Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit.  It is higher, purer, nobler.  We consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever.  We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of mankind.  We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us and our posterity.  We wish that whoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought.  We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age.  We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection, from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests.  We wish that labor may look up here, and be proud in the midst of its toil.  We wish that in those days of disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong.  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