FELLOW-CITIZENS,--Knowing well the character of the good people in the region where we are assembled, I feel that our cause is safe in your hands; nor do you need my voice to quicken the generous zeal which throbs in all your hearts. Proceeding from intelligence and from conscience, your zeal, I am sure, is wise, steady, and determined, even if it do not show itself in much speaking,--like your own faithful Representative in Congress, Mr. Buffinton, who never misses a vote, and whose presence alone is often as good as a speech. He will pardon me, if I say that I am glad to see him here among his constituents, so many of whom I now meet for the first time face to face. You would hardly bear with me, if, on this occasion, I undertook to occupy your time at length. There is a time for all things; and let me say frankly, that I have come here to mingle with my fellow-citizens, and to partake of their social joy, rather than to make a speech. And yet I cannot let the opportunity pass without undertaking for a brief moment to impress upon you our duties in one single aspect,--I mean _simply as citizens of Massachusetts_. Of course you have duties as men, belonging to the great human family; you have duties also as American citizens, belonging to this National Republic; and you have duties especially as citizens of Massachusetts, not inconsistent with those other duties, but merely cumulative and confirmatory. Happily, in all good governments duties do not clash, but harmonize; and we may well suspect any pretension, whatever name it assumes, which cannot bear this touchstone. As _men_, our duties have been grandly denoted in that ancient verse which aroused the applause of the Roman theatre:-- “Myself a man, nought touching man alien to me I deem.”[1] What can be broader or more Christian than this heathen utterance? Sympathy, kindness, succor are due from man to man. This is a debt which, though daily paid, can never be cancelled while life endures. And this debt has the sanction of Religion, so that wrong to man is impiety to God. Of course, in the constant discharge of this debt, we must be the enemies of injustice, wherever it shows itself. Nor can we hesitate because injustice is organized in the name of Law and assumes the front of Power. On this very account we must be the more resolute against it.