To crown the whole, time in its course has recognized the supremacy of political and religious toleration, and established constitutional freedom on the basis of equal rights and even and exact justice to all men. That New-York has given her full measure of toil, expenditure, and talent in furtherance of these vast results, by her patriots and statesmen, is proclaimed in grateful accents by the myriad voice of the nation at large.
But however gratifying to national feeling our cogitations on themes of this nature might prove, they fall not within the scope of our present intentions. A special and much more definite object on this occasion is a reference to individuality. While we ponder at our leisure on those great issues already hinted at, we feel that specific justice has not been awarded to individual merit; and that in our general glorification of acts and principles, we have proved laggard in our encomiums on the authors and the actors of the very deeds which invoke our panegyric. The most amiable tendency of the human heart is the intrinsic appreciation of the noble spirits of a land, whose services have conferred benefits of wide and lasting duration; wisdom no less than gratitude cherishes their memories, and the example of their life is the most powerful stimulus to future efforts on the part of their successors. A people who cherish this reverence must naturally possess that delicious frame of mind whose most effective powers are manifested in the results of a philanthropic spirit, and whose joys are most in harmony with the diviner essence of our nature.
Duly to estimate the career of duty, which has marked the lives of the men who thus by individual or confederated toll reared up the nation to a commanding and an exemplary attitude, it becomes obligatory on us to scrutinize in distinctive cases the circumstances which checked or advanced their praiseworthy impulses for the public weal. It is only by such investigations and inquiries that we become proper umpires of their merits, can truthfully award the just meed of praise, or hold in reverence their claims to regard. As at the juridical tribunal circumstantial evidence is demanded, in order to arrive at a proper conclusion and pronounce an honest verdict in the premises, so in the various occupations and transactions of men, we associate the
