such regulations, such motives for attachments, and such experience as may assist them in their deliberations.

When to our civil and political advantages, we add the benefits we owe to our extensive limits, that our country comprises every climate, from that in which Alpine plants may be found on the tide water, to one which ripens the sugar cane; that all the productions between these extremes may be cultivated freely and exchanged without restriction, and that the industry of man, spread over such a large portion of the earth, will at no distant period supply every want: while this industry existing under one banner, fettered by no custom-house impediments or restrictions, is enabled, by every where directing its efforts after the most beneficial manner, to throw the vast capabilities of this immense territory into one common stock, how incalculable the amount of prosperity that will be created! When we consider that enterprise is unbounded, and constantly excited by successful examples, that property is secure, the person protected, and opinion without arbitrary control; that the restless may go when and where they will, and every man in the pursuit of fame, fortune or amusement, may range unquestioned throughout these wide domains, what a prespective accumulation of glory, happiness and power is here displayed!

Much of this is owing to local position, but it would be false modesty to deny, that much of it is owing to ourselves, to the patriotism,integrity, ability and moderation of our public men, and to the intelligence and morality of our citizens at large. Our character and condition attract daily more and more of the attention of the world. The late war was productive of inestimable benefit in this way; it made us known and respected by

other nations. Our youth and our distance had made us little regarded, often misrepresented, and very falsely appreciated. Dragged into war at the end of a long quarrel, which had desolated every nation in Europe, and given military glory an unfortunate superiority over all others, we soon gave decisive proofs that peace had not made us timid, nor liberty ungovernable. The vulgar glory which arises from gallantry and skill in war, we showed ourselves capable of attaining, not by an equivocal struggle with a weak nation, but in a hardy conflict with the strongest. Foreigners who see us abroad, or visit us at home, estimate us more justly, since recent events have dissipated so many prejudices. The old routine of calumny begins to be discontinued, and though some exaggeration may grow out of the re-action, we shall hereafter be better understood. lightened strangers see our country in a favourable, but a true light, and are exempt from the bias which is given by party passions. One of this class, who after having reigned for some years as a sovereign over some of the fairest portions of Europe,and now resides in this country with philosophic contentment, and all the simplicity of a private gentleman, remarked to me in conversation, "This is a happy nation, and in the most fortunate cir"cumstances: some persons think you have not go"vernment enough; others, that you have too much;

En

they are both wrong; every thing is as it should be, "and it is the happiest country in the world for persons “like me, who neither wish to command, nor to obey."

It is natural that the citizens of such a nation should exult in their national character. It is impossible that men who are reared in a country, governed on more elevated principles than any other; one which supposes

a higher degree of virtue and intelligence in its inhabitants; where every man may enjoy not only civil liberty, but the highest political immunities,-where there is no titular inferiority, and no exclusive privileges; where talent and virtue are the only honourable distinctions, and open the way to the highest magistracy, it is impossible such men should not be proud, and glory in the character of republicans. The vulgar and the insolent will be apt to show this offensively to other nations; but the man of education, who knows how to reconcile the esteem of others with self respect, while careful not to offend foreigners with arrogance or vanity, and allowing them all the advantages resulting from a high degree of polished refinement, and the establishment of many time-honoured institutions, will still secretly feel that his national condition is the noblest in the world.

Though I could not entirely clear your brow from that expression of reproachful anxiety, which would come over it. when the situation of religion here was a subject of our conversation, yet you were willing to smile at the ludicrous denunciations of some of your fellowcitizens, and of others farther south, against the heretical sects in this quarter, while they themselves never passed the threshold of any church. Even the orthodox among us, if they are not partisans, think their friends in other states, who hold the same opinions with themselves, a

little bigoted in their judgment of our Unitarians. It is indeed difficult to feel any prejudice against the theory of people, whose practice embraces every virtue, and we perhaps become insensible to the danger of certain tenets in their ultimate consequences, by the constant exhibition of the most benevolent virtues in their present followers. Many of these who go to places of public worship from motives not very dissimilar to those of the lady in your city, who took a pew in the Unitarian chapel, "because it was a nice, cool place, to carry the children,” are dangerous examples of strict morality and active virtue, connected with every unsound and limited notions of abstract doctrine. In attempting to give you some account of the present state of religion in Massachusetts, you must recollect that I am no theologian, and that I give you only a superficial sketch, unbiassed by any sectarian prejudice.

The consideration of the state of religion here is attended with peculiar interest, since the first colonists, driven by persecution to seek a shelter for their principles, crossed the ocean to maintain them, and laid the foundations of this state as a religious commonwealth. They acted in the spirit of, and considered themselves as living under the sway of a theocracy, and this of course accompanied with the highest degree of zeal and intolerance in conduct, parity of manners, austerity in discipline,and the severest tenets of faith. They were rigid Calvinists in belief; puritans in regard to all the amusements of the world; obstinate dissenters from all ceremonies in worship; jealous independents of all ecclesiastical government, and most devout abhorrers of every other sect. The cruel character and appalling ferocity of this religious creed, never was better justified and

strengthened by circumstances; they might naturally believe in a system, which transformed that Deity, who is the fountain of mercy and God of all grace, into a being of mysterious vengeance and cruelty, when they found themselves, though living in the strictest morality and devoted to religion, called upon to endure the greatest sufferings, exposed to an untried climate and howling wilderness, the coil of the rattlesnake at their heels, and the tomahawk of the savage at their heads.

It was not a sudden impulse, but a long course of preparation, that drove them to cross the Atlantic; the process was gradual that hardened their feelings to every thing but their religious attachments, and made them prefer those to every other consideration. They were as ready to suffer martyrdom as to inflict it; the time indeed had gone by when the refractory were condemned to the flames in this world. But martyrdom, according to the fashion of the day-proscription,imprisonment and exilethey first suffered themselves, and then inflicted on others; they were the victims of intolerance and ecclesiastical tyranny; and the moment it was in their power exercised both. Stimulated as they believed by the love of God in both cases, they endured, and they made others endure. From the closest convictions of conscience, having sacrificed fortune, friends and country, in support of their principles, any permission to differ would have been considered a criminal levity and inconsistency. Persecution was to them a lesson not of charity, but of perseverance, and the system they adopted was as rigid and exclusive, as that from which they had fled.

Stern and zealous as they were, they could not be wholly insensible to the reflections that were cast upon them, for thus following a system of oppression in matters