will also be repairing to the same fountains of instruction, will bring hither their genius to be kindled at our fire, and will carry back the fraternal affections which, nourished by the same alma mater, will knit us to them by the indissoluble bonds of early personal friendships.  The good Old Dominion, the blessed mother of us all, will then raise her head with pride among the nations, will present to them that splendor of genius which she has ever possessed, but has too long suffered to rest uncultivated and unknown, and will become a centre of ralliance to the States whose youths she has instructed, and, as it were, adopted.

I claim some share in the merits of this great work of regeneration.  My whole labors, now for many years, have been devoted to it, and I stand pledged to follow it up through the remnant of life remaining to me.  And what remuneration do I ask?  Money from the treasury?  Not a cent.  I ask nothing from the earnings or labors of my fellow-citizens.  I wish no man’s comforts to be abridged for the enlargement of mine.  For the services rendered on all occasions, I have been always paid to my full satisfaction.  I never wished a dollar more than what the law had fixed on.  My request is, only to be permitted to sell my own property freely to pay my own debts.  To sell it, I say, and not to sacrifice it, not to have it gobbled up by speculators to make fortunes for themselves, leaving unpaid those who have trusted to my good faith, and myself without resource in the last and most helpless stage of life.  If permitted to sell it in a way which will bring me a fair price, all will be honestly and honorably paid, and a competence left for myself, and for those who look to me for subsistence.  To sell it in a way which will offend no moral principle, and expose none to risk but the willing, and those wishing to be permitted to take the chance of gain.  To give me, in short, that permission which you often allow to others for purposes not more moral.

Will it be objected, that although not evil in itself, it may, as a precedent, lead to evil?  But let those who shall quote the precedent bring their case within the same measure.  Have they, as in this case, devoted three-score years and one of their lives, uninterruptedly, to the service of their country?  Have the times of those services been as trying as those which have embraced our Revolution, our transition from a colonial to a free structure of government?  Have the stations of their trial been of equal importance?  Has the share they have borne in holding their new government to its genuine principles, been equally marked?  And has the cause of the distress, against which they seek a remedy, proceeded, not merely from themselves, but from errors of the public authorities, disordering the circulating medium, over which they had no control, and which have, in fact, doubled and trebled debts, by reducing, in that proportion, the value of the property which was to pay them?