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It is observed above, that the diamond country extends from Punnah, on three sides, to the distance of twenty-four miles. Now, as no part of this space is permitted to be cultivated, it may be questioned, whether the possessor really derives so much advantage from the diamonds, as he would reap from the successive culture of the same compass of ground, either in pasture or tillage.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

HOULD you have any thing better

on

the following be committed to the flames: if not, perhaps you will allow a place in your useful miscellany to these remarks, upon the criticism of your learned correspondent, R. B. upon the use of the word "flebilis." (Vide last volume, p. 471.) My confined reading does not enable me to decide, whether this word ever occurs in any classical writer, in the precise meaning in which it is used by Lord Hailes; but, from the number of examples cited by Stephanus in his Thesaurus, none of which will apply, I am willing to allow that it does not. Nevertheless I think it may be maintained, that, in the sense he has used it, he has not deviated farther from the ordinary application of the word by other classical writers, than 'Horace himself has done.

To me it appears, that R. B. has very properly stated, that "it is the quality of exciting grief, or the quality which renders the thing or person the subject of grief, which is expressed by this verbal adjective;" but surely this definition in cludes two distinct meanings, which your correspondent seems to consider as one and the same. When Romaa writers

speak of a carmen fiebile, or modi flebiles, &c. the word expresses the quality of exciting grief. But when Horace says "multis ille bonis flebilis occidit, the word flebilis, in the language of . B. expresses the quality of rendering the person the subject of grief in others, and may be accurately translated into English by the word lamented.

Now, upon examining the examples of the word flebilis, cited by Stephanus, of which there are fifteen, the one just quoted from Horace is the only one, in which the word is affixed to the subject of grief, or in which it could be rendered lamented in English. In all the rest it expresses the quality of exciting rief; and I believe answers exactly to the English word doleful; as cantus flebilis,

(doleful singing); carmen flebile, (a doleful song); clumor flebilis, (a doleful noise ;) elegia flebilis, (a doleful elegy); gemitus flebiles, (doleful groans); modi flebiles, (doleful tunes); murmur flebile, (a doleful murmaring); questus flebiles, (doleful complainings); voces flebiles, (doleful voices); &c.

R. B. appears to me to have made the same mistake in quoting Stephanus's explanation of flebilis. Plenum lachrymis, vel dignum quod fleatur, by speaking of it as containing one meaning only, when he says, that this author has given many use

in no other;" for surely this definition by Stephanus, contains two distinct meanings, the 1st. plenum lachrymis, (tearful or doleful); the 2nd, dignum quod fleatur, (that which may be lamented). Now it is to the first sense only, that all the examples cited by Stephanus, except the one quoted above from Horace, will apply. I submit it therefore to your learned readers, whether Horace himself has not, by using flebilis to signify lamented, de-' viated as far from its constant acceptation in every other classical writer, as Lord Hailes has done, by using it to signify lamenting or weeping, which would come under Stephanus's definition of plenum lachrymis.

Your's, &c.

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These instances I suppose, will be amply sufficient to satisfy R. B. that the word is used correctly by Lord Hailes; and at the same time they render the above letter, as far as respecta his criticism,perfectly nugatory. It may nevertheless, serve to show that the Lexicographers have not well explained flebilis in its three signi

cations, and may therefore be not altogether

uninteresting to some of your readers.

I suspect that the quotation from Horace, "multis ille bonis flebilis," &c. affords the only example to be found in any classical writer, in which flebilis has the signification there given it of lamented. It may be curious too, to remark, how exactly, in every other instance,

the

the old English word doleful corresponds with the Latin word flebilis; for though not frequently used to denote an afflicted person, it is so applied by Sydney:

descended in peace to a later tomb. Our gratitude attends the precious few who remam to us of that list of worthies; the illustrious relics of so many fields of dan

How oft my doleful sire cried to me, Tarry,son, ger, and so many years of labour; who When first he spied my love.

For the Monthly Magazine. ORATION DELIVERED at WASHINGTON, JULY 4, 1809, at the REQUEST of the CITIZENS of the DISTRICT of COLUMBIA, by JOEL BARLOW.

Friends and Fellow Citizens:IIE day we now commemorate will THE never cease to excite in us the most exhilarating reflections and mutual gratulations. Minds of sensibity, accustomed to range over the field of contemplation, that the birth of our empire spreads before them, must expand, on this occasion,to great ideas, and invigorate their patriotic sentiments.

The thirty-three years of national existence, which have brought us to our present condition, are crowded indeed with instructive facts, and comprise an interesting portion of history. But they have only prepared this gigantic infant of a nation to begin its own development. They are only the prelude to the greater events that seem to unfold themselves before us, and call for the highest wisdom to give them their proper direction.

It appears to have been the practice of the public speakers, called to give utterance to the feelings of their fellow citizens on the anniversary of this day, to dwell chiefly upon those memorable transactions which necessitated, and those which afterwards supported, the Act of Independence, that gives name to the present festival. Such were the oppressions of Britain, and our effectual resistance to those oppressions. Transactions SO eventful, are, doubtless,worthy to be heid in perpetual remembrance. And as they ought never to be forgotten, they should frequently be recalled to the notice of our younger brethren, who can know them only from their elders. But those conflicting scenes are now become every where matters of record. They are detailed so copiously in our annals, and so often by our orators, as to render the repetition of their story, at this moment, far less important than to turn our attention to other subjects, growing out of the interests of our blessed country.

Our departed heroes and statesmen have not gone without their fame. Our tears have mingled with the ashes of those fallen in our battles, and those who have

led us in all our darings, when resist-
ance to tyrants, as well in the forum
as in the field, was deemed rebel-
lion, and threatened with death, Their
whitened locks that still ware among us
are titles to our veueration; they com
inand and they will obtain it, while the
shall continue to warn our hearts.
virtues they have taught us to practice

But our respect for the memory and the persons of all our leaders will be best evinced by the pious culture we bestow on the rich heritage they have secured, and are handing over to our possession. The present race is likewise passing away; but the nation remains and rises with its years. While we, the present race, are able to call ourselves the nation, we should be sensible of the greatness of the charge that has devolved upon us. We have duties to posterity as well as to our selves. We must gather up our strength and encounter those duties. Yes, my friends, we are now the nation. As such we have arrived at that epoch, when, instead of looking back with wonder upon our infancy, we inay look forward with solicitude to a state of adolescence, with confidence to a state of manhood. Though as a nation we are yet in the morning of life, we have already attained an elevation which enables us to discern our course to its meridian splendor; to conand the commanding station we must gain, template the height we have to climb, in order to fulfil the destinies to which we are called, and perform the duties that the cause of human happiness requires at our hands.

To prepare the United States to act has assigned them, it is necessary to conthe distinguished part that Providence vince them that the means are within their power. A familiar knowledge of the means will teach us how to employ them in the attainment of the end. Knowledge will lead to wisdom; and wisdom, in no small degree, is requisite in the conduct of affairs so momentous and so new. For our situation is, in many respects, not only new to us, but new also to the world.

The form of government we have chosen, the geographical position we occupy, as relative to the most turbulent powers of Europe, whose political maxins are widely different from ours; the vast ex

tent

tert of continent that is, or must be, comprised within our limits, containing not less than sixteen hundred millions of acres, and susceptible of a population of two hundred millions of human beings; our habits of industry and peace instead of violence and war-all these are cir

cumstances which render our situation as novel as it is important. It requires new theories; it has forced upon us new and bold, and in some cases doubtful, expe riments; it calls for deep reflection on the propensities of human nature; an ac curate acquaintance with the history of human actions; and what is perhaps the most difficult to attain, a wise discrimination among the maxims of wisdom, or what are such in other times and nations, to determine which of them are applicable, and which would be detrimental, to the end we have in view. I would by no means insinuate that we should reject the councils of antiquity in mass; or turn a deaf ear to the voice of modern experience, because it is not our own. So far as the policy of other nations is founded on the real relations of social man, on his moral nature undisguised, it may doubtless be worthy of imitation; but so far as it is drawn from his moral nature, disguised by habits materially different from ours, such policy is to be suspected, it is to be scrutinized, and brought to the test, not perhaps of our experience, for that may in certain cases be wanting, but the test of the general principles of our institutions, and the babits and maxims that arise out of them.

There has been no nation,either ancient or modern, that could have presented human nature in the same character as ours does and will present it; because there has existed no nation whose government has resembled ours. A representative democracy on a large scale, with a fixed constitution, had never before been attempted, and has no where else succeeded. A federal government on democratical principles is equally unprecedented, and exhibits a still greater innovation on all received ideas of statesmen and lawgivers. Nor has any theorist in political science, any among those powerless potentates of reason, the philosophers, who have taught us so many valuable things, ever framed a system or conceived a combination of principles producing such a result.

Circumstances beyond our controul had thrown in our way the materials for this wonderful institution. Our first me rit lay in not rejecting them. But when

our sages began to discern the use that might be made of materials then so unpromising, they discovered great talents and patriotism in combining them into the system we now find in operation. It is indeed a stupendous fabric; the greatest political phenomenon, and probably will be considered as the greatest advancement in the science of government that all modern ages have produced.

This is not the moment to go into a dissertation on the peculiar character of our political constitutions. The subject being well understood by so respectable a portion of this assembly, and the time allotted to this part of the exercises of the day being necessarily short, I shouldhardly expect to obtain your indulgence if I were even capable of doing justice to so great a theme. Otherwise the whole compass of human affairs does not admit of a more profitable inquiry. Every ci tizen should make it his favorite study, and consider it as an indispensable part of the education of his children.

But nations are educated like individual infants. They are what they are taught to be. They become whatever their tutors desire,and invite, and prepare, and force them to become. They may be taught to reason correctly; they may be taught to reason perversely; they may be taught not to reason at all. The last is the case of despotism; the second, where they reason perversely, is the case of a nation with an unsettled and unprin cipled government, by whatever technical name it may be distinguished; for a democracy without a constitution, though generally and justly called the school of disorder and perversity, is no more liable to these calamities than a monarchy ill defined, and without a known principle of action, and where the arm of power has not that steady tension which would render it completely despotic. The first, the case in which they reason correctly, if it ever existed, or ever is to exist, must be ours. Our nation must, it can, its legislators ought to say, it shall, be taught to reason correctly, to act justly, to pursue its own interest upon so large a scale as not to interfere with the interest, or at least with the rights, of other nations. For the moment it should interfere with theirs, it could no longer be said to be pursuing its own.

What then are the interests of this nation, which it becomes us as private citi zens (without any mission but the autocratical right of individuals) to recomend to the great body of the American people

sys

people on this auspicious occasion? The
most obvious, and I believe the most in
portant, are comprised in two words; and
to them I shall confine my observations:
public improvements, and public instruc-
tion. These two objects, though distinct
in the organization which they will re-
quire, are so similar in their effects, that
most of the arguments that will apply to
one, will apply equally to both. They
are both necessary to the preservation of
our principles of government; they are
both necessary to the support of the
tem into which those principles are
wrought, the system we now enjoy; they
are each of them essential, perhaps in an
equal degree, to the perfecting of that
system, to our perceiving and preparing
the ameliorations of which it is suscepti-
ble. I shall dwell exclusively on these
two objects, not because they are the
only ones that might be pointed out, but
because their importance, their imme-
diate and pressing importance, seems to
have been less attended to, and probably
Jess understood, than it, ought to have
been among the general concerns of the
Union.

Public improvements, such as roads, bridges, and canals, are usually cousidered only in a commercial and economical point of light; they ought likewise to be regarded in a moral and political light. Cast your eyes over the surface of our dominion, with a view to its vast extent; with a view to its present and approaching state of population; with a view to the different habits, manners,languages, origin, morals, maxims of the people; with a view to the nature of those ties, those political, artificial ties, which hold them together as one people, and which are to be relied upon to continue to bold them together as one people, when their number shall rise to hundreds of millions of freemen, possessing the spirit of independence that becomes their station. What anxiety, what solicitude, what painful apprehensions, must naturally crowd upon the mind for the continuance of such a government, stretching its thin texture over such a country, and in the hands of such a people! The prospect is awful; the object, if attainable, is magnificent beyond comparison; but the dificulty of attaining it, and the danger of losing it, are sufficient to cloud the prospect in the eyes of many respectable citizens, and force them to despair. Despair in this case, to an ardent spirit devated to the best good of his country, is a distressing state indeed. To despair of preserving the federal union of these

republics, for an indefinite length of time, without a dismemberment, is to lose the highest hopes of human society, the greatest promise of bettering its condition that the efforts of all generations have produced. The man of sensibility who can contemplate without horror the dismemberment of this empire, has not well considered its effects. And yet I scarcely mingle in society for a day without hearing it predicted, and the prediction uttered with a levity bordering on indifference; and that too by well-disposed men of every political party. Hence I conclude, that the subject has-not been examined with the attention it deserves. I am not yet so unhappy as to believe in this prediction; but I should be forced to believe in it if I did not anticipate the use of other means than those we have yet employed to perpetuate the union of the States.

means.

They must not be coercive Such ones, in most cases, would produce effects directly the reverse of what would be intended. Our policy does not admit of standing armies; and if it did, we could not inaintain them sufficiently numerous to restrain great bodies of freemen with arms in their hands, blinded by ignorance, heated by zeal, and led by factious chiefs; and if we could maintain them strong enough for that purpose, we all know they would very soon overturn the government they were intended to support.

With as little prospect of success could we rely upon legislative means; that is, upon laws against treason and misdemeanor, or any other chapter of the criminal code. Such laws may sometimes intimidate a chief of rebels, or a few unsupported traitors. But a whole geographical district of rebels, half a mation of traitors, would legislate against you. They would throw your laws into one scale and their own into the other,and toss in their bayonets to turn the balance.

No, the means to be relied upon to hold this beneficent union together, must apply directly to the interest and convenience of the people; they must, at the same time, enable them to discern that interest and be sensible of that conveni

ence. The people must become habituated to enjoy a visible, palpable, incontestable good; a greater good than they could promise themselves from any change. They must have information enough to perceive it, to reason upon it, to know why they enjoy it, whence it flows, how it was attained, how it is to be preserved, and how it may be lost. The people of these States must be edu

cated

cated for their station, as members of the great community. They must receive a republican education; be taught the duties and the rights of freemen; that is, of American freemen, not the freemen that are so by starts, by frenzy, and in mobs, who would fill the forum at the nod of Clodius, or the prytaneum at that of Cleon; nor the freemeu of one day in seven years, who would rush together for sale at the bustings of Brentford, and clamor and bludgeon for a man whose principles and person were to them alike unknown and unregarded.

Each American freeman is an integral member of the sovereignty; he is a coestate of the empire, carrying on its government by his delegates. The first right he possesses, after that of breathing the vital air, is the right of being taught the management of the power to which he is born. It is a serious duty of the society towards him, an unquestionable Fight of the individual from the society. In a monarchy the education of the prince is justly deemed a concern of the nation. It is done at their expense; and why is it so it is because they are deeply interested in his being well educated, that he may be able to administer the government well, to conduct the concerns of the nation wisely, on their own constitutional principles. My friends, is it not even more important that our princes, our millions of princes, should be educated for their station, than the single prince of a monarchy? If a single prince goes wrong, obstinately and incurably wrong, he may be set aside for another, without overturning the state. Bat if our sovereigns in their multitudinous exercise of power, should become obstinate and incurable in wrong, you cannot set them aside. But they will set you aside; they will set themselves aside; they will crush the state, and convulse the nation. The result is military despotism, dismem berment of the great republic, and, after a sufficient course of devastation by civil wars, the settlement of a few ferocious monarchies, prepared to act over again the same degrading scenes of mutual encroachment and vindictive war, which disgrace modern Europe; and from which many writers have told us, that mankind are never to be free.

Our habits of thinking, and even of reasoning, it must be confessed, are still borrowed from feudal principles and monarchical establishments. As a nation' we are not up to our circumstances. Our principles in the abstract, as wrought into

1

our state and federal constitutions, are in' general worthy of the highest praise; they do honor to the human intellect. But the practical tone and tension of our minds do not well correspond with those principles. We are like a person conversing in a foreign language, whose idiom is not yet familiar to him. He thinks in his own native language, and is obliged to translate as he talks; which gives a stiffness to his discourse, and betrays a certain embarrassment which nothing can remove but frequent exercise and long practice. We are accustomed to speak and reason relative to the people's education, precisely like the aristocratical subjects of a European monarchy. Some say the people have no need of instruction; they already know too much; they cannot ali be legislators and judges and generals; the great mass must work for a living, and they need no other knowledge. than what is sufficient for that purpose." Others will tell you it is very well for the people to get as much education as they can; but it is their own concern, the state has nothing to do with it; every parent, out of regard to his ofspring, will give them what he can, and that will be onough.

I will not say how far this manner of treating the subject is proper even in Europe, whence we borrowed it. But I will say that nothing is more preposterous in America. It is directly contrary to the vital principles of our constitutions; and its inevitable tendency is to destroy them. A universal system of education is so far from being a matter of indiffer-. ence to the public, under our social compact, that it is incontestably one of the first duties of the government, one of the highest interests of the nation, one of the most sacred rights of the individual, the vital fluid of organized liberty, the precious aliment without which your republic cannot be supported.

I do not mean that our legislators should turn pedagogues; or 'send their commissioners forth to discipline every child in this nation. Neither do I mean to betray so much temerity as to speak of the best mode of combining a system of public instruction. But I feel it my duty, on this occasion, to use the freedom. to which I am accustomed, and suggest the propriety of bringing forward somet system that shall be adequate to the ob ject. I am clearly of opinion, that it is already within the power of our legisla tive bodies, both federal and provincial; but if it is not, the people ought to place

it

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