kingdoms to the centre. So far is it from the ordinary habits of
mankind to calculate the importance of events in their
elementary principles, that had the first colonists of our country
ever intimated as a part of their designs the project of founding
a great and mighty nation, the finger of scorn would have
pointed them to the cells of Bedlam as an abode more suitable
for hatching vain empires than the solitude of a transatlantic
desert.

These consequences, then so little foreseen, have unfolded
themselves, in all their grandeur, to the eyes of the present age.
It is a common amusement of speculative minds to contrast the
magnitude of the most important events with the minuteness of
their primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full of
examples for such contemplations. It is, however, a more
profitable employment to trace the constituent principles of
future greatness in their kernel; to detect in the acorn at our
feet the germ of that majestic oak, whose roots shoot down to
the centre, and whose branches aspire to the skies. Let it be,
then, our present occupation to inquire and endeavor to
ascertain the causes first put in operation at the period of our
commemoration, and already productive of such magnificent
effects; to examine with reiterated care and minute attention
the characters of those men who gave the first impulse to a
new series of events in the history of the world; to applaud and
emulate those qualities of their minds which we shall find
deserving of our admiration; to recognize with candor those
features which forbid approbation or even require censure, and,
finally, to lay alike their frailties and their perfections to our
own hearts, either as warning or as example.