In thus calling your attention to some of the peculiar features in the principles, the character, and the history of our forefathers, it is as wide from my design, as I know it would be from your approbation, to adorn their memory with a chaplet plucked from the domain of others.  The occasion and the day are more peculiarly devoted to them, and let it never be dishonored with a contracted and exclusive spirit.  Our affections as citizens embrace the whole extent of the Union, and the names of Raleigh, Smith, Winthrop, Calvert, Penn, and Oglethorpe, excite in our minds recollections equally pleasing and gratitude equally fervent with those of Carver and Bradford.  Two centuries have not yet elapsed since the first European foot touched the soil which now constitutes the American Union.  Two centuries more and our numbers must exceed those of Europe itself.  The destinies of this empire, as they appear in prospect before us, disdain the powers of human calculation.  Yet, as the original founder of the Roman state is said once to have lifted upon his shoulders the fame and fortunes of all his posterity, so let us never forget that the glory and greatness of all our descendants is in our hands.  Preserve in all their purity, refine, if possible, from all their alloy, those virtues which we this day commemorate as the ornament of our forefathers.  Adhere to them with inflexible resolution, as to the horns of the altar; instill them with unwearied perseverance into the minds of your children; bind your souls and theirs to the national Union as the chords of life are centred in the heart, and you shall soar with rapid and steady wing to the summit of human glory.  Nearly a century ago, one of those rare minds to whom it is given to discern future greatness in its seminal principles upon contemplating the situation of this continent, pronounced, in a vein of poetic inspiration, “Westward the star of empire takes its way.”  Let us unite in ardent supplication to the Founder of nations and the Builder of worlds, that what then was prophecy may continue unfolding into history,—­that the dearest hopes of the human race may not be extinguished in disappointment, and that the last may prove the noblest empire of time.

LAFAYETTE (Delivered in Congress, December 31st, 1834)

On the sixth of September, 1757, Lafayette was born.  The kings of Prance and Britain were seated upon their thrones by virtue of the principle of hereditary succession, variously modified and blended with different forms of religious faith, and they were waging war against each other, and exhausting the blood and treasure of their people for causes in which neither of the nations had any beneficial or lawful interest.