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then in what the genius of the country does now show itself? If you have had no war, you have had peace and government. Exhibit the samples of your talents of this sort. Where are your poets, your orators; where are your statesmen?—I ask again where are they?—You cast your eyes to congress:-alas! what do you behold?-See you among them a Franklin, a Jefferson, a Madison, a Jay, a Hamilton!What can be more humiliating than such a contrast?

'My position, however, is that this decline of talents was by no means a necessary consequence of peace. The fathers of the revolution were guilty only of Hannibal's oversight: they did not make every advantage of their victory which they might have done.

"They should have trained their children to virtuous hardihood, and martial glory, as well as to policy and literature. Instead of this they left them to hatch and breed like cankers under the broad wing of luxu rious peace; and they are now little better than blotches upon the fair face of nature-reptile mice, when they should be rampant lions; light and gaudy butterflies, when they should be towering and thunder-bearing eagles. Vol. i. p. 72.

In population, in wealth, in physical resources of every description, Virginia has rapidly progressed-but her moral course seems to be retrograde. The assertion is neither uncandid nor harsh: it is not even my own: I only reverberate a cry which resounds on all sides. Degeneracy, political, forensic, scientific, is every where a subject of lamentation. Vol. i. p. 129.

'Look at the remains of our revolutionary worthies-these plain, honest, hardy sons of valour and virtue-and compare them with "the silken, ducking observants" of the present day. Is there not as much difference between them as there was between the cotemporaries of Fabricius and those of Pompey at Rome; between the frugal simplicity and incorruptible honour which marked the first ages of that great republic, and the degeneracy which debased and ruined it, after conquest had poured upon the banks of the Tiber the splendours and luxuries of vanquished Asia. Vol. i. p. 202.

'Such were your ancestors.-Yes! dignity, firmness and wisdom were, indeed, their attributes. No adverse chance of war, no depth of political misfortune, could impair for a moment, the erect and noble dignity of their characters. No perils could daunt their courage; no hardships, however severe and protracted, could shake their constancy and firmness. No ministerial sophistry could entangle, no insidious show of friendship could beguile that wisdom which was for ever awake, and whose strong and steady light penetrated and scattered even the darkness of futurity. And how, think you, did they attain this eminence? how did they merit this glorious eulogy of lord Chatham? Not-trust me-not by giving up the prime and flower of life to indolence and folly; not by listening in their youth to the syren song of sloth and pleasure, and thus permitting the divine faculties of the mind to be degraded and brutalized. O! no: widely different was their course. Day after day, and night after night, they kept the holy vigil of study and meditation. If they did not, like Pythagoras, Democritus and Plato, explore the remotest extremities of the globe in quest of knowledge, they retraced, however, the whole route and

travel of the human mind; pursued those who had gone before them into every nook and corner of literary adventure, unwound all the mazes of learning and discovery, and followed the towering wing of genius into whatever region of science it shot its bold and daring light. Vol. i. p. 231,2.

'Illustrious men! Immortal patriots! Where are ye now and who are your successors!!-It is true, indeed, that a few, alas! a very few, of our revolutionary planets still hang above the western horizon!Vol. i. p. 233.

'Of those characters of the revolution who are no more, I will select only a few, and giving to the reader the whole post-revolutionary, American world, I will ask him for their equals, &c. . . . . Were not these men, giants in mind and heroism? Compared with them, what is the present generation, but a puny race of dwarfs and pigmies? If the comparison by individuals shall be thought not a fair one, look at them in bodies. Compare, in the first place, your state legislature now, with what it was during the revolution, &c. . . . . The reader, however, may be of the opinion suggested some years ago by an essayist in the Enquirer, that our state legislature is not a fair specimen of the talents of the state; because those talents have been taken away from us by the stronger attraction of the federal legislature. Let us go, then, to the federal legislature itself, and look there for the talents thus removed from us;-and let us compare that body with the old continental or revolutionary congress. Comparing them as bodies, there is no other way to decide between them than by their acts. Talk, if you please, of the difficulties in which the present congress is placed; make every allowance for these difficulties, but, then, remember those greater difficulties which the old congress had to encounter. Compare the resources of the country at those two periods, in men, money, arms and ammunition. These words roll easily from our lips: but remember what they mean; and make the comparison fairly. I am not censuring the pacific course of our congress. I have nothing to do with politics. I say only, that the difficulties with which they are surrounded ought to weigh nothing in their favour, when a comparison is made between their talents for government and those of the fathers of the revolution; because the old congress were environed by difficulties still greater. "When you consider," said lord Chatham, speaking of the Americans of his day, "the dignity, the firmness, and the wisdom with which the Americans have acted, you cannot but respect their cause." Bring this portrait to the present time, and see how well it fits. DIGNITY, FIRMNESS and WISDOM!!"-I have no disposition to press the comparison. Vol. ii. p. 34,5,6,7.

In the old Congress no man opened his lips but to ask or give information for the public good; and no man who was capable of throwing the faintest light upon the subject, shrank from a debate in which he was sure of being treated with politeness and respect.-Is this the case at present? Here again I leave the comparison to the reader: It will be for him to say whether our manners as well as our minds have not most wofully degenerated:-And whether, in all that respects pub. lic character, we do not, like Pompey in my motto, now stand the shadow, merely, of a name once great.

'How far the old Congress surpassed us in energy of intellect as well as grandeur of soul, may be seen by their various reports, resolutions, memorials, remonstrances, petitions, declarations, and statutes; these evidences of their character still live and will for ever live, while the name of liberty shall be dear in any corner of the globe.

It is impossible to read those compositions without being struck with the dignity of action, and Herculean strength with which the whole subject is grasped; and the beautiful simplicity, and, at the same time, irresistible conviction with which the argument is evolved. The magnanimity of sentiment which breathes throughout them, corresponds, in every part, with the force and greatness of intellect which conducts the argument; forming together a tout ensemble, certainly not surpassed, if equalled by any productions on earth. No family ought to be without these state papers; more especially those families in which there are children growing up. A greater part of those papers have been collected in a manual called The Remembrancer. Vol. ii. p. 39.

It is obvious that those men read more, and thought much more than their descendants. Their preparation for public life was on a far greater scale. Their minds were enlarged by the contemplation of subjects, and invigorated by the pursuit of studies of which we seem now to have lost sight entirely. And they entered upon business with an intimate knowledge of every consideration which belonged to it, gained by labour; the place of which their children seem to expect to supply by inspiration:- Our great misfortune is, that narrow and contracted preparations for public life have become so strongly fastened upon us by the fashion and practice of the day, that no one lifts his mind to any other course. Look, for example, at that profession from which you draw almost all your great officers-your presidents, governors, judges, and statesmen. I mean the profession of law. Let me first show you how a young man ought to be prepared for this profession, according to the opinion of lord Mansfield, than whom, no man that ever lived was better qualified to judge. Vol. ii. p. 41, 2.

"Who does not recognise in this plan of forensic preparation the mind of a master, who well knew, and had himself travelled this road to greatness? From this noble route, by which alone great men can be made, turn to the preparation for the bar which is practised in this state-Blackstone and the Virginia laws, now and then Coke upon Littleton, and a few Reporters, make the whole snail's race of our young Virginia lawyers. Yet these young men, thus crude, and spoiled, and crippled, are in a few years returned from their counties to the General Assembly-for the solemn and important function of making laws for the commonwealth.-In a few years they go to Congress-and when the illustrious remains of the revolution shall leave us, such alone are to be the men who are to be our presidents, and law-givers!-With what foreign nation shall we then be prepared to cope? Vol. ii. p. 44.

'At twenty-one my young countrymen imagine they are, whether qualified or not, to enter the great world, and embark on the tempestuous ocean of life. The habits, manners, and pursuits of youth are to be laid down, and the port and dignity, and employments of manhood assumed. The period of education and study is now thought to

their end attained-and nothing wanting but to engage in the

active avocations of some profession, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred closes the prospect to further improvement. Nor is this all: for most unfortunately every young man of the least promise among us, is either prompted by his own vanity and misguided ambition, or urged by the solicitations of his ill-judged friends, to become at this critical period of his life, a candidate for legislative honours-I will say nothing of the time that is lost in this pursuit, or of the immoral and degrading arts commonly employed to crown it with success. The pernicious influence of the electioneering system upon those who practise it and those upon whom it is practised, requires a more serious and distinct consideration than any I can now bestow upon it. I will suppose the young candidate installed into his new dignity-which he has attained by honourable means-without debasing himself, or corrupting others. Is there any thing in his situation to compensate him for the many sacrifices he is forced to make? Our legislative halls are no longer schools for wisdom or eloquence-nothing especially can be more unlike a convocation of sages and orators, than the local assemblies in the several states.-When a great crisis, indeed, calls for extraordinary exertion, talents flock to the theatre where they are required. But in ordinary times, and in the usual routine of duty, the business of local legislation is as insipid as the active men who transact it, are unimproving. The division of a county, the opening of a road, the granting a divorce, or the establishment of a new bank, are certainly not the questions upon which the mind of a young man should for several months in the year, be exclusively employed: Nor are the debates upon these topics, often prompted by local prejudices, and conducted with intemperate zeal, precisely the oracles to which, for that length of time, he ought to listen.

The only effect which such a discipline can have, is, to narrow and prejudice the mind, to magnify trifling things into importance, to erase the few lessons of political wisdom he may chance to have learnt, and to render him an ignorant, pert, and frothy politician, instead of a profound and enlightened statesman. Vol. ii. p. 93, 4, 5.

From all this, and a great deal more of the same purport, to be found in the Essays, a stranger might conclude that we are, indeed, nothing compared to the standard of revolutionary excellence,' and that we truly exhibit the phenomenon of a young people experiencing the decrepitude of age, before they attained maturity.' But it must not be imagined that our author, when he thus upbraided and disparaged his coevals of Virginia particularly, could be deliberately of opinion that their demerits were so great, or the prospects of the country so fearfully overcast. Nor can we suppose that he believed the men of the revolution, august and accomplished as they were, to have been all that he has made them by contradistinction. In one of the Essays, he has himself turnished an explanation of the apparent superiority of the revolutionary race at large. Our revolution called forth latent energies. It is during such a crisis, that superior men became conscious of their native powers, and displayed them to advantage. A revolution always produces what we may term an eruption of talents. The

VOL. XII.

36

commotion of the moment communicates itself to all individuals, renders them useful, necessary, and places each of them in his proper station.'

It is paying a poor compliment to our republican institutions, to assert that we have, since the period at which we substituted them for monarchical government, degenerated in spirit, intellect, morals, and manners. During the late war with England, when the occasion called for energy and ability, these were found to prevail, and ready to be exerted, in a degree and extent fully adequate. As we do not believe that the deteriorating causes, such as the increase of wealth and luxury, the contention for public honours and offices, the influx of foreigners, can have proved so far efficient as to have counteracted the opposite tendency of the republican system, we have no doubt but that the qualities necessary for a great crisis, are more general with the Americans of the present day, than they were with those of the first years of the revolution. Although we may not possess Washingtons and Franklins, there is, proportionably, throughout the nation, an ampler fund of intelligence and resolution for council; there are more men who could as speedily be converted into skilful commanders for the field; more who could furnish statepapers of equal excellence with the collection which the Old Bachelor so justly celebrates. Education is now more diffusive, and carried higher, with the bulk of the people, than it was at the era of the revolution; they are not only further initiated, but are more enlightened as to their rights of every description, and have stronger inducements to maintain those rights; they are certainly not less vigorous either in body or mind. As to simplicity and frugality, it is in the great cities only that these virtues have ceased to flourish, where, as an indemnity, the arts and sciences, the principles and institutions of philanthropy, which contribute to the perfection of national character, have made considerable progress.

There were scattered through the colonies members of the learned professions, planters, and officers of the royal government, who had been educated abroad,-who cultivated letters and philosophy with a keen relish, and on a comprehensive scale. Several of the revolutionary leaders belonged to this class, and we cannot now, perhaps, boast of public characters of exactly the same description; so profound in their studies, so refined in their sentiments, so finished in their style of expression. But, though the education of a few among our forefathers may have been more complete, we are much more generally instructed in the higher branches of knowledge; we have a far greater number of seminaries of learning, of more regular structure; books are more within our reach; facilities of every kind are indefinitely multiplied. At this moment, numbers of our youth are, to use a phrase of our author, retracing the whole route and travel of the human mind,' in the universities, schools, and capitals of Europe, and receiving lights which have broken forth only in these

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