We are not assembled, therefore, fellow-citizens, as men overwhelmed with calamity by the sudden disruption of the ties of friendship or affection, or as in despair for the republic by the untimely blighting of its hopes.  Death has not surprised us by an unseasonable blow.  We have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but it has closed only over mature years, over long-protracted public service, over the weakness of age, and over life itself only when the ends of living had been fulfilled.  These suns, as they rose slowly and steadily, amidst clouds and storms, in their ascendant, so they have not rushed from their meridian to sink suddenly in the west.  Like the mildness, the serenity, the continuing benignity of a summer’s day, they have gone down with slow-descending, grateful, long-lingering light; and now that they are beyond the visible margin of the world, good omens cheer us from “the bright track of their fiery car”!

There were many points of similarity in the lives and fortunes of these great men.  They belonged to the same profession, and had pursued its studies and its practice, for unequal lengths of time indeed, but with diligence and effect.  Both were learned and able lawyers.  They were natives and inhabitants, respectively, of those two of the Colonies which at the Revolution were the largest and most powerful, and which naturally had a lead in the political affairs of the times.  When the Colonies became in some degree united, by the assembling of a general Congress, they were brought to act together in its deliberations, not indeed at the same time, but both at early periods.  Each had already manifested his attachment to the cause of the country, as well as his ability to maintain it, by printed addresses, public speeches, extensive correspondence, and whatever other mode could be adopted for the purpose of exposing the encroachments of the British Parliament and animating the people to a manly resistance.  Both were not only decided, but early, friends of Independence.  While others yet doubted, they were resolved; where others hesitated, they pressed forward.  They were both members of the committee for preparing the Declaration of Independence, and they constituted the sub-committee appointed by the other members to make the draft.  They left their seats in Congress, being called to other public employments, at periods not remote from each other, although one of them returned to it afterwards for a short time.  Neither of them was of the assembly of great men which formed the present Constitution, and neither was at any time a member of Congress under its provisions.  Both have been public ministers abroad, both Vice-Presidents and both Presidents of the United States.  These coincidences are now singularly crowned and completed.  They have died together; and they died on the anniversary of liberty.