The profession itself is numerous and powerful.... But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science.” With this knowledge of law, every other colonist was a keen debater for his private rights and, when the time came, for the rights of his community or nation. From a population thus educated sprang the forensic leaders of the Revolution; and to its sources in eighteenth-century popular education we follow back the steady stream of American eloquence which in the nineteenth century runs strong and full in the noblest efforts of American literature--say Webster’s tribute to Massachusetts in the reply to Hayne, and Lincoln’s undying speech at Gettysburg. So close indeed is the bond between juridic and political history on the one hand, and the achievement of the great American orators on the other, that they can be sundered, as in the following pages, only for purposes of general reference. Since a political history of the United States from the year 1783 is not here expected, we must limit ourselves to brief notice of a few representative men, taken in something like chronological order, and mainly between the years 1800 and 1865. With the Civil War, or perhaps with the second inaugural address of President Lincoln, ended the golden age of national eloquence. =Precursors of the Nineteenth Century.=--The careers of James Otis (1725-83), Samuel Adams (1722-1803), Josiah Quincy, Junior (1744-75), and Patrick Henry (1736-99), fall largely in the period covered by the pages from Tyler; and the orations and political writings of the Revolutionary Period itself do not come within the scope of the present sketch. Of course it is impossible to make a line of sharp division in the case of public men whom we instinctively couple with the earliest days of the Republic, but whose voices were heard to the verge of the next century, or even beyond. The “Farewell Address” of Washington to his countrymen in 1796, so long regarded with veneration, was, in spite of its conservative form, its Johnsonian balance, a document with matter for the coming age. However, it is clear that statesmen who were in their prime at the time of Washington’s death in 1799 more particularly require our attention.