.MjEwNQ.MjgzNjk
490
the friends of liberty throughout the wide earth, and have the slow unmoving finger of seen pointed at us in all coming time. We have succeeded for a brief half century, a mere line on the scroll of ages. Some of the veterans who achieved our liberties yet linger among us to quicken our patriotisms and keep alive the spirit of the Resolution. The lessons of the past admonish as that the greatest danger we have to apprehend, is in the want of a proper degree of intelligence and public virtue, in the silent in roads of corruption, rather than the bold usurpations of tyranny, or the conquests of military force. Shall we not then profit by these lessons, and so diffuse intelligence among the people of this country, that they will never permit the vestal fires of Freedom which have been kindled upon our shores to be overwhelmed by the waves of ignorance, selfishness and veniality which have hitherto swept over the earth with resistless power, prostrating every generous aspiration for civil liberty and moral grandeur. Mr. President - We are about to separate. The faces, which for three months have been so familiar in this house, will soon all be gone: These empty halls will then echo the solitary footsteps of the intruder. And when we part, some of us will part to meet no more forever. Time and chance must happen to us all. The grave to which we are all rapidly hastening may thin our ranks before the snows of another winter may whiten our fields, or the autumn winds scatter the forest leaves. But there is yet happiness in store for us. You who have families will eagerly return to those who are near and dear to you; and with a consciousness of having faithfully performed your duty here, you will be prepared to enjoy the sweets of domestic felicity, and to enter with cheerful alacrity upon