USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > A discourse pronounced on the inauguration of the new hall, March 11, 1872, of the Historical society of Pennsylvania, No. 820 Spruce street, Philadelphia > Part 4
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What irreverence do we not do to even greater memo- ries, with which that place should still be redolent !
It was there, as the old debates in Congress tell us, on the 4th of March, 1797, when John Adams was about to
New York, of course, the government had not been organized. On the second inauguration, the Heads of the Departments, the Foreign Ministers, and other persons of state we know were present. Benton's Abridgment of the Debates in Congress, vol. i, p. 387.
* Benton, vol. ii, p. S.
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make his inaugural speech-the Senators and Representa- tives of the land being assembled with unusual state and the ambassadors of foreign nations glittering with the ensigns of royalty around -- that the modest Washington, having on that day closed his long and splendid public career, entered the assembly, "and taking a seat," says the record, "as a private citizen, a little in front of the seats assigned for the Senate, which were on the south side of the house," showed by his presence the respect which he deemed that propriety made decorous to the successor in his office .* And when, in 1798, Congress had ordered that the nation should be armed by sea and by land against the aggressions of insulting and rapacious France, he came again to this city-summoned by the voice of the nation from those seenes which he so " dearly loved," and from that "peaceful abode " in which he had consoled himself with the prospect of " closing the remnant of his days"-it was in that same hall that he showed himself, in state, "Lieutenant-General of all the armies raised or to be raised for the service of America;" his Secre- tary Lear, and his trusted Major-Generals, Hamilton and Pinckney, beside him ; ready, though "declined in years "- for the sake of that country to whose welfare he felt it was incumbent on every person of every description to contribute at all times-"to enter upon the boundless field of public action, incessant trouble, and high responsibility."t Yet
* How charmingly Marshall describes the scene :
"The sensibility which was manifested when General Washington entered, did not surpass the cheerfulness which overspread his own countenance, nor the heartfelt pleasure with which he saw another invested with the power and authority that had so long been exercised by himself."
t See his beautiful and affecting letter of July 13th, 1798, from Mount Vernon to President Adams, accepting the appointment of Lieutenant-Gen- eral, which the President had requested Mr. MeHlenry, then Secretary of War, to go to Mount Vernon and urge him to accept. Benton, vol. ii, p. 177.
The debates in Congress, under date of Saturday; December 8th, 1798, contain this entry :
" At 12 o'clock, Lieutenant General Washington, with his Secretary, Col. Lear, Major-Generals Pinckney and Hamilton, entered the hall and took their places on the right of the Speaker's chair. The British and Portuguese Ministers with their secretaries had places assigned them on the left." Benton, vol. ii, p. 327.
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more, and fit conclusion of the record of that place. When death had closed the long and virtuous career, and John Marshall, as the old congressional records tell us, had an- nounced, "in a voice that bespoke the anguish of his mind," the sad event-there, within that hall, on the 19th December, 1799,* in that tribute in which he proposed that " the grand council of the nation should display those sentiments which the nation felt,"-in that hall, I say, were first heard the words from that hour forth familiar to the world, inseparable from the name of Washington, predicable of no other name, and as that name imperishable-"FIRST IN WAR, FIRST IN PEACE, AND FIRST IN THE HEARTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN."
A stranger asks, "Where sat in earlier days-those days when Jay and Ellsworth presided on that bench-where sat the Great Tribunal of the Nation-' the more than Amphic- tyonic council ?'" But who can show him, surely, where? Yet . here it did sit-and I suppose, in that same room we now call the Mayor's Office-for nigh ten years; and through a term which embraced more chief justices, Jay, Rutledge, Cushing, Ellsworth, than have ever sat in the same tribunal since! Here were adjudged some of the greatest cases that were ever passed on even by that great tribunal. Hither it was, and here to argue, that Alexander Hamilton and Samuel Dexter and John Marshall came; and saw, but conquered not, or conquered rarely, our own, the elder Sergeant, Brad- ford, the Tilghmans, Lewis, Ingersoll, Rawle, and Dupon- ceau; both these last successively our honored presidents. And what arguments, indeed, were these ! arguments such as a member of that court himself describes; characterized " by a depth of investigation and a power of reasoning equal to anything he had ever witnessed, and some of them adorned with a splendor of eloquence surpassing what he had ever felt before; under whose influence fatigue had given way, and by which the heart had been warmed, while the under- standing had been instructed."t
* Benton, vol. ii, p. 434.
t Mr. Justice Iredell, of North Carolina, speaking of arguments made be- fore him (Mr. Marshall being one of the counsel, I suppose), in Ware v. Hyl- ton, 3 Dallas, 257. The Supreme Court sat in Philadelphia from February
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These, citizens of Philadelphia, are the halls that we have desecrated; the men, the memories, the events that we dis- honor.
The chief public monuments of our once Federal metropo- lis-the chambers which should have been ever telling that here in better times than these-assembled, the Congress of the United States and that higher court which, on issue raised, may validate it's acts or annul them all-are converted into places where complaining people pay reluctant imposts ; where petty suits are litigated or felons tried for crimes !*
In point of decency, is not this disgraceful ? In point of selfish interest, is it not most stupid ? What would we think of Stratford-upon-Avon if she were to demolish Shakspeare's house to erect upon the spot a corn exchange ? of Edin- burgh, if she should convert old Holyrood, to shops, that bring a " a splendid rent ?" of London, if thinking to make her Tower "serviceable," she should convert it to "poro- chial " offices, and a throne-room for Beadle Bumble ?
Is nothing of use at all but what we can weigh or meas -. ure or count? Are not sentiments and affections a part of our nature as well as instincts and ambitions? What curious instruction, what profitable teaching, would it not · minister to this licentious age, if we could yet view in its modest simplicity the home of William Penn! How viv- idly would the difference between the legislature of Pennsyl- vania, in the days of Governor Blackwell, and that same body in the days of Governor Geary, impress us, could we pass
Term, 1791, till the same term of 1800, inclusive. Mr. Hamilton argued (suc- cessfully) against Mr. Ingersoll, Hylton v. The United States, 3 Dallas, 171; Mr. Dexter argued unsuccessfully against Mr. Mifflin, Brown v. Van Braam, Ib. 344; Mr. Marshall (unsuccessfully against Edward Tilghman, W. Lewis and Wilcoeks, who succeeded in reversing the judgment below), Ware t. Hylton. Ib 257. Our own old bar were arguing in the Supreme Court continually while it sat here. And it deserves a mention in honor of that generation of the Philadelphia bar which succeeded to the old bar of which I have been speaking, that though, with the departure of the seat of government in 1800, its fame could no longer radiate like that of the former generation from an artificial centre, it did equally radiate or more from a centre which the ability, learning, and virtue of its members, long made a centre of professional superiority.
* See Appendix IV.
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from the halls of the capitol at Harrisburg to our own prim- itive court-house, which I have referred to as demolished, and where, in the earlier days of the province, our legisla- tures were assembled ! What honor should we not have in the eyes of nations-what conscious dignity in our own- had we preserved to this day the home of Washington, as it was left by him when he took his sad and final leave of us for his resting-place upon the Potomac! if we could show our ancient " Congress Hall," just as May 14th, 1800, closed upon it, when with the departure of the Sixth Congress of the United States it was left to us, filled with the odors of political integrity and of private virtue ! Who in these days of degeneracy would not thither resort, as to a sanctuary, and seek in the presence of the spiritual band whom mental vision there would surely summon up, strength and encour- agement in the trials which still beset our country ! And what a band it was ! I have named to you its leaders, friends of Washington, all; "men who carried into public life the morals and the sentiments that give grace to private charac- ter; who joined sincerity and directness of personal deport- ment with effectiveness and force of political action, who gained the outward without loss of the more sacred excel- lence within."
We have rescued Carpenter's Hall from the desecration to which it was long delivered. We have made again a sacred one the place in which Independence was declared and the Constitution framed. Let us demand that when our new municipal buildings are finished, our city RESTORE to the people and the nation old Congress Hall, which it has captured and defiled-restore and forever preserve it as it was; that our own people and all the world may see that we value our ancient dignity no less than our present strength, and that all who visit it, may derive the refreshing influence of the great and virtuous men who once assembled there.
What, then, our Society asks for is, that past and present stand united; that each may have its place, priority, degree. The present will very soon become the past, and if we ex- pect that we ourselves and all that marks our time shall not be soon swallowed by oblivion, we must teach those who
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come after us how they should remember. I have adverted to the fact that in this city, it was first upon this continent proposed to print the Holy Scriptures, and that here, too- first anywhere upon the earth-the liberty of the press was successfully maintained against arbitrary power. I have said that in Pennsylvania was established, as far back as 1690, the first paper-mill in the British provinces. The evi- dence of all these facts is now patent and irrefragable. On the wall before you hangs the evidence of the first one .* In the hall of the Historical Society of New York, put there by myself, remains the evidence of the second .; In the fire- proof closets yonder, of our own Society, remains a manu- script, the proof of the third.} All three facts were of course known a hundred and fifty years ago, but for at least a hun- dred and fifty years the knowledge of all had departed from the earth. And the honor which in every one of the cases belonged to us, was in the first one transferred to Massa- chusetts,§ in the second to New York, || and in the third to
* On the walls of the Society was hanging the printed " Proposals," dated " Philadelphia, the 14th of the 1st month, 1688," by William Brad- ford, " for the printing of a large Bible." See them, Appendix V.
i See An Address, delivered at the celebration, by the New York Historical Society, May 20th, 1863, of the 200th birthday of William Bradford, p. 52.
# This manuscript is entitled, " Historical Sketch of the Rittenhouse Paper Mill, the first erected in America," by Horatio Gates Jones ; a paper which it is desirable should be preserved in a printed form. It is a curious and valuable essay.
¿ In 1860, Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan published, under the auspices of Mr. James Lennox, of New York, his beautiful and valuable work entitled, "A List of Editions of the Holy Scriptures and Parts thereof, printed in Amer- ica previous to 1860; with Introduction and Bibliographical Notes." In this work, p. vi, he says :
"Cotton Mather was UNDOUBTEDLY the first who projected the publication, in America, of an edition of the Bible in English. He commenced the preparation of what he called the Biblia Americana about the year 1695, and having spent fifteen years in collecting and compiling notes, comments, and expositions, announced, in 1710, the completion of his work in an advertisement at the end of one of his Tracts (Bonifacius, printed in 1710), hoping ' that the glorious Head of the Church will stir up some generous minds to forward an undertaking so confessedly worthy to be prose- cuted.' But this hope was not realized. No printer could be found in the colonies to hazard such an enterprise."
|| John Peter Zenger, of New York, or his counsel, has been the man who it has been constantly stated first maintained the press against the tyranny of government. This is not true, as the record deposited in the New York Historical Society and the Trial of Bradford, mentioned in Brown's Forum, vol. i, p. 280, show.
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New Jersey .* By the merest accidents imaginable, in each case has the truth been recently discovered and justice done through the aid of members of this Society to the men and to the place to whom and to which it was due.t
I advocate no selfish exaltation of Pennsylvania. Far from it. The glory of one state is the glory of all, and the more that others can show how near their title to honor approaches ours, the prouder shall we all feel of our com- mon land. Nor, coming to narrower limits, would I re- gard our city as the Athens of this age. Cities, like men or women, may wrap themselves in vanity while the ridi- cule of all who see attends their self-complacency. But, for all this, it is not less true that " a proper confidence in one's own standards, in one's own judgment, in one's own abilities, is so important for the full development of intellectual capacity and social dignity and happiness, that it ought to be considered a duty of every one who holds the place of a guide or teacher to implant it in the subjects of his care, whether communities or individuals."; The breast of an apostle-he who forbids any one to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, or to be wise in his own conceit, § who ranks " boasters" with " blasphemers,"||- yet swelled with conscious pride at the recollection of an honorable birthplace; and, in virtue of such a birth-
* Mr. Isaiah Thomas, in his History of Printing (vol. ii, p. 95), refers to a paper-mill at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, whose history he does not trace further than to 1728, as not altogether improbably " the first built in British America."
¡ The " Proposals" of Bradford, in 1688, to print the Bible were discov- ered in taking to pieces the binding of an ancient book, where they made an inner lining-paper. See the "Address " quoted supra, in note #, p. 42. The other paper-the one deposited in the New York Historical Society, and of which a copy is given at p. 49 of the same Address, as also in Brown's Forum, vol. i, p. 276-was discovered by a youth, in some rubbish at Chester, who, on the recommendation of some person to whom he had shown it, brought it to me. The foundation of the old paper-mill was discovered, and so its history traced, by Mr. Jones, in Paper-Mill Creek, a branch of the Wissahickon.
# Literary Criticisms, by H. B. Wallace, p. 2.
¿ The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, xii, 3, 16.
Il The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy, iii, 2.
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place, asserts his privilege beyond the rest. " I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia; a citizen of no mean city : and I beseech thee suffer ME to speak unto the people."" Did Paul bewray his teachings ? Did he exalt himself ? or smite any man on the face? Assuredly not. How could he assert such a distinction and not prefer in honor those by whom it was achieved for him ? how assert it and not make his fellow-citizens partakers with him ? how assert it and not preserve an inheritance which, as little as any of this earth, would not fade away, for every citizen of the same place who should come after him ?
Our Society might, indeed, adorn its. very portals with commands of Holy Writ. What in all its objects does it but obey what the great lawgiver of old taught the people whom he so long governed and instructed; taught at the close of life -- in the repetition of the law-the deuteronomyt-where he speaks more to people than to priesthood-and when in that prophetic vision which was vouchsafed to him in more exactness than before-his awful solicitudes for the future condition of his nation so largely engaged his final exhor- tations : "Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee."
Our Society, therefore, in showing to every Philadelphian wherefore and wherein he should value his birthright, teaches him that which it ought to teach. In collecting here, and seeking to preserve in influence and honor-in collecting and preserving where all can see them, and each derive from the sight a virtuous strength-the names, the deeds, the fame of such men as I have referred to-provincial, rev- olutionary, republican alike,-the Historical Society of Penn- sylvania performs a high, and serviceable, and patriotic office to the city, to the state, and to the nation.
Our Society is not founded in the tastes of antiquaries, but in the philosophy of statesmanship. It seeks to main- tain our civil rights, and our freedom, and our privileges,
* The Acts of the Apostles, xxi, 39.
+ Chapter xxxii, verse 7.
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by calling to the aid of the artificial institutions of govern- ment, the warmth of our affections; "to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason with the power of nature's unerring instincts." It proceeds in this its highest aspect, but yet its true one, according to those principles which the great orator, and poet, and statesman,-whom I have quoted more than once already, but whom no American can casily read too much, or remember too well-teaches us in the greatest of his works,* lie at the foundation of his own government; as they must ever lie at the foundation of every other government that is great, stable, and free.
Listen once more to the inspired Burke as he replies to the sophisters and sans-culottes of France ! Thus speaks he with the tongue of angels :
" From magna charta to the declaration of rights it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our fore- fathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity, . . without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right. This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflec- tion, or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity who never look back- ward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free, but it secures what it acquires. . . . By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, and the gifts of Providence are handed to us, and from us in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body com-
* Reflections on the Revolution in France. Boston edition, 1839, vol. iii, p. 52.
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posed of transitory parts; wherein by the disposition of a stu- pendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incor- poration of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, " or middle aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on or through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete. . . . Always acting as if in the pres- ence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading, in itself, to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree, and illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings, and its ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits; its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences, and titles. We procure rev- erence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which na- ture teaches us to revere individual men, on account of their age and on account of those from whom they are descended. All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories of our rights and privileges."
But I detain you far too long.
Fellow citizens, I have told you that the Society has six hundred members. It should have six hundred thousand; by which I mean that the number should be unlimited. Every inhabitant of Pennsylvania should feel an interest in the state; and every citizen of Philadelphia, more peculiarly should support an institution which in an especial way pre- serves the historic honor of the city where he dwells. Some can give money ; some can give pictures, books or manu- scripts; all can give good feeling and good words. "Let each give what he can, and he will give precisely what he ought." And let him give it soon; and let him living give it, that here, in this hall, he may, with us, himself long see and long
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enjoy his bounty. I speak, of course, to those who take but general interest in our objects.
To another class, more special, the virtuosi that I see, I must also say a word, a little sermon-with the clergy's leave.
Collectors of manuscripts and books as rare-possessors of historic portraits almost without a price-ye who spend fortunes upon records of the past, and show with pride your rich and curious stores-think ye that they who come after you will share your zeal, your affection, and your care ? I tell you " nay." Manuscripts and books as rare; historic portraits almost without a price, records of the past, your rich and curious stores-these ye can bequeath to whom ye will. But bequeath ye cannot, the zeal with which ye have col- lected them, the care with which ye have preserved them, the affection with which ye guard them. All of these, more surely than any good which ye have done, will be interred with your bones. Here then, collector, is the place in which when you have done with them, you had best deposit those treasures of the past you value. Here is an institution char- tered to do the very thing which living you are always doing, but which when dead you can no longer do. Here are men of taste; men who when, like imperious Cæsar, you are dead and turn'd to clay-when your vouchers will vouch you no more of your purchases, and you have your fine pates full of fine dirt-will still take pains in preserving and showing your collections ; men who will learnedly, eloquently, gracefully, pathetically, with sentiment, and,-with truth that your epitaphs shall envy,-do what living or dying you could, yourself, have never done-extol the virtues of the man who owned them. Our Historical Society is, in short, " yourself, only more so."
I must not conclude without thanking, for their counten- ance, the numerous ladies who do us the honor to be present.
" Our association," the first President of the Society, in his inaugural discourse of 1825, declared, " is not confined to one sex." "Those to whom society is in every respect so much indebted; who confer on life its finest felicities, and who soften and allay the bitterness of adversity ; whose at- tainments in science are only less frequent because they are
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habituated to content themselves within the sphere of do- mestic duties, but who have so often shown that occasion alone is wanting for advances to the highest rank of mental improvement,-they are not excluded." Without abridging " the endearing characters of guardians, and ornaments of a sacred home,"-the wife, the daughter, the sister may be admitted and encouraged to assist us. Surely they to whose zealous and untiring effort our nation owes the preservation of Mount Vernon, when the men of the land would have seen it sold to the highest bidder, and the Congress of the nation were looking on without an effort to rescue it, can never be deemed uninterested or inefficient ministers in any institution which honors above all earthly names the name of Washington. They, too, are the conservators of things at home, and superior as they usually are to man in fineness of affection, in closeness of attention, and retentiveness of memory, they often cherish with care the memorials of the past in which the absorbing engagements of men without, destroy, to them, all interest. Cordially, therefore, and gratefully shall we receive the co-operation of the women of Pennsylvania.
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