Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Oration, Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, July the Fourth, 1836, in Commemoration of the Sixtieth Anniversary of American Independence
It is to be attributed in a great measure to the ignorance of the people, to their want of intelligence upon political affairs, that no constitutional government has yet succeeded in any of the countries of Europe. The people of those countries do not want courage or resolution. They want information. Bloody and desperate have been the con?icts between pat riots and tyrants, but the people have wanted skill to retain the power they have several times acquired. Their ill-di rected efforts have, in some instances, only served to strengthen their bondage and to rivet their chains. In relation to our own country, it may not be too much to assert, that all the public spirit, all the bravery of the people of these colonies, would never have accomplished the Amer ican Revolution, if that public spirit and bravery had not been accompanied and assisted by a high degree of intelli gence and wisdom. It was this sagacity, this wisdom, which enabled our statesmen to direct the storm of Revolution, and finally to compose the elements, little less stormy, of confu sion and anarchy which were likely to succeed. It was this intelligence on the part of the mass of the people, that taught them the advantages of Union, that taught them the prudence, by a constitution and laws, of imposing some restraint even on liberty itself, in order that it might be a power to do good, and not a license to do wrong.
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