ORATION. GENTLEMEN : I thank you very sincerely for the honor of being selected as your orator on this most interesting anniversary to you and your personal friends. It is always an honor to be called upon to address those who are preparing themselves in academic halls, or having completed their academic course, are bidding adieu to the quiet and peaceful scenes of college life, and taking their leave of beloved classmates and venerated professors, to go forth and bear an active and honorable part in the multifarious affairs of this work-day world; but it is more especially so to be invited to address a literary society connected with this venerable college of Mount St. Mary, already so rich in classic associations, so hallowed by the memory of saintly virtues, and so dear tɔ every American Catholic heart for the eminent servants of the Church of God it has nurtured. Although I may repeat several things which I ventured to advance in this hall some five years since, I have thought that I could not better respond to the confidence which calls me here, than by inviting my young friends to follow me in some remarks on LIBERAL STUDIES IN RELATION TO THE WANTS OF A FREE STATE. I shall have thus the advan tage of treating a subject to which your minds must have often been turned during your collegiate course, and of connecting what has been your occupation as students with what are to be your practical duties as American citizens. Liberal studies, as the name itself implies, whether etymologically or historically considered, are those studies or those arts which are proper for the free as distinguished from the menial or servile classes of society, or, in more modern language, the nobility as distinguished from the people, gentlemen as distinguished from simplemen. Originally nobleman meant nothing more nor less than freeman, and in Hungary to-day all freemen are noble. The distinction of society into two classes, the one free, the other servile, the one noble and the other low, or the one gentle and the other simple-is older than profane history, and in one form and under one name or another has always existed; and, as long as human nature remains what it is, probably will continue to exist. Perfect equality of ranks and conditions is never found, is never to be expected, and is, indeed, incompatible with the very idea of society itself. The distinction, whether a good or an evil, is a fact in all society, and in vain do we seek by political constitutions, social arrangements, and legislative enactments to obliterate or disguise it. It exists and re-appears at every step under all forms of civil polity and social organization,-in democratic America no less than in aristocratic England, feudal Germany, monarchical France, and despotic Turkey; in the so-called Free States of the North no less than in the Slave States of the South. The entire universe, having its prototype in the Eternal Nature of God, in the ever-blessed Trinity, Unity in essence and distinction in persons, is hierarchically organized and governed, and save in the sense of justice between man and man, and man and society, equality is an idle dream, an empty word,—nay, an impious word, fit only to be inscribed on the blood-red banner of the atheisti cal Revolutionist. Whoso seeks to reduce all men to the same level, whether by levelling downwards or by levelling upwards, wars against God and Nature. Diversities of ranks and conditions are in the order of Divine Providence, and obtain even in Heaven, where there are many mansions, and where the Saints differ from each other as one star differs from another in glory. Society without them is inconceivable, and were undesirable. It would be as dull and as monotonous as the boundless sandy plain diversified by no variety of hill and dale, mountain and valley, land and water-where the flocks and herds find no pasture, the bird no grove or bush from which to carol, and man no habitation. It would lose all its charms, all its variety, all its activity, and become stagnant and putrid as the ocean when the long calm sleeps on its bosom. "Order is Heaven's first law, and this confest, You of the South consist of freemen and slaves, of gentle and simple, and so do we of the North. In both sections we find at bottom the same distinction of classes, though while you have the manliness to avow it, we have the art to disguise it from the careless observer, under the drapery of fine names. You call your slaves by their proper name, and while you impose upon them the duties of slaves, you relieve them from the cares and burdens of freemen; we call our slaves freemen, and impose on them the labors and burdens of slavery, while we secure to them none of the advantages of freedom. The only advantage we can claim over you is, that our slaves being of the same race and color with our freemen, are individually less hopelessly slaves than yours. The class is as permanent with us as with you; but individuals of the class may more easily escape from it, and rise in their own persons or in their children to the class of freemen. But on the other hand, if our slaves are under certain aspects less slaves than yours, our freemen are less free than yours. The Southern gentleman has a personal freedom and independence, which we rarely find in the Northern gentleman, and which give to Southern manners a charm, a freshness, an ease, and a grace, which our Northern manners, I am sorry to say, for the most part lack. It is of no use to war against this inevitable distinction. To attempt either with you or with us, to obliterate it and make all freemen can result only in the destruction of freedom and the reduction of all to slavery; as the attempt to make all gentlemen can end only in leaving no gentlemen, and in reducing all to simplemer, with low and vulgar tastes, habits, and manners. It is then our duty to accept the distinction of classes as a social fact, permanent and indestructible in civilized society, and conform to it in all our political and social arrangements. The strength and glory of a nation depend not on the vulgar, the commonalty, the low born, the servile, or the simple, but on its freemen, its gentlemen, its nobility. It is one of the saddest as well as one of the silliest mistakes of our age, that the few may be safely overlooked, and for all that is great and good, wise and just in the action of the state or of society, reliance must be placed on the many, on the masses so-called. But a nation is wise and great, good and just, only in its freemen, its noblemen; and a great nation without nobles or gentlemen, titled or untitled, is an unheard of anomaly. You may tell me there is no army without private soldiers; but there is even less an army without a general. It is the man, Bonaparte was accustomed to say, not the men that is the principal thing. Give us the man qualified to organize and command an army, and an army he will rarely lack. He will find everywhere the materials needed. All troops are brave under brave and competent officers, and no matter how brave the men may naturally be, they will be cowards in action if their officers are incompetent or white livered. As long as the gentry and nobility of a country retain their integrity, are high-minded, patriotic and virtuous, really deserving the name of generosi, it stands firm, and has in itself the recuperative energy speedily to recover from any reverses it may for a moment experience; but let these fail, or let them become corrupt, base and selfish in their principles and feelings, real churls in their char acter, and you may see the hand writing on the wall recording its doom. Its days are numbered; it is weighed in the balance and found wanting; and it must speedily fall to rise no more forever. I tell you only what you must have read in the histories you have studied. When flourished ancient Athens? Was it not when her Eupatrids were really free and noble; when they retained the virtues of the olden times, and were chivalric, generous, brave, and patriotic? Was it the arms of all-conquering Rome that prostrated her in the dust, and left her wallowing for long ages in the mire? Why gained he Roman a victory which the Persian with far greater forces failed to win? Because Athens had not men; because her population had dwindled, or her wealth been exhausted? By no means. But because she had no Miltiades, no Aristides, no Themistocles. Her Eupatrids had lost their nobility, had ceased to be freemen, and the poor people, brave even to daring, were beaten for the lack of brave and competent leaders. Had the brave old tyrant of the Chersonesus commanded, as at Marathon, the Roman Emilianus had perhaps shared the fate of the Persian Datis. The decline of Rome dates from the corruption of her nobles, and she fell when they had lost all vestiges of the old Roman virtues. At the time when the Barbarians began to cross the Rhine and invade the Gallic provinces of the Empire, those provinces were as rich and as populous as modern France, and perhaps even more so; and yet what more contemptible than the resistance they offered! Indeed, they seem to have |