An Oration Delivered Before The Washington Society In Boston On The Fourth Of July 1816 PDF Download

Excerpt from An Oration, Delivered Before the Washington Society, in Boston: On the Fourth of July, 1816 Important events occur in the history of every people, which the wisdom and patriotism of statesmen mark out to be commemorated by anniversary celebrations. There is a fitness and propriety in the thing, that at once approves itself to every reflecting mind. Nothing has a stronger tendency to nourish a lofty and generous patriotism. We seem to participate in the glory of those great deeds, which we celebrate, and the sentiment of patriotism becomes identified with that of self-love. Actions that have in themselves a character of peculiar grandeur, or that have in the current of events led to important results, cannot be left to sleep in obscurity with the common mass of history. They necessarily stand forward in bold relief among the monuments of national glory, and become, as it were, central points, around which the feelings of patriotism are rallied. What event could more suitably be selected for this purpose by any people, than the act that made them an independent nation. The declaration of Independence by the patriots of '76 was an act of that moral sublimity, that finds few parallels in the history of nations. It was an act by which an infant people set at defiance the vengeance of one of the oldest and most powerful nations in the world! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.