depth of that current of good, first opened by the instrumentality of Otis, Henry and Adams?—a stream which, more beneficent than the mighty river of Egypt or the Rhine, is destined to inundate and fertilize the world. The source of American independence may be traced higher than to the period when, to speak in the verse of Thomson, "Strait to the voted aid, Free, cordial, large, of never-failing source, Of the worst ruffians, those of tyrant power." It was not the Stamp-Act that produced, although it immediately occasioned, the struggle with the mothercountry. It has been well said by Mr. Jefferson, that "the ball of the Revolution received its first impulse, not from the actors in that event, but from the first colonists." The latter emigrated to America in search of civil and religious freedom; they fled hither with a hatred toward the shackles which feudal institutions and the canon law imposed upon the soul. The spirit of revolt against oppression originated in England, and went with Robinson's congregation to Holland; thence it emigrated in the Mayflower to Plymouth, and became the basis of all the legislation put forth by the wisest of colonists. Our Pilgrim Fathers moulded their social compacts and ecclesiastical government in direct opposition to the systems under which they had been so severely oppressed. But this spirit of freedom, which had been developing from the first planting of the colonies, England attempted to quell. The chief resist ance was made to her aggressive measures in Massachusetts, because that colony was selected for the first. trial of tyrannic control. We have seen, however, that the south was as prompt to resist as her more oppressed brethren at the north. The historian of Greece records the names of ten distinguished orators who resisted the Macedonian conqueror, and the persons of whom he demanded, as being hostile to his supremacy. Our youthful colonies, soon after the conflict was commenced by the venerated patriots already named, presented an array of orators equal in number and efficiency to those of any land. Henry, Lee, and Randolph, in the south, and Otis, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Josiah Quincy, Hamilton, and others, in the north, rose in grandeur and usefulness as the storm increased; showing that they were the voices and the beacon-fires which God had loved and lighted for the welfare of mankind. Several coincidences in our early history are remarka ble. The first and last battle-fields of the Revolution are almost within sight of the colleges where our leading patriots were educated, and the rostra where the first popular debates occurred. All the chief orators of New England were graduated at Harvard; the popular discussions which led to actual conflict with the mothercountry took place in the public buildings of Boston, and the first great battle for freedom raged on Bunker Hill. The chief leaders of the patriotic party in the south were educated at the college of William and Mary. Jefferson, then a student, heard Patrick Henry's first eloquent denunciation of oppression almost under the eaves of his Alma Mater, as John Adams, then a young man, heard Otis when he first attacked the principle of unjust taxation in the north. In the immediate neighborhood of Williamsburg, Cornwallis surrendered, and the long struggle of the Revolutionary war was closed. Thus the ball rested near where it received its first impulse. Without those colleges to discipline our heroical fathers, how different would have been the destinies of the world! Long may the venerable halls remain, and there "Long may young Genius shed his sparkling ray, And throw his emanations bright around." 66 The apostles of liberty in America, like the original preachers of our holy religion, first proclaimed their doctrines to a few fishermen; men of toil and enterprise, such as Burke described : While we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis' Straits; while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold: that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that while some of them draw the line and Neither strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coasts of Brazil. No sea but is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils. the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. "When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of a watchful and suspicious government, but that through a wise and salutary neglect a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects; when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me; my rigor relents; I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.” Such being the spirit of enterprise among the colonists in their efforts to obtain an honest livelihood on the land and on the sea, we cannot suppose that they would long submit to oppressive exactions. Popular discussions of popular wrongs soon became frequent, and one of the most noted places of gathering was around Liberty Tree. This was a majestic elm, a species peculiar to America, and one of the grandest trees in |