Edwardsville spectator. [volume] (Edwardsville, Ill.) 1819-1826, 1821-08-14

connexions of friendship and of COM
merce with foreign nations. For all
these Offices, the same Congress which
issued the Declaration, and at the same
time with it, had provided. They re-
commended 10 the several states to form
civil governments for themselves, With
guarded and cautious deliberation they
matured a confederation for the whole
Union; and they prepared treaties OF
commerce, to be offered to the principal
maritime nations of the world. All
these objects were in great degree ac-
complished amid the din of arms, and
while every quarter of our country was
ransacked by the fury Of invasion. The
states organized their governments, all
in republican forms all on the princi-
piles of the Declaration. The contede-
ration was unanimously adopted by the
thirteen States, and treaties of commerce
were concluded with France and the
Netherlands, in which, for the first time,
the same just and magnanimous princl-
Piles, contained in the Declaration of In
dependence, were, so far as they could
be applicable to the intercourse between
nation and nation, solemnly recognized.
When experience had proved that the
Confederation was not adequate to the
national purposes of the country, the
people of the United States, without tu-
mutt, without violence, by their dele
gates, all chosen upon principles OF equal
right, formed more perfect Union, by
the establishment of the Federal Cons,i-
tuition. This has already passed the or
deal of one human generation. In all
the changes ofmen and of parties through
which it has passed, it has been adHinis-
tered on the same fundamental princi-
pies. Our manners, our habits, our
feelings, are all republican; and if our
principles had been when first proclaim
ed, doubtful to the ear of reason or the
sense ofhumarity, they would have been
reconciled to our understandings, and
endeared to our hearts by their practi-
cal operation. In the progress of forty
years since the acknowledgement Of our
Independence, we have gone through
many notifications of internal govern
ment, and through all the vicissitudes Of
peace and war, with other powerful ma
lions. But never, never for a moment
have the great principles, consecrated
by the Declaration of this day, been re-
nounced or abandoned.
And now, friends and countrymen, if
the wise and learned philosophers of the
elder world the first observers of nuta-
ton and alteration, the discoveries of
maddening ether and invisible planets,
the inventors of Congreve rockets and
Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts
disposed to inquire what has America
done for the benefit of mankind Let
our answer be this America, with the
same voice which spoke herself into ex-
istence as a nation, proclaimed to man
kind the inex,inguishable rights Of hu-
man nature, and the only lawful iounda-
tons Of government.
America, in the assembly of nations,
since her admission among them, has in
yariably, though often fruitlessly held
forth to them the hand of honest friend
ship, of equal freedom, of generous re-
ciprocity. She has uniformly spoken
among them, though often 10 needless,
and often to disdainful ears, the language
of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of
equal rights. She has, i'll the lapse OF
nearly half century, without single
exception, respected the independence
of other nations while asserting and main
tanning her own. She has abstained
from interference in the concerns of 9TH
ers, even when the conflict has been for
principles to which she clings, as to the
last vital drop that visits the heart. She
has seen that probably for centuries to
come, all the contests OF that Aceldama,
the European world, will be contests of
inveterate power and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and
independence has been or shall be un-
furled, there will her heart, her benedic
tons and her prayers be. But she goes
not abroad in search of monsters to de-
stroy. She is the well-wisher to the
freedom and independence of all. She
is the champion and vindcatcr only of
her own. She will recommend the
general cause by the countenance of her
voice and the benignant sympathy OF her
example. She we'll knows that by once
enlisting under other banners than her
own, were they even the banners OF
foreign independence, she would involve
herself beyond the power Of extrica,ion,
in all the wars of interest and intrigue,
of individual avarice, envy and ambition,
which assume the colors and usurp the
standard of freedom. The fundamental
maxims Of her policy would insensibly
change from liberty tic. force.-The 'front.'
Ia h. l<>nrou T.