A DISCOURSE ON POPULAR EDUCATION. Mr. President, Venerable Guardians, Fellow Graduates, and Students of Nassau-Hall; and my respected Audience— WERE I to yield expression, to the many feelings that crowd at my heart, on entering again this hallowed temple, after the lapse of so many years, I should trespass on an indulgence which I have great need to solicit, and depress, as well as disappoint the generous confidence, that has called me from a remote abode, to address you on this day. I shall better fulfil, though most imperfectly at best, the useful purpose of the invitation I am honored in obeying, by recurring to some of the most important of those early lessons, that we gathered at the feet of our Alma Mater, and which all the experience of life has subsequently confirmed. On an occasion, resembling, in some respects, the present, but now, long past, a devotion to our common country of which we all alike partake, prompted me to offer to you, a vindication of the then endangered security, of her external peace; of that gallant navy which has since borne her triumphant banner on Lake and Ocean.* The occasion and the subject are, doubtless, alike forgotten, nor have I a motive for reviving their recollection, except that they have suggested to me, the topic which I now beg leave to pre * A Discourse delivered at the annual Commencement, in 1800, on "The policy of maintaining a Permanent Navy." Published in Philadelphia, in 1 1801. sent to you, and which involves the most effectual, if not the sole safeguard of that country from internal danger. That man cannot long remain stationary in his moral and intellectual condition, is demonstrated by universal experience. This truth may as confidently be affirmed of his social and political, as of his personal existence. It is only the more true, because the observation is so very trite, that "Nations have their Rise and Fall."-That the mightiest empires prosper or decline under the influence of the same causes which exalt or degrade the individual man. Nor could this well be otherwise, since the most extensive communities, are but associations of men, partaking of all their infirmities, subject to all their wants, and governed by their passions, or their imperfect reason. If resplendent virtues have sometimes appeared amidst an age of general depravity-if the names of Cato and Philopomen shine so conspicuously on the pages of ancient history, the expiring freedom of their degenerate countries furnished the occasion, and by contrast the illustration of their glory. It enhances the importance of the solemn admonition which this instability of human affairs teaches to nations, as well as individuals, that States which have once fallen, by corruption, become in time only more and more degraded; the analogy continuing to subsist between the individual and social condition of man throughout all the stages of his eventful history :- "Facilis descensus Averni : Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, The path from freedom to despotism, through vice and anarchy, is a downward and beaten track, and many nations have travelled it. The return to freedom, by the same highway, has been made-never! Rome, now so mournful an example of this truth, once proclaimed liberty to subjugated and submissive Greece, but found her incapable of enjoying the precious boon. May the heroic struggle of these modern soldiers of the cross, with a ferocious tyranny, prove more propitious to their happiness, than the proffered gratuity of their second masters! From these brief but monitory lessons, how important to our future happiness, is the deduction which we must infer, of the necessity of vigilantly guarding our national prosperity! Heaven has not arrested for us the wheel of revolving empire, nor nature changed her laws for our continent. The bright orb which rolls his unclouded course to the West, will leave us in a few hours amidst the darkness that now wraps the oriental world. Let us, therefore, diligently watch over the sources of our national happiness, while our day spring is on high, and the moral night of our decline may be far distant. That our country is prosperous, I will not pause to demonstrate for, however adventurous speculation, the ordinary fluctuations of commerce, or those domestic afflictions which are inseparable from humanity, may checquer here and there, with passing shadows, the bright scene around us, a patriot throb responds with gratitude to heaven, for the unexampled extent of our national felicity. To what pre-eminent cause, then, are we to ascribe the prosperity of our country? Is it her geographical position; her fruitful soil; her varied climate; her extensive territory; her rising arts; her rich and increasing commerce; her navigation, that already whitens with its swelling canvass, every sea? her glory in arms, of which those now. peaceful fields, and that classic edifice remind us; and which was so recently reflected from another element, by her triumphs over its long acknowledged sovereign?—or, ascending higher, shall we ascribe the happiness of our country, to that political revolution, of which the first ja B bilee has just sounded its rejoicing trumpet; or to her unbounded liberty, civil and religious; or that admirable constitution of government, at once their offspring and their shield? These, in truth, are but the accompaniments, much less than the sum; a part only of the indicia of the outward and visible signs of a prosperity, which has its prolific source, under the favour of heaven, in the intelligence and virtue of the American people. Trust me, my countrymen, this is not the language of flattery. Though it were to cherish national pride, that most pardonable weakness of humanity, if weakness it be, here would not be a proper audience; this religious temple, a suitable place; the present, a fit occasion; nor I, the orator for such a purpose.-Truth, indeed, exacts the concession that other countries, if apparently less happy, surpass our own, in many of the advantages which I have enumerated. Tropical America, for example, along with many parts of Africa, and of Southern Asia, in fertility of soil. Both France and Italy, and, indeed, the entire northern shore of the Mediterranean, in climate. Russia and Great Britain, if her foreign possessions be computed, in extent of territory;-England, singly, though but part of an European Island, in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation; while her people, our ancestors and our equals in valour, are, as their antiquity should render them, as much our superiors in political power, as they unquestionably are, in wealth and numbers. In a spirit, therefore, equally remote from vain boasting at the contemplation of our advantages over other states, and from envy at their transient superiority, in some respects, over us, let us examine the foundation of our national happiness, for the laudable purpose of perpetuating its duration. If the prosperity of our country rests, as it obviously does, on the broad and noble basis, which I have just announced, then does its ultimate security require the cons* nt |