ulation in politics and act on it? Consider how new is this America of yours! Some there are yet alive who saw this infant rocked in the cradle. Some there are yet alive who beheld the first inauguration of Washington; many that felt how the tidings of his death smote on the general heart. Some now alive saw the deep broad trench first excavated, the stone drawn from the mountain-side, the mortar mingled, the Cyclopean foundation laid, the tears, the anthems, the thanksgiving of the dedication day. That unknown, therefore magnified, therefore magnificent original; that august tradition of a mixed human and Divine; that hidden fountain; the long, halfhidden flow glancing uncertain and infrequent through the opening of the old forest, spreading out, at last, after leagues, after centuries, into the clear daylight of history; the authoritative prescription; the legend, the fable, the tones of uncertain harps, the acquiescence of generations, rising in a long line to life as to a gift, -where for us are they? On all this architec ture of utility and reason, where has Time laid a finger? What angularity has it rounded; what stone has it covered with moss; on what salient or what pendant coigne of vantage has it built its nest; on what deformity has its moonlight and twilight fallen? What enables us then to withhold for a moment the sustaining hand? The counsel of philosophy and history, of Cicero, of Machiavel, of Montesquieu, to turn to the first principles, to reproduce and reconstruct the ancient freedom, the masculine virtues, the plain wisdom of the original - is it not seasonable counsel eminently for you? Remember, your reason, your will, may keep, must keep what reason and will builded. Yours is the responsibility, yours, to country, to man, unshared, unconcealed.

I do not know that I need to say next that such a spirit of nationality reposing on will and reason, or, however produced, not spontaneous, and therefore to some extent artificial, demands a specific culture to develop it and to make it intense, sure and constant. I need not say this, because it is so plain; but it is important as well as plain. There is a love of country which comes uncalled for, one knows not how. It comes in with the very air, the eye, the ear, the instincts, the first taste of the mother's milk, the first beatings of the heart. The faces of brothers and sisters, and the loved father and mother, the

laugh of playmates, the old willow-tree, and well, and schoolhouse, the bees at work in the spring, the note of the robin at evening, the lullaby, the cows coming home, the singing-book, the catechism, the visits of neighbors, the general training, all things which make childhood happy, begin it; and then as the age of the passions and the age of the reason draw on, and love and the sense of home and security and of property under law, come to life; and as the story goes round, and as the book or the newspaper relates the less favored lots of other lands, and the public and the private sense of a man is forming and formed, there is a type of patriotism already. Thus they had imbibed it who stood that charge at Concord, and they who hung deadly on the retreat, and they who threw up the hasty and imperfect redoubt on Bunker Hill by night, set on it the blood-red provincial flag, and passed so calmly with Prescott and Putnam and Warren through the experiences of the first fire.

But now to direct this spontaneous sentiment of hearts to the Union, to raise it high, to make it broad and deep, to instruct it, to educate it, is in some things harder, some things easier; but it may be done; it must be done. She, too, has her spectacles; she, too, has her great names; she, too, has her food for patriotism, for childhood, for man. "Americans,' said an orator of France, "begin with the infant in the cradle. Let the first word he lisps be Washington." Hang on his neck on that birth-day, and that day of his death at Mount Vernon, the Medal of Congress, by its dark ribbon; tell him the story of the flag, as it passes glittering along the road; bid him listen to that plain, old-fashioned, stirring music of the Union; lead him when school is out at evening to the grave of his great-grandfather, the old soldier of the war; bid him, like Hannibal, at nine years old, lay the little hand on that Constitution and swear reverently to observe it; lift him up and lift yourselves up to the height of American feeling; open to him, and think for yourselves, on the relation of America to the States; show him upon the map the area to which she has extended herself; the climates that come into the number of her months; the silver paths of her trade, wide as the world; tell him of her contributions to humanity, and her protests for free government; keep with him the glad and solemn feasts

of her appointment; bury her great names in his heart, and into your hearts; contemplate habitually, lovingly, intelligently, this grand abstraction, this vast reality of good; and such an institution do somewhat to transform this surpassing beauty into a national life, which shall last while sun and moon endure.

may

But there is another condition of our nationality of which I must say something, and that is that it rests on compromise. America, the Constitution, practicable policy, all of it, are a compromise. Our public is possible—it can draw its breath for a day only by compromise.

There is a cant of shallowness and fanaticism which misunderstands and denies this. There is a distempered and ambitious morality which says civil prudence is no virtue. There is a philanthropy, so it calls itself,- -pedantry, arrogance, folly, cruelty, impiousness, I call it, fit enough for a pulpit, totally unfit for a people; fit enough for a preacher, totally unfit for a statesman;— which, confounding large things with little things, ends with means, subordinate ends with chief ends, one man's sphere of responsibility with another man's sphere of responsibility, seed-time with harvest, one science with another science, one truth with another truth, one jurisdiction with another jurisdiction, the span-long day of life with the duration of States, generals with universals, the principle with the practice, the Anglo-Celtic-Saxon of America with the pavers of Paris, cutting down the half-grown tree to snatch the unripe fruit- there is a philanthropy which scolds at this even, and calls it names.

To such a spirit I have nothing to say, but I have something to say to you. It is remarked by a very leading writer of our times, Lord Macaulay — ennobled less by title than by genius and fame," that compromise is the essence of politics." That which every man of sense admits to be so true, as to have become a common-place of all politics, is peculiarly true of our national politics. Our history is a record of compromises; and this freedom and this glory attest their wisdom and bear their fruits. But can these compromises stand the higher test of morality? Concessions for the sake of the nation; concessions for what the general opinion of America has pronounced concessions for America; concessions in meas

ures; concessions in spirit for such an end; — are they a virtue?

I hope it is worth something, in the first place, that the judgment of civilization, collected from all its expression and all its exponents, has ranked concession for the keeping and well-being of the nation, among the whiter virtues. Starting with the grand central sentiment that patriotism is the noblest practical limitation of universal philanthropy, and reserving its enthusiasm, its tears, for the martyred patriot, and deeming his death the most glorious of deaths, it has given ever the first place to him whose firmness, wisdom, and moderation have built the State, and whose firmness, wisdom, and moderation keep the State. These traits it has stamped as virtues. These traits it has stamped as great virtues. Poetry, art, history, biography, the funeral discourse, the utterance of that judgment, how universally have they so stamped them! He whose harp, they said, attracted and fused savage natures; he who gave to his people, not the best government, but the best that they would bear; he who by timely adaptations elevated an inferior class to equality with a superior class, and made two nations into one; he whose tolerance and comprehension put out the fires of persecution, and placed all opinions and relig ions on one plane before the law; he whose healing counsels composed the distractions of a various empire, he is the great good man of civilization. Ambition might have been his aim to some extent, but the result is a country, a power, a law. On that single title, it raised his statue, hung on it the garland that cannot die, kept his birthday by the firing of cannons, and ringing of bells, and processions, and thanks to God Almighty. He may not have been fortunate in war; he may not have been foremost among men of genius; but what Luxembourg, what Eugene, what Marlborough heaped on his ashes such a monument, as the wise, just, cold, Dutch deliverer of England? What Gates, what Lee, what Alexander, what Napoleon, won such honor, such love, such sacred and warmfelt approval as our civil father, Washington? Does that judgment, the judgment of civilization, condemn Demosthenes, who would have invited Persia to help against Macedon; or Cicero, who praised and soothed the young Octavius, to win him from Anthony; or the Calvinist William, who invited the

papal Austria to fight with him against Louis XIV.? Does it dream of branding such an act as hypocrisy, or apostacy? Does it not recognize it rather as wisdom, patriotism, and virtue, masculine and intelligent? Does it not rather give him all honor and thanks, who could forego the sweets of revenge, rise above the cowardice of selfishness and the narrow memory of personal inapplicable antecedents, and for the love of Athens, of Rome, of England, of liberty, could magnanimously grasp the solid glory of great souls?

But this judgment of civilization, I maintain next, is a sound moral judgment. It is founded on a theory of duty which makes the highest utility to man the grandest achievement of man. It thinks that it discerns that the national life is the true useful human life. It thinks that it discerns that the greater includes the less; that beneath that order, that government, that law, that power, reform is easy and reform is safe reform of the man, reform of the nation. It ventures to hold that a nation is the grandest of the instrumentalities of morals and religion. It holds that under that wing, beneath that lightning, there is room, there is capacity, for humbly imitating His plan who sits in the circle of eternity, and with whom a thousand years are as one day; room, motive, capacity for labor, for culture, for preparation, for the preaching of the gospel of peace to all, for elevating by slow, sure, and quiet gradations down to its depths, down to its chains, society itself. Concession to keep such an agent is concession to promote such ends.

Do you remember what a great moralist and a great man, Archbishop Whately, said on this subject in the House of Lords? He was advocating concession to Catholics; and see how much stronger was truth than the hatred of theologians. The biographer of Peel calls the speech a splendid piece of reasoning; and it decided the vote:

"So great is the outcry which it has been the fashion among some persons for several years past to raise against expediency, that the very word has become almost an illomened sound. It seems to be thought by many a sufficient ground of condemnation of any legislator to say that he is guided by views of expediency. And some seem even to be ashamed of acknowledging that they are, in any degree, so