USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Quincy > Commemorative discourse pronounced at Quincy, Mass., 25 May, 1840 on the second centennial anniversary of the ancient incorporation of the town : with an appendix > Part 2
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Taking this key with us, the history of the past as- sumes a new face. We read it with an alphabet that makes it intelligible. It is not only not discouraging, but crowded with lessons of warning, with incitements to new effort, and hopeful promises of good. What cause for wonder, so often expressed, when we look back to nations or cities of antiquity, and perceive that under seemingly prosperous circumstances, fortune smiling, they could not be held together beyond a cer- tain point, -that after a time they have shattered to pieces like some vast edifice, outwardly adorned, but within which the perilous elements of explosion have been all the while concealed, ready fuel for the fatal
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spark ! The truth was, their overthrow and downfall were inevitable; - in most instances, because the prominent principles by which they were governed were dissocial, not only not binding, but altogether dis- severing. And in the same connexion, though in a different sphere, we see why it was that such a man as Howard could go on his self-devoted mission and fulfil it so well, why it was that success and triumph seemed so marvellously to run before him, that, in the striking language of the Scriptures, he appeared "to have power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, nothing by any means hurting him." It was because his whole heart and soul were allied with, and all he did was done upon these binding principles, - principles, which draw men to one common object, the sublimest services that can engage the human soul, and cement all their sympa- thies, hopes, and affections with it.
If now, we inquire again what there was in the coming out of the first settlers of New England so dis- tinctive and hopeful in its very nature, - if we ask, again, what was the peculiar character of the seed here sown, whence sprung up these flourishing towns, whence came the unparalleled prosperity, which in less than two centuries, nay in far less than one, converted a wilderness into more than a blooming garden, here we find the reply. It was their alliance with these elevating principles, blessed by the overruling Provi- dence of God, which did it all. Coiled up here, lay hidden, as I conceive, the great moving spring, which first drove our fathers from their pleasant abodes, and founded here these new manifestations of freedom and hope. It was the same, which, as it gradually uncoiled,
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gave a new impulse to human action, scattered far and wide hitherto unimagined blessings, and handed down to distant ages an inheritance surpassing - with the exception of Christianity, of which it might be called in part a new development - surpassing in value the most precious legacy of the past.
It might be useful, only that it would lead me into too wide a field, to consider somewhat in detail, by what operation of their opposites these better princi- ples gradually found root in the hearts of the Puritans, and by what oppressions and excesses our fathers grew more and more enamored of them, till they found an asylum and a new sphere for them here. In their day and previously to their day, the selfish and dissevering principles had gained almost entire sway in their own and other lands. The civil, moral and religious, and intel- lectual aspect of the times were each and all singularly odious and hateful. All refinement had a low aim. Correct modes of philosophizing were buried up under metaphysical obscurities. Expansive and elevated prin- ciples were wanting. Few, if any, among the higher elements of man, were recognised as having any foun- dation in himself. Religion was practically regarded as an outward mechanism, to be used only for worldly purposes. To complete the dark picture, the civil power came down in the form of infringements upon property and personal liberty. Those unpleasant min- isters, those unconciliating peace-makers, confiscation and imprisonment, torture and the stake, were every- where busy. Wisdom above man's overruled them all for good. Strange to tell, their very contraries grew up on the uncongenial soil. Out of adversity gems of virtues glistened brightly. The old curse was again
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a blessing ; and in these elevated principles they took refuge with high and animating hope.
It has been common to ascribe the first movement of the founders of New England, and their subsequent action and success to religion ; and in its very broadest acceptation, undoubtedly, this term would embrace the wide circle of incitements by which they were moved. But let us beware lest, in our application of it, we fail to do justice to all their springs of action. Religion has been narrowed, and made a technical thing. Little else does it express to the minds of many but the un- folding and right direction of the sentiment of rever- ence alone. It speaks to them only of pious sentiments, and affectionate and confiding trust in God. They had all these, but they had more. The Jews present to us a remarkable specimen of this sort of development. The devotional and pious element, - religion in this restricted sense was signally displayed in their char- acter. But what did they comparatively accomplish, even with all this, in the way of civil and social in- stitutions, in the sense of laying the foundation of a comprehensive and enduring national prosperity? What have the various tribes and nations accomplished, - the long catalogue of whom we need not stop to re- capitulate, - in whom the same element has predomi- nated ? We may readily reply, without injustice, little or nothing. Contrast the founders of New England with such as these, and how obvious is it that by such an estimate we reach to no adequate appreciation of their wide spirit, their far reaching principles. A much nearer approach do we make to it, by saying that they were looking to the foundation of a Christian common-
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wealth. That end was most assuredly in their hearts, and for its accomplishment all that I have set forth, as their guiding principles, was indispensably necessary. It was religion, under the direction of which they moved, but religion in its most comprehensive sense ; reverence presiding over the right development of all the higher faculties. Hence the principles, with which they were accompanied, all the subsidiary action be- came of the character we have been considering. They were those binding principles, which elevate at the same time that they honor humanity. They were those which, in proportion as they prevail in their perfection, give success and permanency to any undertaking.
Mighty principles these ! And yet say now, ye who calculate the chances of success of human enterprises, say, what chances have these exiles as the dim outline of their loved land fades from their view! By all worldly calculation, they would be set down as destined to certain and irretrievable failure. So might we say of almost every great undertaking, in which man has ever engaged. Judged by the maxims of worldly pru- dence, scarcely one great achievement of all the myri- ads that man has brought to pass, would have been marked antecedently with any likelihood of success. But tested by the principles on which we perceive the Pilgrims started, we see good reason why beginnings so inauspicious as theirs have grown so illustrious ; and, on the other hand, why schemes, that arrayed on their side wealth and power and numbers and public opinion, have dwindled into insignificance, and left no other trace that they ever were, but the story of their early promise and almost as early and signal defeat.
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We * are not to look back to the Pilgrims, even in all our admiration of what they were and what they did, with the expectation of finding a full and perfect exemplification of the principles, the general character of which have rendered them and their cause so illus- trious. They manifested them, perhaps, about as fully as could be expected from humanity, under their cir- cumstances. Their perfect manifestation would have realized the Utopian commonwealth. They gave their hearts to the higher order of principles, the highest that can actuate the souls of men, - and that was enough. That they were not perfect only reminds us that they were mortal. They took hold of principles in sympa- thy with man's better elements, principles that had been despised and rejected of men, and with their ad- herence to them the institutions of society could not but be remodelled and safely founded. They poured a fresh spirit into religion by claiming the rights of con- science ; and even cramped, as it undeniably was, it stood forth among them as if raised from the dead. They defended the principle of self government, and vested the right of electing their own magistrates in the hands of the people. This also breathed into the civil condition the breath of life. They recognised all the right of individual action they felt to be consist- ent with safety ; and that set all the wheels of industry in motion, on which public prosperity relies so much. They drew out the religious sentiment, and kept it uppermost like a presiding Deity. They founded the free schools, and thus rocked an infant Hercules as 1
* This and the next paragraph, on account of the unavoidable length of the Discourse, were omitted in the delivery.
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among the first-born children of the youthful common- wealth.
We may pardon some few imperfections to men who in a dark age could accomplish such things as these. Is it asked, why they could not have carried out some of their professed principles a little more fully, - toleration, for example ? "Tolerate ! tolerate whom ?" let me reply in the words of a descendant of one of the first settlers of the Mount and some of the earliest natives of this ancient town, whose name has been given to our soil, " Tolerate whom ? the legate of the Roman Pontiff, or the emissary of Charles the First and Archbishop Laud ? How consummate would have been their folly and madness, to have fled into the wilderness to escape the horrible persecutions of those hierarchies, and at once to have admitted into the bosom of their society men brandishing and ready to apply the very flames and fetters from which they had fled! Those, who are disposed to condemn them on this account, neither realize the necessities of their condition, nor the prevailing character of the times. Under the stern discipline of Elizabeth and James, the stupid bigotry of the first Charles, and the spiritual pride of Archbishop Laud, the spirit of the English hierarchy was very different from that which it assumed, when, after having been tamed and humanized under the wholesome discipline of Cromwell and his common- wealth, it yielded itself to the mild influence of the prin- ciples of 1688, and to the liberal spirit of Tillotson."*
We would honor the memories of those, who first trod these shores, and founded our towns in all their
* Quincy's Centennial Address, Boston, p. 26.
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allegiance to these elevating and binding principles. We would honor their patience and perseverance, their magnanimous endurance and trust in God, in all the days of darkness and discouragement they saw, of which there were many. And we would devoutly bless God, that to causes so honorable to themselves, so elevating and enduring in their very nature, we may trace the success that crowned their day of small things, their feeble but magnanimous enterprise.
If now we have been able to find an interpretation to the prosperity that attended the original enterprise of our Fathers, in the very principles on which they started, equally also to the same cause are we to ascribe the rapid growth of the towns, which soon sprung up upon their footsteps, and the almost startling and con- stantly accelerating progress they have made since in all that improves and honors man.
1. In the first place, as to their government. It was the same order of principles, carried out into practice here, that bound them together and gave them stability. Actually it might seem it could be no otherwise at the first ; for the very men, who in the beginning brought to this wilderness the principles we have been consid- ering, were those who peopled the ancient towns. They must be expected to breathe the spirit of the principles they cherished. But in this we overlook the important distinction between being merely resident in the towns, -the general government being, mean- while, administered over all, - and the transmission of all the vital principles they held so sacred, so far as they could be transmitted, down to the towns them- selves. In a word, it would have been one thing, as it
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might have been, to have made the towns actual de- pendencies, - subject in every particular to the dis- cretion and management of the general government, having their officers all appointed by authority, amount of taxes fixed and assessed abroad, enactments passed as to the regulation of all matters connected with public roads, instruction, and so forth, descending to the very lowest details, - and another thing, as it was, to com- mit all this to their entire management and control, with an undoubting confidence as to the wisdom and success of entrusting it to their care.
In doing this, the very principles were put in action in all the towns for which the Pilgrims had crossed the ocean. The roots of the liberty they sought to realize went down to the smallest communities among them. It was the right they claimed of governing themselves, and having a voice in every law they were called to obey, which was the one thing essential, the beginning, middle, and end of their civil prosperity. We see its good effects in its cementing and elevating character, turn where we will, in their early history ; - nowhere are these good effects more apparent than in the grow- ing prosperity of the towns. The prevalence of this principle, in particular, - and of a similar character, more or less, were all upon which they acted, - tended to make at once a common interest for all. It served as a stimulant upon individual exertion. Where each one does something to determine measures, and who shall enforce them, it is natural that each one should feel some incitement and call to that service. It is natural that, in devising the best means of bringing about desirable objects, the higher intellectual qualities should be called forth and exercised, such as invention,
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prudence, and forethought. A generous spirit and liberal views spring up likewise in the same connexion and from the same cause, - and in every byway where we trace its operation, the principle becomes a bless- ing. Hence it is, that accumulating funds and legacies, whether for schools or religious institutions, become so often dead weights upon a community ; not so much by any direct influence of evil, as because they go, - pre- cisely in proportion to the ground they cover, - to palsy all those qualities in man, which ought to be roused to do for the community just that amount they are trying to do for them. The real good in the world is accomplished by individual exertion and sacrifice ; and these the free principles, planted in all our towns, have been singularly well calculated to draw out.
Now all these qualities, thus stirred into action, are the sure elements of prosperity. The rocky and sterile soil of New England, - girdled almost uninterruptedly by breakers on the sea and mountains on the main, - whose natural productions, as has been strikingly said, are nothing but rocks and ice, yet dotted all over with these flourishing communities, most satisfactorily cor- roborates the assertion. It is vain to place man under the most genial sky, and amid all the favorable circum- stances of outward condition, warm suns and balmy breezes and a fruitful soil, without those manly quali- ties, which enable him to make them tributary to great ends ; and on the contrary, with these, what are the most forbidding and dreary wildernesses but the fields of his prosperity and glory ? Let some of the sunny Italian lands with their lazy, stupid, decaying popula- tion attest the first. Our own time-honored municipal- ity, imbedded in her granite quarries, with her long and
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flourishing sisterhood, the smiling towns of New Eng- land, shall be the diagram for the last.
" Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky."
2. So much for the principles, which have entered into the government of the towns. Then next in rela- tion to their social interests. Some provision must be made to foster these, or any community will dwindle away. Instead of taking a prosperous course, it will in time die out. Our progenitors took the most decid- edly effectual measures towards this object, that human ingenuity could devise, and by doing nothing, actually did everything. They might, indeed, be said to have taken off all the old impediments and restrictions, which had been previously wound round the social condition, as if artfully contrived to put an end to all healthy circulation, inasmuch as they never, for a mo- ment, renewed, on this side of the water, what had been amply tested to their satisfaction on the other. But it was only in such a sense that they could be said to have done anything. They virtually left the social condition to itself. They gave it all it asked, - the field of a fair opportunity.
It was a wide stride in the advancement of human affairs, and in the elevation of the social condition, thus to do nothing. With the laws already based upon jus- tice, and looking to the support of equal rights, all the fruits of industry were at once made secure and per- manent ; - all property, in short, however acquired, became sacred and safe. Beyond this, to drop all the old props of society, the crazy framework on which they had relied so much, wasting their energies in sus- taining what, instead of strengthening, only made soci-
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ety the weaker, was, we must confess, in their day, an experiment, as bold as to the philosophic eye it was profound, as in the event it has proved successful. What mad scheme would you be venturing upon ? might have inquired the crafty politician of those times, - and the inquiry would not have sounded either shallow or unmeaning, - what mad scheme would you be venturing upon, thus to cut loose from the protect- ing laws, the safe mooring places of primogeniture and entail ? What will become of all the family distinctions of wealth and power, we have found so essential to pre- serve the government and the social state what it is? Hold on, - rather the more firmly amidst the gathering commotions that are brewing up, - to what time has proved such efficient instruments to check and regulate human affairs. - Unfortunately, they have checked and regulated us a little too much, - might have been the sagacious reply, - and that too at the cost of the real interest and happiness of those who have been only dreaming that they were served. In reality, all of us have fared alike. All of us have suffered. The social circulations have been dead. We want free action. Let us lay the social foundations anew. Let us put them on the free exercise of the native sentiments of the soul. - There they were laid. There they have prospered.
In this result, in this new experiment of the Pilgrims, we come back again to the prevalence of the same elevated and binding principles which governed them from the first, and all along. The towns flourished un- der these new social privileges. The sympathies of men were called out, we might almost say, as they had never before been in the history of Christian civiliza-
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tion. There was nothing to impede or counteract them. They were free. They worked spontaneously. If to any one thing more than another we are to as- cribe the healthy and unexampled growth of the towns, I know not to what we could turn more readily than to this. Lay back, at this hour, upon the most prosperous of these communities, the old burden of social embar- rassments, and who can doubt, for one moment, their certain and rapid decay ?
3. Then, too, in still another department, - never to be overlooked or forgotten, - may we trace, in the growth and prosperity of our towns, the prevalence and operation of the same exalted and elevating principles. The system that was early adopted for the diffusion of good learning; and the means that were taken to develop and direct the religious sentiment, were alike honorable to our Fathers, and fruitful of unspeakable blessings to their posterity. We sometimes lose sight of the actual dimensions of great privileges enjoyed ; - on the one hand, by our familiarity with their constant contributions to our comfort or prosperity ; and on the other, by never ceasing panegyric or fulsome eulo-
gy. Let us take care that neither of these makes us insensible to the institutions in question. Let me not be thought especially to be falling in with any formal commendation. If much has been said, in times past, on these topics, it has been because they could right- fully claim so much. In connexion with all their other wise provisions, these prospective measures, - for be- yond dispute they were eminently that, -stood out foremost, and engaged their most devoted attention. They sprung beyond the narrow calculations of utility. They were neither bread, nor houses, nor weapons of
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defence against their ever watchful and insidious foes. The first settlers could hardly be said to have required these institutions for themselves, - certainly not those for the promotion of learning. Their great distinction was that they came charged with the treasures of learn- ing, - an overflowing stock for the youthful common- wealth. But they looked forward to the generations that were to follow on after them. Or rather, let us say, actuated by higher considerations still, feeling the strong claims and necessity of disciplining and storing the mind, impressed with the infinite importance of re- ligion to human well-being, they gave expression to these convictions. Their anticipations were far-reach- ing and hopeful, we know; but there were deeper fountains in their own souls than they. They did their duty to themselves, and confided in God that their fruits would appear in their children. So it came to pass that in poverty and straits they built their churches and supported their ministers, established the free schools and founded the university.
The fruits, for which they trusted in God, have ap- peared in their children. In those fruits the towns have been strong and prosperous. Of what avail were all other blessings without the fruits of these institu- tions ? What were all our glorious rivers, our granite hills, our mines of coal, our protecting harbors, open- ing into the wide bosom of the ocean, and ready to lay the treasures of distant climes into the lap of the stretching main, - what were industry, toiling from early morn till latest eve, without mind directing all these, and intelligent enterprise turning them into a richer value, a truer worth, than Peruvian gold ? The free schools, aided by the higher institutions and col-
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leges, have done this, and far more than I may even hint at, throughout New England. And of what avail were all the acuteness of intellect, all the unfolded powers and stored wisdom of the mind, unsanctified by higher considerations, - unless guarded, made safe and strong by moral and religious influences ? Possibly might they prove only the greater curse. The sons of the Pilgrims, in these our towns, have fully exemplified the worth of these institutions. Nothing can be truer than the assertion often made and in many forms, that these institutions have cost us nothing. They have borrowed nothing, they have not more than twice over paid back. But rising above all such considerations as these is the more grateful and ennobling reflection, that from the churches of New England has shone forth a steady light, guiding her sons in all their homes and walks, and opening to their aspiring vision a higher world beyond the sorrows and allurements of this.
I have spoken of the character of the principles, by which the first settlers of New England were actuated, in their original enterprise, on their fidelity to which, under the smiles of a beneficent Providence, their suc- cess was founded ; and to the prevalence of the same order of principles have traced the prosperity of our towns. In their growing and flourishing condition, New England herself has been honored. With the matron of old, presenting them as her offspring, she has been ready to exclaim, " these, these are my jewels."
On a day like this, when the children of this our household have gathered home, -when, with a filial reverence and glowing affections we have come to sit once more by the family hearth-stone, and to enjoy the
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social pleasures of the paternal birth-day, - when we have come to mingle our gladness and our grief to- gether in many of the proud and happy, no less than the tender and affecting remembrances of the past, we shall be indulged, I trust, without the accusation of an attempt to glorify the family name, in recurring, as a dutiful service, to some of the venerable portraits that honor our walls, whose lives were eminent in their day, and many of whose names have become illustrious in the history of the world.
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