light visible to your eyes. And is it truly so? Are you convinced beyond a doubt, that the powers of eloquence are a wise, an honorable, a virtuous pursuit? A pursuit, to which justice, patriotism, and piety, with equal energy stimulate your souls? Then go with me but one step further; draw with me the only valuable inference, which can result from this long dissertation; the practical inference, which alone can make it of any use to you. Invert the advice of Timotheus to Alexander, and say to yourselves,

If the world be worth enjoying,

Think! Oh! think it worth thy winning.

I will conclude with urging upon your reflections the last great consideration, which I mentioned, as giving its keenest edge to the argument for devoting every faculty of the mind to the acquisition of eloquence; a consideration, arising from the peculiar situation and circumstances of our own country, and naturally connecting my present subject, the vindication of the science, with that, which will next claim your attention; I mean its origin and history.

Should a philosophical theorist, reasoning à priori, undertake to point out the state of things,

and of human society, which must naturally produce the highest exertions of the power of speech, he would recur to those important particulars, which actually existed in the Grecian commonwealths. The most strenuous energies of the human mind, would he say, are always employed, where they are instigated by the stimulus of the highest rewards. The art of speaking must be most eagerly sought, where it is found to be most useful. It must be most useful, where it is capable of producing the greatest effects; and that can be in no other state of things, than where the power of persuasion operates upon the will, and prompts the actions of other men. The only birth place of eloquence therefore must be a free state. Under arbitrary governments, where the lot is cast upon one man to command, and upon all the rest to obey; where the despot, like the Roman centurion, has only to say to one man, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh; persuasion is of no avil. Between au

thority and obedience there can be no deliberation; and wheresoever submission is the principle of government in a nation, eloquence can never arise. Eloquence is the child of liberty,

And

and can descend from no other stock. where will she find her most instructive school? Will it not be in a country, where the same spirit of liberty, which marks the relations between the individuals of the same community, is diffused over those more complicated and important relations between different communities? Where the independence of the man is corroborated and invigorated by the independence of the state? Where the same power of persuasion, which influences the will of the citizens at home, has the means of operating upon the will and the conduct of sovereign societies? Should it happen then, that a number of independent communities, founded upon the principles of civil and political liberty, were so reciprocally situated, as to have a great and continual intercourse with each other, and many momentous common interests, occasional as well as permanent, there above all others will be the spot, where eloquence will spring to light; will flourish; will rise to the highest perfection, of which human art or science is susceptible.

The experience of mankind has proved exactly conformable to this theory. The Gre

cian commonwealths furnish the earliest examples in history of confederated states with free governments; and there also the art of oratory was first practised, the science of rhetoric first invented; and both were raised to a pitch of unrivalled excellence and glory.

From this powerful concurrence of philosophical speculation with historical proof, there are several important inferences, which ought to be pressed with peculiar energy upon the consideration of all youthful Americans; and more especially of those, who are distinguished by the liberal discipline of a classical education, and enjoy the advantages of intellectual cultivation. They cannot fail to remark, that their own nation is at this time precisely under the same circumstances, which were so propitious to the advancement of rhetoric and oratory among the Greeks. Like them, we are divided into a number of separate commonwealths, all founded upon the principles of the most enlarged social and civil liberty. Like them, we are united in certain great national interests, and connected by a confederation, differing indeed in many essential particulars from theirs, but perhaps in a still higher degree

favorable to the influence and exertion of eloquence. Our institutions, from the smallest municipal associations to the great national bond, which links this continent in union, are republican. Their vital principle is liberty. Persuasion, or the influence of reason and of feeling, is the great if not the only instrument, whose operation can affect the acts of all our corporate bodies; of towns, cities, counties, states, and of the whole confederated empire. Here then eloquence is recommended by the most elevated usefulness, and encouraged by the promise of the most precious re

wards.

Finally, let us observe how much it tends to exalt and ennoble our ideas of this art, to find it both in speculation and experience, thus grappled, as with hooks of steel, to the soul of liberty. So dear, and so justly dear to us are the blessings of freedom, that if no other advantage could be ascribed to the powers of speech, than that they are her inseparable companions, that alone would be an unanswerable argument for us to cherish them with more than a mother's affection. Let then the frosty rigor of the logician tell you, that eloquence