When your venerated Sire, with burning zeal, proclaimed independence _now_, independence _forever_; when, with heroic and inflexible resolution, he signed his name to the great charter of our liberty, the place on which you now stand was a barren and unproductive forest. Now, "As the swollen column of ascending smoke," so swells her grandeur. From a thousand chimneys are emitted the living evidences of her prosperity. The flaming fire, the busy hammer, the revolving roller, all give daily, hourly proof of her rapid advancement. Here the rough misshapen elements of nature are formed and moulded to suit the purposes of man. Here machines to mitigate the toil of the laborer, and to facilitate intercourse between the States, are made with a skill unsurpassed even by the old world. Here the anchor is forged to give security and protection to the weather-beaten mariner. Here the shovel and the mattock, the plough and the harrow, go forth to ease the labors of the husbandman. And here the naked are clothed and the hungry fed, by the evolution of machinery "and the potent agency of steam." To what are we indebted for all these blessings? Since the war of the Revolution, to that wise TARIFF policy by which you were regulated when at the head of the government, and as chairman of the Committee on Manufactures in the Congress of the United States. No base subserviency to Foreign Powers dictated your course, but a manly and determined support of the true interests of the country, by the protection of its industry, and by a proper reciprocity of countervailing restrictions. We thank you, Sir--we thank you with the truest friendship and the deepest sincerity. We honor you for the lustre you have shed on all the high places it has been your good fortune to occupy--we praise you for that sublimest virtue which shines in all your actions--we see in your brow that undaunted valor which renders you inexorably firm in the discharge of all your public duties, and in your eye "that inextinguishable spark, that fires the souls of patriots." Great and good Citizen! Venerable and Venerated Man! Panegyric or Eulogy, now, or hereafter, cannot add one cubit to your stature. Live on--live on, in honor and in glory--and when "this corruptible _does_ put on incorruption, and this mortal, immortality," I pray God that it may be in the calm serenity of that summer's evening, when bonfires and illuminations light up the land, in commemoration of that glorious INDEPENDENCE, to the achievement of which your illustrious FATHER so largely, so eminently contributed. MR. ADAMS' REPLY. FELLOW-CITIZENS: Before I attempt to address you, and to respond to the eloquent discourse pronounced under circumstances so unauspicious to eloquence, I must apologize for my appearance before you.