humanity; still there is some satisfaction in the remembrance, that ideas conserve men, and keep alive the vitality of nations. These ideas, alas! for the consistency of men! though often but abstractions there, have been made realities here. We have brought them with us to this continent; and in this young nation are striving to give them form, shape, and constant expression. With the noble tongue which Providence has given us, it will be difficult for us to be divorced from the spirit, which for centuries has been speaking through it. For a language acts in divers ways, upon the spirit of a people; even as the spirit of a people acts with a creative and spiritualizing force upon a language. But difficult though it be, such a separation is a possibility. And hence arises the duty of doing all we can to keep alive these grand ideas and noble principles. May we be equal to this duty—may we strive to answer this responsibility! Let us endeavor to live up to the sentiments breathed forth in all the legal charters, the noble literature, the religious learning of this tongue. Let us guard, even here, the right of Free Speech. Let us esteem it one of the proudest boasts of this land, and, to appropriate the happy language of a heathen—esteem it "the rare felicity of our times that, in this country, one can think what he pleases, and speak what he thinks."[1] Let us prize the principle of Personal Liberty, as one of the richest jewels of our constitutional diadem. Let us not shrink from the severest lest to which a heathen
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the english language in liberia.
