The political prosperity which this country has attained, and which it now enjoys, has been acquired mainly through the instrumentality of the present government.  While this agent continues, the capacity of attaining to still higher degrees of prosperity exists also.  We have, while this lasts, a political life capable of beneficial exertion, with power to resist or overcome misfortunes, to sustain us against the ordinary accidents of human affairs, and to promote, by active efforts, every public interest.  But dismemberment strikes at the very being which preserves these faculties.  It would lay its rude and ruthless hand on this great agent itself.  It would sweep away, not only what we possess, but all power of regaining lost, or acquiring new possessions.  It would leave the country, not only bereft of its prosperity and happiness, but without limbs, or organs, or faculties, by which to exert itself hereafter in the pursuit of that prosperity and happiness.

Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome.  If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests.  It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley.  All these might be rebuilt.  But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government?  Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty?  Who shall frame together the skilful architecture which unites national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity?  No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again.  Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality.  Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them, than were ever shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art; for they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional American liberty.

But let us hope for better things.  Let us trust in that gracious Being who has hitherto held our country as in the hollow of his hand.  Let us trust to the virtue and the intelligence of the people, and to the efficacy of religious obligation.  Let us trust to the influence of Washington’s example.  Let us hope that that fear of Heaven which expels all other fear, and that regard to duty which transcends all other regard, may influence public men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in her happy career.  Full of these gratifying anticipations and hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is now commenced.  A hundred years hence, other disciples of Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration than we now commemorate