We
wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of
so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all
minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally,
that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore,
and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which
shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it
rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest
light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its
summit.
* * * * *
From his "Works."
=_87._= BENEFITS OF THE CONSTITUTION.
Its benefits are not exclusive. What has it left undone, which any
government could do for the whole country? In what condition has it
placed us? Where do we now stand? Are we elevated, or degraded, by its
operation? What is our condition, under its influence, at the very
moment when some talk of arresting its power and breaking its unity? Do
we not feel ourselves on an eminence? Do we not challenge the respect of
the whole world? What has placed us thus high? What has given us this
just pride? What else is it, but the unrestrained and free operation
of that same Federal Constitution, which it has been proposed now to
hamper, and manacle, and nullify? Who is there among us, that, should
he find himself on any spot of the earth where human beings exist, and
where the existence of other nations is known, would not be proud to
say, I am an American? I am a countryman of Washington? I am a citizen
of that Republic, which although it has suddenly sprung up, yet there
are none on the globe who have ears to hear, and have not heard of
it,--who have eyes to see and have not read of it,--who know any
thing,--and yet do not know of its existence and its glory? And,
gentlemen, let me now reverse the picture.
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