And now, friends and fellow-citizens, it is time to bring this discourse to a close.

We have indulged in gratifying recollections of the past, in the prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the future.  But let us remember that we have duties and obligations to perform, corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy.  Let us remember the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to the rich inheritance which we have received from our fathers.  Let us feel our personal responsibility, to the full extent of our power and influence, for the preservation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.  And let us remember that it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy, under any form of government.  Let us hold fast the great truth, that communities are responsible, as well as individuals; that no government is respectable, which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society.  In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future.  And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended!  And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, “Thank God, I—­I also—­AM AN AMERICAN!”

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NOTE.

Page 139.

The following description of the Bunker Hill Monument and Square is from Mr. Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston, pp. 355, 356.

“Monument Square is four hundred and seventeen feet from north to south, and four hundred feet from east to west, and contains nearly six acres.  It embraces the whole site of the redoubt, and a part of the site of the breastwork.  According to the most accurate plan of the town and the battle (Page’s), the monument stands where the southwest angle of the redoubt was, and the whole of the redoubt was between the monument and the street that bounds it on the west.  The small mound in the northeast corner of the square is supposed to be the remains of the breastwork.  Warren fell about two hundred feet west of the monument.  An iron fence encloses the square, and another surrounds the monument.  The square has entrances on each of its sides, and at each of its corners, and is surrounded by a walk and rows of trees.