Alexandria gazette & daily advertiser. [volume] (Alexandria [Va.]) 1817-1822, 1821-07-13

OCCUSSUH " To"us'eS eeO DeoSo' ooeoSe
of Independence, on the Fourth Of July,
1921.
BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
Fellow Citizens:
Until within few days preceding
that which we have again assembled to
commemorate, our Fathers, the people Of
this Union, had constituted portion of
the British nation; nation renowned in
Arts and Arms who, from small Island
in the Atlantic Ocean had extended their
dominion over considerable parts ofevery
quarter of the Globe. Governed them
selves by race of Kings, whose title to
sovereignty had originally been founded
in conquest, spell-bound for a succession
of ages under that portentious system of
despotism and of superstition which, in
the name of the meek and humble Jesus,
had been spread over the Christian world,
the history of this nation had, for a peri
cd of seven hundred years, from the days
of the conquest till our own. exhibited
conflict almost continual, between the OPP
pressions of power and the claims of
RIGHT. In the theories of the Crown and
the Mitre man had no rights. Neither
the body nor the soul of the individual
was his own From the impenetrable
Gloom of this intellectual darkness, and
the deep degradation of this servitude,
the British nation had partially emerged.
The Martyrs of religious freedom had
consumed to ashes at the stake: the
champions Of temporal liberty had bowed
their heads upon the scaffold; and the
spirits of many bloody day had left their
earthly pesture upon the field Of battle,
and scared to plead the cause of liberty
before the throne of Heaven. The peo-
pie of Britain, through long ages of civil
war, had extorted from their tyrants not
acknowledgements, but grants, of right
With this concession they had been con-
tent to stop in the progress of human i'm
provement They received their free
don as donation from their sovereigns !;
thew appealed for their privileges to sign
manual and seal; they held their title to
liberty, like their title to lands, from the
bounty of man; and in their moral and
political chronology, the great charter of
Runny Mead was the beginning of the
world.
From the earliest ages of their recor-
ded history, the inhabitants of the British
Islands have been distinguished for their
intelligence and their spirit. How much
ofthese two qualities, the fountains of all
amelioration in the condition of men, was
stifled by these two principles of subsur-
viency to ecclesiastical usurpation, and of
holding rights as the donation of kings,
this is not the occasion to enquire.
Of their tendency to palsy the vigor
and enervate the the faculties of man, all
philosophical reasoning, and all actualex-
perience, concur in testimony.
These principles, however, were not
peculiar to the people of Britain. They
were the decisions Of all Europe, still the
most enlightened and most improbable
portion of the earth. The temporal chain
was rivitted upon the people of Britain
by the Conquest. Their spiritual letters
were forged by subtlety working upon
superstition. Baneful as the effect of
>these principles was, they could not for
ever extinguish the light of reason in the
human mind The discovery of the Mari
ner's Compass was soon followed by the
extension of intercourse between nations
the most distant, and which, without
that light beaming in darkness to guide
the path Of man over the boundless waste
of waters, could never have been known
to each other The invention of Printing
and the composition of gun-powder, which
revolutionized at once the art and science
of war, and the relations of peace; the re-
violation of India to Vasco de Cana, and
the disclosure to Columbus ofths Ameri-
can hemisphere, all resulted fro the in
compressible energies of the hun IAN intel
lect. bound and crippled as it was by the
double cords of ecclesiastical imposture
and political oppression, To these pow
erfui agents in the progressive improve
ment of our species, Britain can lay no
claim. For them the children of men are
indebted to Italy, to Germany, to Portu-
gal, and to Spain, All these improve
ments. however, consisted in successfulre
searches into the properties and modif
cations Of external nature. The religious
Reformation was an improvement in the
science of mind; an Improvement in the