eral, that is just what the enemy say of them." A smile lit up the face of Washington, and the cloud passed from his brow. The freedom of this reply could have been warranted by nothing but the known estimation in which the Rhode Island troops were held, both by Washington and his army.

For nearly three years, during the time that Rhode Island was making these efforts, the territory occupied by one-fifth part of her inhabitants was, as I have said, in possession of the enemy, and onehalf of the remaining portion of her people may be said to have slept within range of his naval cannon. The shores were guarded; artillery companies were stationed in every town bordering on the bay; the militia were constantly either under arms to repel assaults, or ready at a moment's warning for that purpose; and in Sullivan's expedition they were called out in mass. Such were the trials through which she passed, and such the efforts which she made, that, on the return of peace, both State and people were utterly bankrupt. All the property within the State, both real and personal, would not have paid the debts of either. The subsequent laws, making paper money a tender, were, in fact, bankrupt acts. Massachusetts, by not adopting this course, forced the oppressed debtors into a resistance of the execution of her laws, and finally into rebellion and civil war. I say not which was the better course. It was, in fact, a choice between great and unavoidable evils; but the course of each State was perfectly characteristic. Rhode Island dissolved the contract, and saved the debtor; Massachusetts saved the contract, and ruined the debtor. In Rhode Island, mercy triumphed over justice; in Massachusetts, justice triumphed over mercy.

Such was the conduct of Rhode Island-that young sovereigntywhen called upon to act out of herself, and upon the world around her. And has she fallen, in any thing, short of the high promise given by her fundamental idea? Have our expectations been in any degree disappointed? Is she not, thus far, first among the foremost in the great cause of liberty and law? In this struggle, she has acted under the liberty element of her idea, and it has triumphed over illegal force.

But she is now called to another trial, in which the law element, by force of circumstances, is destined to predominate. She is called to adopt a new constitution, prepared by the sisterhood for themselves and her; and she shrinks from it, as repugnant to her idea of governShe had been the first to propose the permanent establishment of a Continental Congress. She had been among the first to

ment.

adopt the Articles of Confederation under which it was held, and she was now to be the last to abandon them. She had ever felt and acted as a sovereignty, even under England; and every freeman in the State felt her sovereignty and glory to be his own. His own individuality-his own conscious being was identified with her idea, and he lived, moved, and breathed, as if he were one and identical with her, or she one and identical with him. Under the old confederation this sovereignty would have been continued, and with it, the same free individuality—the same glorious conceptions of liberty and law that had come down from of old. But under the new constitution-" through what new scenes and changes must she pass-through what variety of untried being," under constraint and limitation to which she had hitherto been a stranger-exposed, perchance, to the annoyance of a new brood of States? or of States, at least, that shared not in her sympathies, and which might become hostile for imputed political, if not religious, heresies-she paused-she hesitated. If her sisters, with something of their Church and State ideas still clinging to them, and with their royal governors just cast off, could put on this straight jacket, why let them do it—it might be natural enough for them-but she would hold to the old confederation whilst she could-she could use her arms and her hands under that; but under this they would be tied down and she must pass her helmet and shield and lance into other hands, and trust them for the defence of her own glorious idea-she determined to cling to the confederation-and who can blame her? I do not-and she did cling to it, until she stood alone, and was obliged to abandon it.

If Rhode Island lost something of the freedom of her sovereignty, by the adoption of the constitution of the United States, it must be admitted that she gained much, by the new position into which she was brought with her sister States. She, in fact, acquired a new stand-point, and vantage ground, from which the influence of her idea of government, and of her enterprising and inventive genius has been. transmitted and is continually passing into every portion of the Union. The constitution of the United States, itself, had adopted her own original idea-indeed, without it, as I have said, it could not have been established; and whatever remnant there was of old Church and State ideas, has, under its influence, long since passed away. In the constitution and government of the Union, her own conceptions of liberty and law have been conspicuously exemplified to the nations of the earth, and have produced, and are still producing on them, their legitimate and necessary effects.

From this new vantage ground she has made her enterprising and original genius more sensibly felt by all. Having cast aside her shield and her lance, Minerva-like, she turned to the spindle and the loom. Without abandoning agriculture or commerce, she gave her attention to the manufacturing arts. The first cotton, spun by water in the United States, was spun in North Providence. The first calico printed in America, was printed in East Greenwich. It was from these beginnings that the cotton manufacturing business of this country sprung, and soon came to give a most important direction to the legislation and policy of the Union. It was in 1816, that the manufacturing interest, chiefly of this State, presented to Congress the great question of protection to American industry, in the most effective form. And from that time to the present, it has been a question upon which the policy of the government has turned, and in reference to which administrations have been established and displaced, as this or that party prevailed.

But she has given occasion to a question more important stilla question touching her own original conception of regulated libertya question, however, which she settled for herself, by direct legislative enactment, and almost by judicial decision, nearly two centuries ago; but which now comes back upon her, by reason of the new relations and immature influences into which she is brought. I allude to that question which has grown out of events too recent for a particular discussion here, and at this time, but which I mention because it forms a necessary part of the history of her idea of government. It is a question which, when raised under the constitution of the United States, it was well should be first raised and decided here, in a State which has been so long accustomed to preserve a due equipoise between liberty and law, and be then presented to those States who are yet vernal in the enjoyment of that liberty which has been so long her own. Upon their ultimate decision of this great question, may turn the destinies of this nation. Yet if Rhode Island continue true to her own just conceptions of government, we need not despair of the final re-organization, even of the elements of anarchy and misrule. By force of her own example, shall she restore them to order. The future is big with fates, in which she may be called to enact a higher part than any that has yet been hers. Let her gird herself for the coming crisis, whatever it may be. Let her recollect her glorious past, and stand firm in her own transcendent idea, and she shall, by that simple act, bring the social elements around her, even out of anarchy, into order and law.

We have thus reviewed the history of Rhode Island's idea of government of its internal development, and of its external action; and I now ask you, fellow citizens, all, whether there be not that in its history which is well worthy of our admiration; and that in it which is still big with destinies glorious and honorable? Shall the records which give this history still lie unknown and neglected in the cabinet of this society for the want of funds for their publication? Will you leave one respected citizen to stand alone in generous contribution to this great cause? I ask ye, men and women of Rhode Island!-for all may share in the noble effort to rescue the history of an honored ancestry from oblivion-I ask ye, will you allow the world longer to remain in ignorance of their names, their virtues, their deeds, their labors, and their sufferings in the great cause of regulated liberty? Aye, what is tenfold worse, will you suffer your children to imbibe their knowledge of their forefathers from the libelous accounts of them given by the Hubbards, the Mortons, the Mathers, and their copyists? Will you allow their minds, in the germ of existence, to become contaminated with such exaggerations, and perversions of truth, and inspired with contempt for their progenitors, and for that State to which their forefathers' just conceptions of government gave birth? Citizens! be ye native or adopted, I invite ye to come out from all minor associations for the coercive development of minor ideas, and adopt the one great idea of your State, which gives centre to them all, and, by hastening it onward to its natural developments, you shall realize your fondest hopes. Let us form ourselves into one great association for the accomplishment of this end. Let the grand plan be at once struck out by a legislative enactment, making immediate, and providing for future appropriations; let the present generation begin this work, and let succeeding ones, through all time, go on to fill up and perfect it. us begin, and let our posterity proceed, to construct a monumental history that shall, on every hill and in every vale-consecrated by tradition to some memorable event, or to the memory of the worthy dead— reveal to our own eyes, to the eyes of our children, and to the admiration of the stranger, something of Rhode Istand's glorious past. Let us forthwith begin, and let posterity go on, to publish a documentary history of the State-a history that needs but to be revealed and truly known in order to be honored and respected by every human being capable of appreciating heroic worth. Let a history be provided for your schools that shall teach childhood to love our institutions, and reverence the memory of its ancestry; and let myth and legend conspire with history, truly to illustrate the character and genius of ages

gone by, and make Rhode Island all one classic ground. Let a literary and scientific periodical be established that shall breathe the true Rhode Island spirit-defend her institutions, her character, the memory of her honored dead from defamation, be it of the past or present time and thus invite and concentrate the efforts of Rhode Island talent and genius, wherever they may be found. Let us encourage and patronize our literary institutions of all kinds, from the common school to the college; they are all equally necessary to make the Rhode Island mind what it must be, before it can fulfil its high destinies. Let this, or other more hopeful plan, be forthwith projected by legislative enactment, and be held up to the public mind for present and future execution, and we shall realize by anticipation, even in the present age, many of the effects of its final accomplishment. It will fix in the common mind of the State an idea of its own perpetuity, and incite it to one continuous effort to realize its loftiest hopes. If Rhode Island cannot live over great space, she can live over much time— past, present, and to come—and it is the peculiar duty of statesmen to keep this idea of her pepetuity constantly in the mind of all.

LEGISLATORS OF RHODE ISLAND:*

The State which you represent is not an institution for a day, but one for all time. Generation after generation passes away, but the State endures. The same organic people still remains; the places of those who pass off are filled by those who come; and the same sovereignty still lives on and on, without end. Every particle of the human body is said to pass off out of the system, once in seven years; yet the same organic form still continues here to act its part—to be rewarded for its good, and punished for its evil deeds. It is just so with that body which constitutes the State. The organized people continues ever the same. The individuals which compose it are its ever-coming and ever-fleeing particles, animated within it for a time, and then passing off to be seen no more: but unlike our own frail structures, it is qualified to endure through all time, and therefore, in all that is done, this idea of its perpetuity should be ever kept before it. A great object is accomplished when once a people is fully impressed with this idea; it almost secures the immortality of which you thus oblige it constantly to think. One great curse of all popular institutions has ever been, a resort to paltry, temporary expedients—to legis

* The members of the General Assembly, then in session at Providence, were invited to attend at the delivery of this discourse; and most of them, it is believed, were present.