“To the ardent wishes of this vast assembly I unite my fervent prayer to that infinite and awful Being without whose favor all human power is but vanity, that he will crown your labor with his blessing, and our work with immortality.”

As soon as he had ended, the President of the United States, to whom Gen. Mercer had presented the spade, stepped forward, and, with an animation of manner and countenance which showed that his whole heart was in the thing, thus addressed the assembly of his fellow-citizens:—­

“Friends and Fellow-citizens:  It is nearly a full century since Berkely, bishop of Cloyne, turning towards this fair land which we now inhabit, the eyes of a prophet, closed a few lines of poetical inspiration with this memorable prediction—­

    “Time’s noblest empire is the last :”—­

a prediction which, to those of us whose lot has been cast by Divine Providence in these regions, contains not only a precious promise, but a solemn injunction of duty, since upon our energies, and upon those of our posterity, its fulfilment will depend.  For with reference to what principle could it be that Berkely proclaimed this, the last, to be the noblest empire of time?  It was, as he himself declares, on the transplantation of learning and the arts to America.  Of learning and the arts.  The four first acts—­the empires of the old world, and of former ages—­the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, the Roman empires—­were empires of conquest, dominions of man over man.  The empire which his great mind, piercing into the darkness of futurity, foretold in America, was the empire of learning and the arts,—­the dominion of man over himself, and over physical nature—­acquired by the inspirations of genius, and the toils of industry; not watered with the tears of the widow and the orphan; not cemented in the blood of human victims; founded not in discord, but in harmony,—­of which the only spoils are the imperfections of nature, and the victory achieved is the improvement of the condition of all.  Well may this be termed nobler than the empire of conquest, in which man subdues only his fellow-man.

“To the accomplishment of this prophecy, the first necessary step was the acquisition of the right of self-government, by the people of the British North American Colonies, achieved by the Declaration of Independence, and its acknowledgment by the British nation.  The second was the union of all these colonies under one general confederated Government—­a task more arduous than that of the preceding separation, but at last effected by the present constitution of the United States.