“Theirs was the task (and nobly did they perform it) to possess themselves, us, of this goodly land, to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours to transmit these--the former unprofaned by the foot of an intruder, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation--to the generation that fate shall permit the world to know. “This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity--all imperatively require us faithfully to perform. “How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? “Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? “Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa, combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. “At what point, then, is this approach of danger to be expected? “I answer, if ever it reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide. “I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now something of ill-omen amongst us. “I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. “This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to deny. “Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. “They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun of the latter. “They are not the creatures of climate, neither are they confined to the slave-holding or non-slave-holding States. “Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting Southerners and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. “Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. “Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they may undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or Presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. “What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never! “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. “It seeks no distinction in adding story to story upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others.