night was retiring before the advancing light of
day, the portentous cloud which had been some time rising upon the
horizon of Liberia, increasing and gathering blackness as it
advanced, filling all hearts with fearful apprehension, burst upon
the colony with the force of a tornado. The events of that day have
marked it as the most conspicuous in our annals, and it is the
anniversary of that day we are here assembled to celebrate.
"And what, fellow-citizens, are the particular circumstances of
that most eventful day which more than others awaken our
exultation? On which one amongst them all is our attention most
intensely fixed? Is it on that our fathers fought, and fought
bravely, and strewed the ensanguined plain with the dead bodies of
their savage assailants? Is it on the bloody lesson of their
superiority which they taught them in the hoarse thunder of the
murderous cannon? Is it on that greater skill they displayed in the
inglorious art of slaughter and death? I trust not. These trophies
of their valour serve not to awaken exultation, but to call up a
sigh of regret. It was as the possessors of far higher and nobler
virtues they desired to be remembered; as such we tenderly cherish
the remembrance of them; and to exult over the fallen foe would be
to grieve the pure spirit of those by whose arm the savage fell.
Necessity, stern necessity, unsheathed their sword and forced upon
them an alternative from which all the feelings of their heart
turned with instinctive recoil.
"But there is a circumstance connected with the events of that day,
with which our hearts cannot be too deeply impressed, as it will
serve, on each appropriate occasion, as a check upon presumption
and an antidote against despair. Think upon the number of the
assailants, and compare it with the number of the assailed, and
then say whether any scepticism short of downright, unblushing
Atheism, can doubt the interposition, in the events of that day, of
an overruling Providence. Most emphatically does the issue of that
contest declare, 'The battle is not to the strong.' The Lord was a
shield around them, so that when their foes rose up against them,
they stumbled and fell. To the interposition of an ever-gracious
Providence, manifested in no ordinary way, we owe the privileges
and pleasure of this day.
"At this epoch we date the establishment of the colony.
"Having sustained and repulsed every external attack, and
maintained its ground against the combined and concentrated forces
of the country, it had now to commence its onward career. If there
were any, who, because the colonists had repulsed the natives,
supposed they had passed the greatest danger, and overcome the most
formidable obstacles, they gave, in this very supposition, evidence
of a deplorable ignorance of human nature and of human history. It
is from within, that the elements of national overthrow have most
commonly evolved: and the weakness under which nations expire,
generally results from disease of the national heart. Luxury and
ambition, oppression on the one side and insubordination on the
other; these are the fatal elements which, with more than volcanic
force, rend to atoms the fabric of human institutions. A common
danger, a danger equally menacing all, is almost sure to sink
every minor and merely personal consideration, and to be met by a
combination of energy, concentration of effort, and unity of
action: and in proportion as the pressure of the danger is great,
will there be want of scope for those passions which, in a certain
class, possess such fearful and disorganising potency.
"From the period of their landing, up to the moment of which we
have just spoken, all minds had been possessed by an undefined
apprehension of impending danger, and the first and the constant
lesson which their critical position inculcated upon them was,
Union and Subordination. The pressure was now taken off, the angry
cloud had now passed away, the heavens shone bright and clear, the
face of nature was calm and placid, and on every breeze was wafted
the fragrance from the surrounding groves. All breathed freely.
Each one had time to look around him, to contemplate with calmness
and composure the circumstances of his condition, and to select
that particular mode of operation, and line of conduct, which was
most congenial with his disposition. All were free; All were equal.
Here was unbounded scope for the operation of the passions. Will
they, who have been declared incapable of enjoying liberty without
running into the wildest excesses of anarchy—will they, now the
gift is enjoyed in its largest extent, restrain themselves within
the bounds of a rational and virtuous freedom? Will they connect
those two ideas which are at one and the same time the base and the
summit of all just political theories, and which can never be
separated? Will their liberty be tempered by just and wholesome
law? Is it to be expected that a people just set free from the
chains of the most abject oppression and slavery, can be otherwise
than turbulent, insubordinate, and impatient of the least
restraint? Is it among the things to be hoped, that they into whose
minds the idea of political action had not been allowed to enter,
will not, now political power is entrusted to their hands, rush
into the wildest extremes of crude legislation?
"Fellow-Citizens! the voice of twenty-four years this day gives
the answer; and we are assembled to hear it, and let those who
abuse us hear it; let them hear it and be for ever silent, when
they hear that Liberty regulated by Law, and Religion free from
Superstition, form the foundation on which rests the cement which
unites, and the ornament which beautifies, our political and social edifice.
"Let us now turn from those who preceded us, and ask, What are the
peculiar obligations which rest upon us: what the particular duties
to which we are called? Let us not suppose, that because we are not
called upon to drive the invading native from our door—that
because we can lie down at night without fear—because the savage
war-whoop does not now ring upon the midnight air,—therefore we
have nothing to do. No mistake can be more fatal. Ours is a moral
fight. It is a keener warfare, a sharper conflict.
"For, after indulging to the utmost allowed extent in hyperbolical
expression and figurative declamation, still we are forced to
confess, the work is but just commenced. The nervous arm of our
predecessor marked out the site, and laid the foundation, and
reared the walls, of the edifice. The scaffold is still around it.
It is ours to mount it—to commence where they ended, and to
conduct it on towards a glorious completion. How shall we execute
our trust—how shall we conduct ourselves so as to stand acquitted
before the bar of coming generations, and obtain from them a
favourable and an honorable verdict? By what means shall we secure
and perpetuate our own prosperity, and transmit it an inheritance
to our children? These are questions which seem peculiarly
appropriate to this interesting occasion. And let me congratulate
you, fellow-citizens, that you have the experience of others to
guide you. The art of government is now elevated to the dignity of
a science. The most gifted minds—minds which do honour to human
nature, have long been turned to the subject: and maxims and
propositions which, consecrated by time, had grown into the
strength of axioms—maxims which had obtained universal assent and
universal application—maxims which would have overwhelmed him who
should have doubted them, with more than sacrilegious turpitude and
sent him to atone for his presumption upon the scaffold, or in the
gloomy depths of a dungeon—maxims the legitimate offspring of
ignorance and oppression, have been successfully explored and the
human mind disenthralled. That more than magical phrase, in the
hand of the despot, 'the divine right of kings,' has lost its power
to charm; and frequent examinations into the foundations of society
have at length taught men the interesting truth, that the duties
and rights of magistrate and subject are correlate—that government
is made for the people, and not the people for the government: thus
establishing the eternal truth first enunciated in the Declaration
of American Independence, 'That all men are free and equal.' The
bare utterance of those ever-memorable words, by the immortal
Jefferson, whilst it struck the fetters from the human mind, and
sent it bounding on in a career of improvement, wrested the sceptre
from the tyrant's hand and dissolved his throne beneath him. 'Magna
est veritas et prævalebit.'[2]—Truth threw a strong and steady
light where there was naught but darkness before: man beheld his
dignity and his rights, and prepared to demand the one and sustain
the other. But I return. By what means shall we advance our
prosperity?
"The first requisite, to permanent advancement, if I may so speak,
is order. Order is heaven's first law. It is this which imparts
stability to human institutions, because, while like the laws of
nature it restrains each one in his proper sphere, it leaves all to
operate freely and without disturbance. Here will be no jostling.
When I say order, I mean not to restrict the term to the ordinary
occupations of life; I extend the word to mean, a strict and
conscientious submission to established law. It is said to be the
boast of that form of government under which we live, that no man,
however high in office, can violate with impunity the sacred trust
committed to his hand, and long insult the people by trampling
upon their rights: that the distinguishing excellence of a
republican form of government is, that, under it, oppression can
have no place. This opinion I am not disposed to combat; but as it
is a fact, that a safe and constitutional remedy for all grievances
of this kind is in the hands of the people, this circumstance alone
should dispose every one to submit, for a time, to some
inconvenience rather than apply a rash and violent corrective. I
admit, there are cases in which the minions of office become so
intoxicated with a little brief power—that, forgetting all men are
free and possess certain constitutional privileges, and forgetting
also, that they were elevated to office not to be oppressors but
conservators, their haughty, vexatious, and oppressive conduct,
becomes intolerable. In such cases as these, let the strong
indignation of an outraged public, calmly but firmly expressed,
awaken the dreamer from his vision of greatness, and send him back
to re-enact his dream in his original obscurity.
"Another argument for order and subordination lies in the fact,
that the laws are in the hands of the people. Legislators are not
elevated to office for their private emolument and honour, but for
the nobler purpose of advancing and securing the happiness of their
constituents: and they are bound—by the most solemn
considerations—they are bound, to enact such laws, and such laws
only, as are suited to the genius and circumstances of the people.
If they betray the high trust committed to them, and enact laws
either oppressive or partial, the corrective is equally in the
hands of the people. They have only to apply the constitutional
remedy. Here, then, is no apology for disorder. Order, then, must
be our rule; for without subordination, and prompt and constant and
conscientious obedience to wholesome law, there can be no security
for person nor property. The bands of society would be untwisted,
and the whole fabric exposed to ruin on the first popular outbreak.
Be it, then, fellow-citizens, our first concern to sustain our
officers in the proper discharge of their constitutional duties;
to secure obedience to the laws, and to preserve them from
violation with the same jealousy with which we watch the first
encroachment of power.
"I observe, in the second place, that union among ourselves is
absolutely necessary to prosperity. The idea of prosperity and
stability where disunion reigns, where the elements of discord are
actively at work; the idea of prosperity and stability, in such
circumstances, can only serve to mislead. Can that army, in which
faction triumphs among the soldiers and disunion and jealousy
distract the counsels of the officers, hope to succeed in a
campaign? Where each is afraid of the other, where no one has
confidence in any, where every one regards every other one with
feelings not only of jealousy but of positive hostility, how can
there be any hope to bring an unbroken front to bear with undivided
force upon any single point? I would observe also, that the
complexion of the soldiers' mind will be sure to be tinged by that
of their officers. In every community there will be found some few
to whom the mass will look up with unenquiring deference. Mankind,
generally, are averse to the labour of thinking. This circumstance
separates those who should be very friends, and men file off under
different leaders as fancy or caprice may dictate. Each party
ranges itself under the banner of a leader whom it invests with all
perfection of political sagacity and political integrity. To his
semi-brutal followers his word is law; his decisions an oracle.
Finding in him every attribute of perfection, they abandon the
reins to his hand; yield up the glorious privileges of thinking and
examining, and prepare to follow with a blind and implicit
obedience. This unworthy abandonment of the public interests, this
surrender of a privilege to which every man is born, and which
every man should exercise, is the capital of intriguing politicians
and unprincipled political demagogues. And, let me ask you,
fellow-citizens, what scheme, however mad and absurd, which has
been set on foot by these unprincipled leaders, has not had among
the masses its advocates and adherents? Bad, however, as human
nature is, alluring and fascinating as are the glitter and
privilege of place and power, this confidence has not been always
abused. We could easily point out instances, in which the influence
which this disposition we have been adverting to has given to men,
has been exerted wholly and exclusively for the public good. But we
must take human nature as we find it; and as we find this
disposition every where prevalent, the duty becomes imperative on
all who have influence, to exert it for the public good. The root
of the jealousies and divisions among public men will, generally
speaking, be found planted in the soil of selfishness and ambition:
not in any real and sincere disagreement as to the proper measures
for the public good. This, I admit, is always the avowed, the
ostensible, but, I am bold to say, not the real cause.
"It is envy of place and emolument—it is ambition of power, that
array public men in a hostile attitude, and range their infatuated
followers under their opposing banners. In the infancy of our
political existence, let those amongst us who have credit with the
people and influence over them, beware of so great infatuation. Let
us recollect, that all cannot govern: that from the division and
order into which society naturally resolves itself, all even of
those who are worthy, cannot stand in the foremost ranks. Let us
remember, that we equally serve our country, whether we sit in the
gubernatorial or presidential chair; whether we deliberate in the
Hall of the Legislature or preside in the Sanctuary of Justice;
that we equally serve our country, whether from the shades of
cloistered retirement we send forth wholesome maxims for public
instruction, or in the intercourse of our daily life we set an
attracting example of obedience to the laws; that we equally serve
our country, whether from the sacred desk we inculcate lessons of
celestial wisdom, exhibit the sanctions of a heaven-descended
religion and the thunders of an incensed Jehovah, or in the nursery
of learning unfold the mysteries and display the glories of
science, recall and re-enact the deeds and the achievements of the
past, and call back upon the stage the heroes, the patriots, and
the sages of antiquity, to kindle the ardour, nerve the virtue,
awaken the patriotism, elevate and purify the sentiment, and expand
the mind, of the generous and aspiring youth. Humble as many of
those offices of which I have spoken are esteemed to be,—obscure
and concealed from vulgar gaze and destitute of the trappings of
office and the glitter of fame as most of them actually are, it is,
nevertheless, fellow-citizens, not within the reach of our judgment
to determine which one of them exerts the greatest influence on the
destinies of our race. True dignity, and, I may add, true
usefulness, depend not so much upon the circumstance of office as
upon the faithful discharge of appropriate duties.
'Honour and fame from no condition rise;
Act well your part—there all true honour lies.'
'He who does the best his circumstances allow,
Does well, acts nobly: Angels could do no more.'
"It is the false notion of honour which has unhappily possessed the
minds of men, placing all dignity in the pageantry of state and the
tinsel of office, which produces those collisions, jostlings, and
acrimony of contending factions which sometimes shake the fabric of
society to its very foundations: it is by the maddening influence
of this false notion that men, whose claim to respectful notoriety
is inversely as their desire to be conspicuous, are sometimes urged
to abandon their obscure but appropriate position in the line, and
to rush into the foremost ranks. When men shall have learned
wherein true honour lies—when men shall have formed correct ideas
of true and sober dignity, then we shall see all the ranks of
society united as by a golden chain—then Ephraim shall not envy
Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim;—then the occupant of the palace and
of the cottage—then the man in lawn and the man in rags will, like
the parts of a well-adjusted machine, act in perfect unison.
Considering, then, the influence which in every community a few
men are found to possess—considering, also, that each one of these
influential men is sure to be followed by a party, we can hardly
appreciate the obligation which rests upon them, to abandon all
jealousies and suspicions—to merge every private and personal
consideration in thoughts for the public good—and to bring a mind
untrammelled, and free from every party predilection, to a solemn
deliberation on the great objects of public utility.
"The education of our youth is the next subject to which I would
direct your attention. 'Knowledge is power'—is an old proverb—but
not the less true because it is old. This is the spring that
regulates the movements of society—this is at once the lever and
the safety-valve of human institutions. Without it society will
either not move at all, or, like an unbalanced, unhelmed ship, move
in a direction and at a rate that must eventually destroy it.
Education corrects vice—cures disorders—abates jealousies—adorns
virtue—commands the winds—triumphs over the waves—scales the
heavens. In a word, education lays all nature under tribute, and
forces her to administer to the comfort and happiness of man. Nor
is this all that education does. It ennobles and elevates the mind,
and urges the soul upward and animates it to deeds of high and
lasting renown. Education opens sources of pure, refined, and
exquisite enjoyment—it unlocks the temple of nature, and admits
the awe-stricken soul, to behold and admire the wondrous work of
God. An ignorant, vicious, idle community, has the elements of
destruction already in its bosom. On the very first application of
a torch they will explode and lay the whole fabric in ruins. A
virtuous, orderly, educated people, have all the elements of
national greatness and national perpetuity.—Would we be happy at
home and respected abroad, we must educate our youth.
"In professing to notice those things which are necessary to our
prosperity—to the advancement of our prosperity, and the
perpetuity of our prosperity, it is natural that you should expect
that agricultural industry will be brought prominently into view.
I think it may be safely affirmed, that the virtue and independence
of a people will be inversely as their attention is wholly given to
commerce—that their virtue and independence is evermore to be
measured by their pursuits of the wholesome and pleasing and
primitive employment of agriculture and husbandry. Go into the
countries of Europe—examine their large manufacturing and
commercial towns and cities. Then visit the rural, agricultural
districts—compare the quiet, tranquillity, order, virtue, plenty
of the latter, with the bustle, confusion, vice, and general
dependence and poverty of the other, and you cannot fail to be
struck, and deeply affected, by the frightful contrast. And
wherefore? Is not commerce called the great civiliser of the world?
Is it not the means by which nations become acquainted and hold
communion with each other? Is it not by this means that the great
and master-minds of one nation commune with kindred minds of other
nations? Is it not the channel through which improvements in art,
in science, in literature, in all that adorns, dignifies, and
ennobles human nature, flow as on the wings of the wind from
country to country? Grant it. It is not my purpose to pronounce a
wholesale anathema upon commerce. I appreciate its high importance
in improving our race. It is excess I would discourage—it is the
wretched deteriorating influence it will exert upon a people, when,
by absorbing their whole attention, it keeps them looking
constantly abroad to the neglect of the improvement of their own
country. It is to this I would call your attention. Again;—Let it
not be forgotten, that if commerce imports improvements, it imports
vices also. It offers the same facility for the transmission of
both. The same vessel that brings us the Book of God brings us also
the Age of Reason—and in one and the same ship, we not
unfrequently find the devoted self-sacrificing missionary, and that
accursed thing which a celebrated orator with characteristic energy
has styled 'liquid fire and distilled damnation!!'
"In the natural, or, more properly, vegetable world, we have
sometimes seen exotics outstripping in rapidity of growth the
natural spontaneous productions of the soil. In this we have not a
very unhappy illustration of the rank growth of imported vices.
These baneful exotics, grafted on the tree of indigenous
corruption, seem to receive and impart unwonted vigour from the
contact: and the result is, a fruit of the most disorganising
potency. An examination into the moral state of towns and
districts, wholly given to commerce and manufactures, will fully
sustain this remark. How, let me ask you, can there be order, where
the very nature of the pursuits which engross all minds demand
ceaseless hurry, bustle, and confusion?—where to stop to breathe
is to be at once outdone, and where he who can move the most
swiftly amid the greatest confusion is thought to be the smartest
man! In respect of virtue,—is it to be thought of, except for the
purpose of holding it up to ridicule, in a place where the vicious
of all countries meet; and where females of every class and
character, far from the watchful eye of parental solicitude, are
huddled together in one promiscuous throng, and dependent for their
daily bread upon the freaks and fancies of unprincipled employers!
Lowell, in America, is, I believe, the only large manufacturing
town where virtue is held in the least esteem. What shall I say of
honesty and integrity? where the lowest, basest arts, are practised
for gain; where all is intrigue and circumvention—where the maxim
prevails, 'all is fair in trade'—where each regards the other as
lawful game—where one can gain only by the loss of the
other—where, in a word, rascality is fair-play, and villainy
systematic;—where, fellow-citizens, let me ask you, where, in such
a community, is there room for honesty? Can the heart fail, in such
circumstances, to become deadened to every feeling of
humanity—steeled against every kindly, generous, and ennobling
impulse? I will not venture to affirm, that the result we have just
now noticed is universal. I admit, with pleasure, there are
honourable exceptions—but I do affirm, that what I have said forms
the general rule.
"But let us turn from these scenes of noise and smoke and deep
depravity, and visit the quiet abode of the farmer and the
husbandman. What tranquillity reigns here, and order, and peace,
and virtue!! Behold the farmer, as he goes forth in the morning to
his daily task;—how firm and elastic his step; how cheerful his
sun-burnt countenance; how active his athletic arm!! Behold how
cheerfully he labours; how the fat valleys around him laugh with
corn; how the spacious plains teem with grain, and the ancient
forests fall beneath his resounding axe!! Follow him, when the
labour of the day is over, follow him to his humble home. See him
surrounded by an affectionate, industrious, frugal wife,
unsophisticated by the vices and dissipations of the fashionable
world, and by a prattling progeny blooming in health, and big with
promise of future usefulness. No cankering cares gnaw his peaceful
bosom; no uncertain speculation disturbs his quiet slumbers; no
revolutions in foreign lands, damming up the channels of trade,
cloud the calm serenity of his brow. Oh! if there be a spot on
earth, where true happiness is to be found, here is that spot.
"But we take a higher and a more extended view of this subject, and
regard it in its bearing on political economy. And my first remark
is, that no nation can be independent which subsists wholly by
commerce. And here let it be observed, once for all, that I use the
word independent in a sense altogether distinct from sovereignty. I
admit that there may be a temporary prosperity; that so long as
peace prevails amongst nations connected by commercial and
diplomatic relations,—so long as each acts in perfect faith, and
maintains in all their entireness and in all their integrity his
treaty stipulations, there may not be felt a want of the
necessaries or even of the luxuries of life. There may, perhaps, be
a large influx of the precious metals. Nothing, however, could be
more fallacious, than to regard this activity as an indication of
independence or permanent prosperity. For I remark, in the second
place, that so uncertain are the operations of trade—so suddenly
are its channels and outlets closed by misunderstandings and
ruptures between rival nations—so liable is it to paralysing
shocks from intriguing cabinets and wily politicians, the
operations of one year scarcely afford any ground for conjecture in
regard to the operations of the next. Let us illustrate our
position by an humble supposition.
"Suppose the surrounding country should suddenly relent, throw wide
its doors, and shake its teeming wealth of gold and ivory and wood
and gums into our lap; and the native African, patient of labour
and of travel, should supply us at the most accommodating rates
with all the coarser food for our consumption;—suppose vessels
should flock (as, under such circumstances, vessels would most
assuredly flock) to our shores, offering us in exchange for the
produce thus liberally poured in upon us, the conveniences,
elegances, and luxuries of foreign countries. Suppose every man
desert his farm, and betake himself to trading as the more easy and
the more speedy road to wealth,—there would certainly be great
activity and great prosperity. But should we be independent? One
more supposition, and the important and interesting problem is
solved. Suppose the paths to the interior are suddenly blocked up
by feuds among the tribes; all ingress cut off and trade suspended.
Where, then, are our supplies? Should we be able to return to our
farms, and draw thence articles of exchange with foreign nations?
By no means. In the mania for trade our farms have been deserted,
and, like the land on which a curse rests, have long laid fallow.
Think you, fellow-citizens, that our trade once gone, we should
again behold the French, the Bremen, the American, and the English
flag floating to the breeze in our harbour. From that hour you
might bid a long adieu to every white face but that of a
missionary. Fellow-Citizens! our prosperity and independence are to
be drawn from the soil. That is the highway to honour, to wealth,
to private and national prosperity.
"Liberians! do not disdain the humble occupation! It commends
itself to our attention, ennobled and sanctified by the example of
our Creator. 'And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden;
and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground
made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight,
and good for food.... And the Lord God took the man, and put him
into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.'[3] Never,
never, until this degenerate age, has this simple, primitive,
patriarchal occupation been despised.
'In ancient times, the sacred plough employed
The kings and awful fathers of mankind:
And some, with whom compared your insect tribes
Are but the beings of a summer's day,
Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm
Of mighty war; then, with unwearied hand,
Disdaining little delicacies, seized
The plough, and greatly independent lived.'
"Thus sings the author of the Seasons, one of Britain's sweetest
bards.
"The last remark time will allow me to make under this head, is,
that 'Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any
people.'[4] All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay
the head-long propensity to vice—to abate the madness of ambition,
will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the
restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound
regard and deference for religion, a constant recognition of our
dependence upon God, and of our obligation and accountability to
Him; an ever-present, ever-pressing sense of His universal and
all-controlling providence, this, and only this, can give energy to
the arm of law, cool the raging fever of the passions, and abate
the lofty pretensions of mad ambition. In prosperity, let us bring
out our thank-offering, and present it with cheerful hearts in
orderly, virtuous, and religious conduct. In adversity, let us
consider, confess our sins, and abase ourselves before the throne
of God. In danger, let us go to Him, whose prerogative it is to
deliver; let us go to Him, with the humility and confidence which a
deep conviction that the battle is not to the strong nor the race
to the swift, is calculated to inspire.
"Fellow-Citizens! we stand now on ground never occupied by a people
before. However insignificant we may regard ourselves, the eyes of
Europe and America are upon us, as a germ, destined to burst from
its enclosure in the earth, unfold its petals to the genial air,
rise to the height and swell to the dimensions of the full-grown
tree, or (inglorious fate!) to shrivel, to die, and to be buried in
oblivion. Rise, fellow-citizens, rise to a clear and full
perception of your tremendous responsibilities!! Upon you, rely
upon it, depends in a measure you can hardly conceive, the future
destiny of your race. You, you are to give the answer, whether the
African race is doomed to interminable degradation,—a hideous blot
on the fair face of Creation, a libel upon the dignity of human
nature,—or whether they are incapable to take an honourable rank
amongst the great family of nations! The friends of the colony are
trembling; the enemies of the Coloured man are hoping. Say,
fellow-citizens, will you palsy the hands of your friends and
sicken their hearts, and gladden the souls of your enemies, by a
base refusal to enter upon the career of glory which is now opening
so propitiously before you? The genius of universal emancipation,
bending from her lofty seat, invites you to accept the wreath of
national independence. The voice of your friends, swelling upon the
breeze, cries to you from afar—Raise your standard! assert your
independence!! throw out your banners to the wind!! And will the
descendants of the mighty Pharaohs, that awed the world—will the
sons of him who drove back the serried legions of Rome and laid
siege to the 'eternal city'—will they, the achievements of whose
fathers are yet the wonder and admiration of the world—will they
refuse the proffered boon, and basely cling to the chains of
Slavery and dependence? Never! never!! never!!! Shades of the
mighty dead!—spirits of departed great ones! inspire us, animate
us to the task—nerve us for the battle! Pour into our bosom a
portion of that ardour and patriotism which bore you on to battle,
to victory, and to conquest.
"Shall Liberia live? Yes; in the generous emotions now swelling in
your bosoms—in the high and noble purpose now fixing itself in
your mind, and ripening into the unyieldingness of indomitable
principle, we hear the inspiring response—Liberia shall live
before God, and before the nations of the Earth.
"The night is passing away—the dusky shades are fleeing, and even
now
'Second day stands tiptoe
On the misty mountain top.'"
