I have stood on the spot where a treaty was made by William Penn with the aborigines of Pennsylvania, where a seat of empire was established by him, and, although the statue of the good man stands in public places, and his memory remains in the minds of men, yet there is no day set apart for the recollection of the time and occasion when civil and religious liberty were planted in that State.  I went still farther south, and descending the James River, sought the first colony of Virginia at Jamestown.  There remains nothing but the broken, ruined tower of a poor church built of brick, in which Pocahontas was married, and over the ruins of which the ivy now creeps.  Not a human being, bond or free, is to be seen within a mile from the spot, nor a town or city as numerously populated as Plymouth, on the whole shores of the broad, beautiful, majestic river, between Richmond at the head, and Norfolk, where arms and the government have established fortifications.  Nowhere else in America, then, was there left a remembrance by the descendants of the founders of colonies, of the virtues, the sufferings, the bravery, the fidelity to truth and freedom of their ancestors; and more painful still, nowhere in Europe can be found an acknowledgment or even a memory of these colonists.  In Holland, in Spain, in Great Britain, in France, nowhere is there to be found any remembrance of the men they sent out to plant liberty on this continent.  So on the way to the Mississippi, I saw where De Soto planted the standard of Spain, and, in imagination at least, I followed the march of Cortez in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru; but their memory has gone out.  Civil liberty perishes, and religious liberty was never known in South America; nor does Spain, any more than other lands, retain the memory of the apostles she sent out to convert the new world to a purer faith, and raise the hopes of mankind for the well-being of the future.

There was one only place, where a company of outcasts, men despised, contemned, reproached as malcontents and fanatics, had planted a colony, and that colony had grown and flourished; and there had never been a day since it was planted that the very town, and shore, and coast, where it was planted had not grown and spread in population, wealth, prosperity, and happiness, richer and stronger continually.  It had not only grown and flourished like a vigorous tree, rejoicing in its own strength, but had sent out offshoots in all directions.  Everywhere the descendants of these colonists were found engaged in the struggles for civil and religious liberty, and the rights of man.  I had found them by my side, the champions of humanity, upon whose stalwart arms I might safely rely.

I came here, then, because the occasion offered, and if I pretermitted this, it might be the last, and I was unwilling that any friend or any child, who might lean upon me, who reckoned upon my counsel or advice, should know that I had been such a truant to the cause of religious liberty and humanity, as never to have seen the Rock of Plymouth.