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tremulous, he addressed the two houses, confessing CHAP. his distrust of his own endowments and his inexperience in civil administration. The magnitude and 1789. difficulty of the duties to which his country had 30. called him weighed upon him so heavily that he shook as he proceeded: "It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who presides in the councils of nations, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by themselves. No people can be bound to acknowledge the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men, more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. There exists in the economy of nature an indissoluble union between an honest and magnanimous policy and public prosperity. Heaven can never smile on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right. The preservation of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of gov ernment, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the American people."

At the close of the ceremony the president and both branches of congress were escorted to the church of St. Paul, where the chaplain of the senate read prayers suited to the occasion, after which they all attended the president to his mansion.

“ "Every one without exception," so reports the

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CHAP. French minister to his government," "appeared peneIII. trated with veneration for the illustrious chief of 1789. the republic. The humblest was proud of the virtues of the man who was to govern him. Tears of joy were seen to flow in the hall of the senate, at church, and even in the streets, and no sovereign ever reigned more completely in the hearts of his subjects than Washington in the hearts of his fellowcitizens. Nature, which had given him the talent to govern, distinguished him from all others by his appearance. He had at once the soul, the look, and the figure of a hero. He never appeared embarrassed at homage rendered him, and in his manners he had the advantage of joining dignity to great simplicity.”

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To the president's inaugural speech, one branch of the legislature thus responded: "The senate will at all times cheerfully co-operate in every measure which may strengthen the union, and perpetuate the liberties of this great confederated republic."

The representatives of the American people likewise addressed him: "With you we adore the invisible hand which has led the American people through so many difficulties; and we cherish a conscious responsibility for the destiny of republican liberty. We join in your fervent supplication for our country; and we add our own for the choicest blessings of heaven on the most beloved of her citizens."

In the same moments of the fifth day of May, 1789, when these words were reported, the ground was trembling beneath the arbitrary governments of Eu

1 Moustier's report on the in- United States; nearly literally auguration of the president of the translated.

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rope, as Louis XVI. proceeded to open the states CHAP. general of France. The day of wrath, against which Leibnitz had warned the monarchs of Europe, was beginning to break, and its judgments were to be the more terrible for the long delay of its coming. The great Frederick, who alone of them all had lived and toiled for the good of his land, described the degeneracy and insignificance of his fellow-rulers with cynical scorn. Not one of them had a surmise that the only sufficient reason for the existence of a king lies in his usefulness to the people. Nor did they spare one another. The law of morality was never suffered to restrain the passion for conquest. Austria preyed upon Italy until Alfieri could only say, in his despair, that despotic power had left him no country to serve; nor did the invader permit the thought that an Italian could have a right to a country. The heir in the only line of protestant kings on the continent of Europe, too blind to see that he would one day be stripped of the chief part of his own share in the spoils, joined with two other robbers to divide the country of Kosciuszko. In Holland dynastic interests were betraying the welfare of the republic. All faith was dying out; and self, in its eagerness for pleasure or advantage, stifled the voice of justice. The atheism of the great, who lived without God in the world, concealed itself under superstitious observances which were enforced by an inquisition that sought to rend beliefs from the soul and to suppress inquiry by torments which surpassed the worst cruelties that savages could invent. Even in Great Britain all the branches of government were con

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CHAP. trolled by the aristocracy, of which the more liberal III. party could in that generation have no hope of being 1789. summoned by the king to frame a cabinet. The land, 5. of which every member of a clan had had some share of ownership, had been for the most part usurped by the nobility; and the people were starving in the midst of the liberality which their own hands had extorted from nature. The monarchs, whose imbecility or excesses had brought the doom of death on arbitrary power, were not only unfit to rule, but, while their own unlimited sovereignty was stricken with death, they knew not how to raise up statesmen to take their places, and they awakened in skepticism the fearful passion to destroy. Even the wise and prudent were incensed at the unjust institutions which bore them down; while the lowly classes, clouded by despair, were driven sometimes to admit the terrible thought that religion, which is the poor man's consolation and defence, might after all be but an instrument of government in the hands of their oppressors. There was no relief for the nations but through revolution, and their masters had poisoned the weapons which revolution must use.

In America a new people had risen up without king, or princes, or nobles, knowing nothing of tithes and little of landlords, the plough being for the most part in the hands of free holders of the soil. They were more sincerely religious, better educated, of serener minds, and of purer morals than the men of any former republic. By calm meditation and friendly councils they had prepared a constitution which, in the union of freedom with strength and order, ex

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celled every one known before; and which secured CHAP. itself against violence and revolution by providing a peaceful method for every needed reform. In the 1789. happy morning of their existence as one of the pow ers of the world, they had chosen justice for their guide; and while they proceeded on their way with a well-founded confidence and joy, all the friends of mankind invoked success on their unexampled endeavor to govern states and territories of imperial extent as one federal republic.