DELIVERED AT THE BENEFICENT CONGREGATIONAL MEETING-HOUSE, JULY 4, 1838; BEING THE FIRST TEMPERANCE CELEBRATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, IN PROVIDENCE. BY L. M. SARGENT. PROVIDENCE: B. CRANSTON & CO. L. M. SARGENT, Esq. PROVIDENCE, July 7, 1838. DEAR SIR-The undersigned have the pleasure of communicating to you a copy of the Resolutions of the Committee of the Friends of Temperance for the celebration of the Anniversary of our National Independence, on the 4th instant, expressing their thanks for your very excellent, appropri, ate, and interesting Address delivered on that occasion, and requesting a copy of the same for publication. With an earnest desire that you will comply with this request, We remain, Yours, very respectfully, JOSIAH WHITAKER, Committee for requesting a copy of the Address, BOSTON, July 10, 1838. GENTLEMEN, I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 7th, communicating a vote, passed at a meeting of the friends of Temperance, in the city of Providence, on Friday, July 6, 1838. If in their opinion, gentlemen, and in your own, the cause of Temperance may derive the smallest additional support from a publication of the Address, delivered by me on the 4th instant, I most cheerfully acquiesce, The manuscript shall be transmitted, in such manner as you may direct, at any time after the 15th current, affording me the leisure moments of these few days, for revision. I remain, gentlemen, very truly and respectfully, Your friend and servant, JOSIAH WHITAKER, S. S. WARDWELL, THOMAS DAVIS, Esquires. L. M. SARGENT. ADDRESS. TO-DAY another link is added to the chain, which con hects the present and the past-another milestone is erected in the path of time. The last of that band of patriots, who signed the declaration of our national independence, is gathered to his fathers. The friend of Washington, the friend of liberty, he who, by planting his foot once more upon the soil of his adopted country, could gather around him the living remnant of his compatriots in arms, and brighten the recollection of the dead-the beloved, the lamented Lafayette, is no more upon the earth. His ashes belong to his native land-his imperishable glory to the world. A few years shall pass away, and not one living witness shall remain, to tell, with honest pride, of the part he bore, during those memorable days, which are said to have tried the souls of men. That white-haired old man, who, to-day, will gather his grandchildren about his knee, and, for the hundreth time, repeat the tireless tale of Lexington or Concord, Yorktown or Saratoga, shall ere long descend into the grave. What numbers have already lain down to slumber in their robes of glory! How feeble the remnant, which yet walks upon the earth! When the last of these hoary heads shall have departed, and nothing but tradition shall remain, may the story be transmitted, from age to age, to a people, brave, generous, and just, firmly attached to the constitution and the laws, and living in the love of country and the fear of God. The present is a day of unfading recollections. Think not, that I would check the patriot's joy, when I ask one honest tear from twelve millions of freemen, for two millions of slaves! So much for Africa; and how much for ourselves! I inquire, my respected fellow-countrymen, are there no slaves but the degraded African, in this happy land? What means this mighty moral revolution of the world, in which the wise and the good, of all classes and of every profession, are so earnestly engaged? What is this novel declaration of independence, already subscribed by millions of the citizens of these United States? We are gathered here, upon the invitation of those, whose high and holy design is the emancipation of man-not from those chains and fetters, with which a tyrant binds down his involuntary slaves, but from chains. and fetters of man's own imposing upon himself; beneath whose oppressive weight he writhes, and groans, and grovels in the very dust of the earth, a self-made slave, bowing before the unrelenting tyranny of his own unnatural appetites and passions. In full contemplation of such miserable vassalage as this, well and truly may we say to the most favored nation of the earth, in the language of St. Paul, "would to God, ye were not only almost but altogether such as we are, saving these bonds." Events of more than ordinary interest become entitled, by the common consent of mankind, to marks of distinction in the kalendar. The wheel of time turns not the tithe of a hair upon its axis, without bringing to light the anniversary of some interesting event, to a nation or to an individual, of sorrow or of joy. These recurrences of corresponding periods demand a token of commemoration, in some form or other, from those, who are immediately interested in their annual return. How various, and even opposite, in their character, the modes adopted by different nations of the earth, for the celebration of their jubilees of liberty! The jubilee of the Hebrews, which continued down to the period of the Babylonish captivity, and which was celebrated at the expiration of every fiftieth year, was marked by the emancipation of slaves; all slaves became freemen. The jubilee of the Romans, which was of annual occurrence, commencing about the middle of December, was also marked by the temporary emancipation of slaves. All slaves, during the continuance of the Saturnalia, were placed upon a footing of perfect equality with their masters. The jubilee of our own country, which is commemorated upon the return of this glorious anniversary, has been very commonly celebrated in a different manner. Slaves have not become freemen, but freemen have become slaves. By a species of political refinement, they have stupified their senses, and bartered their birthrights for the drunkard's fetters of shame. How many patriots upon this grand national jubilee, sacred to freedom, have entered, body and spirit, into the most degrading, voluntary bondage! How many have lulled their big hearts to slumber, overflowing with unutterable devotion to their beloved country, who, alas! have arisen, on the morrow, with a painful conviction, that it was nothing but the rum! Thank God, the fashion of these things passeth away. What, I ask you, my fellow-countrymen, are the appropriate means for the celebration of such a festival as this? Shall we pour libations, and put the goblet to our lips? Can it be necessary, for a christian and a patriot, to illustrate his love of rational liberty, by such means as these? Be it so then. Let us fill to the brim-but with the pure and wholesome beverage of God's appointment. Let us pledge one another and the world, that inebriating poison shall never mingle with our draught from the cradle to the grave. We are fathers-we will lean upon our children in the winter of life, when our joints are stiff and our hairs are gray; but never for support from the |