when we consider that state of society in which they had been adopted, and in which they seemed necessary.  Our fathers had that religious sentiment, that trust in Providence, that determination to do right, and to seek, through every degree of toil and suffering, the honor of God, and the preservation of their liberties, which we shall do well to cherish, to imitate, and to equal, so far as God may enable us.  It may be true, and it is true, that in the progress of society the milder virtues have come to belong more especially to our day and our condition.  The Pilgrims had been great sufferers from intolerance; it was not unnatural that their own faith and practice, as a consequence, should become somewhat intolerant.  This is the common infirmity of human nature.  Man retaliates on man.  It is to be hoped, however, that the greater spread of the benignant principles of religion, and of the divine charity of Christianity, has, to some extent, improved the sentiments which prevailed in the world at that time.  No doubt the “first comers,” as they were called, were attached to their own forms of public worship and to their own particular and strongly cherished religious sentiments.  No doubt they esteemed those sentiments, and the observances which they practised, to be absolutely binding on all, by the authority of the word of God.  It is true, I think, in the general advancement of human intelligence, that we find what they do not seem to have found, that a greater toleration of religious opinion, a more friendly feeling toward all who profess reverence for God, and obedience to His commands, is not inconsistent with the great and fundamental principles of religion—­I might rather say is, itself, one of those fundamental principles.  So we see in our day, I think, without any departure from the essential principles of our fathers, a more enlarged and comprehensive Christian philanthropy.  It seems to be the American destiny, the mission which God has intrusted to us here on this shore of the Atlantic, the great conception and the great duty to which we are born, to show that all sects, and all denominations, professing reverence for the authority of the Author of our being, and belief in His Revelations, may be safely tolerated without prejudice either to our religion or to our liberties. [Cheers.]

We are Protestants, generally speaking; but you all know that there presides at the head of the Supreme Judicature of the United States a Roman Catholic; and no man, I suppose, through the whole United States, imagines that the judicature of the country is less safe, that the administration of public justice is less respectable or less secure, because the Chief Justice of the United States has been, and is, an ardent adherent to that religion.  And so it is in every department of society amongst us.  In both Houses of Congress, in all public offices, and all public affairs, we proceed on the idea that a man’s religious belief is a matter above human law; that