Excerpt from An Oration, Delivered in Newburyport, on the Forty-Fifth Anniversary of American Independence, July 4, 1821 What expedient then Shall the established govern ments of Europe employ to arrest the rapid advance ment of liberal principles? Will they put their trust in the blind respect, with which mankind have been ac customed to regard superior birth? They might have done this in the dark ages, when the v'assal was but lit tle raised in estimation above the brute beasts in whose company he tilled the soil; but centuries are since gone by, and the oppressed and the Oppressor have descend ed to the tomb together, where their remains are moul dering and corrupting into the same undistinguishable dust. SO capricious and changeable is fortune that the very names of the haughty lords of other times are pre served only in the fugitive and decaying records of the historian, their race extinct, their titles transferred to the upstart courtier of yesterday, and their palaces be come the banqueting-hall in which the posterity Of their meanest Slave may now be revelling as gaily and arro gantly as ever they did in the proudest moments of their glory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.