slaves, or vassals? How can we wonder at the forms of government which prevail in Europe, with such a system of monopoly in the land as there exists? Nothing but this explains our own history, clears up the mystery of the revolution, and makes us fully comprehend the secret of our own strength. Austria or France must fall, whenever Vienna or Paris is seized by a powerful army. But what was the loss of Boston or New York, in the revolutionary war, to the people of New England? The moment the enemy set his foot in the country, he was like the hunter going to the thicket to rob the tigress of her young. The officers and soldiers of the revolution were farmers and sons of farmers, who owned the soil for which they fought; and many of them, like the veteran Putnam, literally left their ploughs in the furrow to hasten to the field. The attempt to conquer such a population is as chimerical as it would be to march an army down to the sea-shore, in the Bay of Fundy, when the tide is rolling in seventy feet high, in order to beat back the waves with their bucklers. But it is time to conclude. When the civil wars of Rome were over, Virgil was requested by the Emperor Augustus to write a poem on agriculture, in order to encourage the Italian husbandmen to return to the culture of their wasted fields. The farmers in Italy at that time were mostly tenants at the halves;* but the philosophic poet could not help pronouncing even them too happy, did they but know their blessings. After having compared, with some attention, the various conditions in which man is found, in the principal countries of Europe and in America, I have come to the undoubting conclusion, that there is not a population on earth, taken as a whole, so highly favored in the substantial blessings of life, as the yeomanry of New England. There are other countries that surpass us in wealth and power; in military strength; in magnificence, and the display of the expensive arts; but none which can so justly lay claim to the character of a free and happy commonwealth,-none in which the image of a state, sketched by the philosophic poet, is so beautifully realized "What constitutes a state? Not high-raised battlement, and labored mound, Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned; Where, laughing at the storm, proud navies ride; Where low-browed baseness wafts perfumes to pride. Men who their duties know, But know their rights, — and knowing, dare maintain, — And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain;- And sovereign law, that state's collected will, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill." EULOGY ON LAFAYETTE.* PREFATORY NOTE, FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITION. To avoid the necessity of frequent marginal references, I would observe, that the account of Lafayette's first visit to America is chiefly taken from a very interesting article on that subject, communicated by Mr Sparks to the Boston Daily Advertiser, of 26th June, 1834, from his edition of Washington's Works, now in the press. Among the other authorities which I have consulted are the well-known works of Sarrans, the Memoirs of Lafayette and the Constitutional Assembly, by Regnault-Warin, Montgaillard's History of France, from the close of the reign of Louis XVI. to the year 1825, and Mr Ticknor's beautiful sketch of the life of Lafayette, originally published in the North American Review. But I owe a more particular acknowledgment to Mr Sparks, who not only furnished me with the sheets of those parts of the unpublished volumes of Washington's Works which throw light on the military services of Lafayette in the war of the American revolution, but placed in my hands a great mass of original papers, of the highest interest and value, relating to the career of Lafayette, and furnished to Mr Sparks by the general himself, from his own collections and the public offices at Paris. These papers contain the Correspondence of Lafayette with Washington, from the year 1778 to his death; his Correspondence and Notes of his Conferences with the Count de Vergennes and other French ministers; his Correspondence with his family and friends, from America and from his prisons in Germany; Notes and Commentaries on the most important incidents of his life; his Correspondence with the Governor of Virginia and officers of the army, especially during the campaign of 1781, and miscellaneous papers bearing on the main subject. They form altogether ample materials for a history of the life and services of Lafayette; a work which no one is so well qualified as Mr Sparks to execute, and which, it is greatly to be wished, he might be induced to undertake. * Delivered in Faneuil Hall, at the request of the young men of Boston, on the 6th of September, 1834. EULOGY. WHEN I look round upon this vast audience, and reflect upon the deep interest manifested by so many intelligent persons in the occasion which has called us together, - - when I consider the variety, the importance, and singularity of the events which must pass in review before us, and the extraordinary character of the man whom we commemorate, — his connection with Europe and America, in the most critical periods of their history, - his intercourse in both hemispheres with the master spirits of the age, his auspicious, long protracted, and glorious career, alternating with fearful rapidity from one extreme of fortune to the other, - and when I feel that I am expected, by the great multitude I have the honor to address, the flower of this metropolis, to say something not inappropriate to such an occasion, nor wholly beneath the theme, I am oppressed with the weight of the duty I am to perform. I know not how, in the brief space allotted to me, to take up and dispose of a subject so vast and comprehensive. I would even now, were it possible, retire from the undertaking; and leave to your own hearts, borne upwards with the swelling strains of yonder choir, — whose pious and plaintive melody is just dying on the ear, to muse, in expressive silence, the praise of him we celebrate. But since this may not be, since the duty devolved upon me must, however feebly, be discharged, let me, like the illustrious subject of our contemplation, gather strength from the magnitude of the task. Let me calmly trace him through those lofty and perilous paths of duty which he trod with serenity, while empires were toppling round him; and, trampling under foot the arts of the rhetorician, as he trampled under foot all the bribes of vanity, avarice, and ambition, and all the delights of life, let me, in the plainness of history and the boldness of truth, not wholly uncongenial to the character of the man I would reproduce to your admiration and love, discharge as I may the great duty which you have assigned to me. There is, at every great era of the history of the world, a leading principle, which gives direction to the fortunes of nations and the characters of distinguished men. This principle, in our own time, is that of the action and reaction upon each other of Europe and America, for the advancement of free institutions and the promotion of rational liberty. Ever since the discovery of America, this principle has been in operation, but naturally and necessarily with vastly increased energy, since the growth of a civilized population this side For the formation of a man of truly great character, it is necessary that he should be endowed with qualities to win respect and love; that he should be placed in circumstances favorable to a powerful action on society; and then, that, with a pure affection, a strong, disinterested, glowing zeal, a holy ambition of philanthropy, he should devote himself to the governing principle of the age. Such a combination, humanly speaking, produces the nearest approach to perfection which the sphere of man admits. Of such characters the American revolution was more than commonly fertile, for it was the very crisis of that action and reaction which is the vocation of the age. Such a character was Washington; such was Lafayette. - He was born at Chavaniac, in the ancient province of Auvergne, in France, on the sixth day of September, 1757 seventy-seven years ago, this day. His family was one of the most ancient in the country, and of the highest rank in the French nobility. As far back as the fifteenth century, one of his ancestors, a marshal of France, was distinguished for his military achievements; his uncle fell in the wars of Italy, in the middle of the last century; and his father lost his life in the Seven Years' war, at the battle of Minden. |