repeat, with every ship that crosses the Atlantic, the same debasing voice of despotism, credulity, superstition, and slavery.

Let us here bring our general conceptions down to an example. The country called Brazil, and till lately subject to the kingdom of Portugal, (a kingdom more nearly of the size of Tennessee than of any other of the United States ;)-the country of Brazil, stretching from the mouth of the Oyapoco, in the fourth degree of north latitude, to the Banda Oriental in the thirty third degree of south, and from Peru to the Atlantic Ocean,* is, by computation, one tenth part more extensive than the entire territory of the United States. Our whole vast possessions, from the most southern point of Florida to the northeastern extremity of Maine, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean,possessions which the Surveyor's chain has never marked out, over which tribes of Indians yet roam undisturbed, whose numbers, whose race, whose very names are unknown,―tracts unexplored, in which the wild hunter, half savage, half outlaw, has not yet startled the beaver, on the still and solitary banks of his

* See Note 0.

hereditary stream,-I say this mighty territory is one tenth smaller than Brazil. And now name to me a book in the Portuguese language, where a Brazilian could read so much as the elements of liberty. Name to me a law in the Portuguese code, to protect his property from confiscation and himself from the rack or the stake, whenever the minister shall give the nod. Name me an institution in the whole Portuguese system, in the remotest degree favorable to the progress and happiness of man. And yet it is from this despised corner of Europe, that all the seed must come, to sow this mighty land. It is from this debased source that all the influences have gone forth, which have for three centuries actually decided, and for centuries more must decisively influence the destinies of these all but boundless territories.*

What citizen of our republic is not grateful in the contrast which our history presents? -Who does not feel, what reflecting American does not acknowledge, the incalculable advantages derived to this land, out of the

* See Note P.

deep fountains of civil, intellectual, and moral truth, from which we have drawn in England?What American does not feel proud that he is descended from the countrymen of Bacon, of Newton, and of Locke ?-Who does not know, that while every pulse of civil liberty in the heart of the British empire beat warm and full in the bosom of our fathers; the sobriety, the firmness, and the dignity with which the cause of free principles struggled into existence here, constantly found encouragement and countenance from the sons of liberty there? -Who does not remember that when the pilgrims went over the sea, the prayers of the faithful British confessors, in all the quarters of their dispersion, went over with them, while their aching eyes were strained, till the star of hope should go up in the western skies?And who will ever forget that in that eventful struggle, which severed this mighty empire from the British crown, there was not heard, throughout our our continent in arms, a voice which spoke louder for the rights of America, than that of Burke or of Chatham, within the walls of the British parliament, and at the foot of the British throne ?-No, for myself, I can

truly say, that after my native land, I feel a tenderness and a reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take in my own country makes me respect that from which we are sprung. In touching the soil of England, I seem to return like a descendant to the old family seat ;-to come back to the abode of an aged, the tomb of a departed parent. I acknowledge this great consanguinity of nations. The sound of my native language beyond the sea, is a music to my ear, beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness, or Castillian majesty.-I am not yet in a land of strangers, while surrounded by the manners, the habits, the forms, in which I have been brought up. I wander delighted through a thousand scenes, which the historians, the poets have made familiar to us,-of which the names are interwoven with our earliest associations. I tread with reverence the spots, where I can retrace the footsteps of our suffering fathers; the pleasant land of their birth has a claim on my heart. It seems to me a classic, yea, a holy land, rich in the memories of the great and good; the martyrs of liberty, the exiled heralds of truth; and richer as the parent of this land of promise in the west.

The

I am not, I need not say I am not,-the panegyrist of England. I am not dazzled by her riches, nor awed by her power. sceptre, the mitre, and the coronet, stars, garters, and blue ribbons seem to me poor things for great men to contend for. Nor is my admiration awakened by her armies, mustered for the battles of Europe; her navies, overshadowing the ocean; nor her empire grasping the farthest east. It is these, and the price of guilt and blood by which they are maintained, which are the cause why no friend of liberty can salute her with undivided affections. But it is the refuge of free principles, though often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious for the struggles to which it has been called ; the tombs of those who have reflected honor on all who speak the English tongue; it is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the pilgrims; it is these which I love and venerate in England. I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece, did

I not also feel it for a land like this. In an American it would seem to me degenerate and ungrateful, to hang with passion