But I forbear. Those who are more competent than I am will consider these questions and others growing out of them, and, I trust, correctly decide them.

Respectfully submitted,

SAMUEL HOAR.

December 20, 1844.

JOHN G. PALFREY, D.D., LL.D.,

Secretary of the Commonwealth.

Samuel Hoar was born in Lincoln, Mass., in 1778. His father, both grandfathers, and two uncles were at Concord Bridge on the 19th of April, 1775, in the Lincoln Company. His father, Samuel Hoar, was a Revolutionary officer and served many years in the Massachusetts legislature. The son was graduated at Harvard in 1802, was for two years a private tutor in Virginia, then studied law, and began practice in Concord, which was his home for the rest of his life: he died in 1856. He became one of the most eminent lawyers in the State. He was a member of the State Constitutional Convention in 1820, three times a member of the State Senate, and in 1835-37 a member of Congress. In 1844 he was sent by the legislature to South Carolina to test the constitutionality of acts of that State authorizing the imprisonment of free colored persons who entered it. The excitement which his appearance caused and his expulsion from Charleston constitute one of the most stirring chapters of the anti-slavery struggle. His own account of this and Governor Briggs's message concerning it, with other papers, are printed in the present leaflet. Charles Francis Adams was the chairman of the legislative committee which prepared the report on the matter; and that very able report is Senate Document 31, 1845.

Samuel Hoar married a daughter of Roger Sherman; and among their sons were Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and George Frisbie Hoar. The latter has written the best memoir of his father, in the Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society, vol. iii. This contains a list of other biographical accounts and tributes from Governor Andrew, Charles Sumner, Winthrop, Lyman Beecher, and others. Starr King said of him that "he lived all the beatitudes daily.' But," said Senator Hoar, "the best memorial of Samuel Hoar will be found in the two sketches by Ralph Waldo Emerson, noble and faithful as faces of Vandyke." One of these was published in Putnam's Monthly, December, 1856; the other in the Monthly Religious Magazine, January, 1857. Both appear in Emerson's "Lectures and Biographical Sketches." 1903.

By national literature we mean the expression of a nation's mind in writing. We mean the production among a people of important works in philosophy, and in the departments of imagination and taste. We mean the contributions of new truths to the stock of human knowledge. We mean the thoughts of profound and original minds, elaborated by the toil of composition, and fixed and made immortal in books. We mean the manifestation of a nation's intellect in the only forms by which it can multiply itself at home, and send itself abroad. We mean that a nation shall take a place, by its authors, among the lights of the world. It will be seen that we include under literature all the writings of superior minds, be the subjects what they may. We are aware that the term is often confined to compositions which relate to human nature and human life; that it is not generally extended to physical science; that mind, not matter, is regarded as its main subject and sphere. the worlds of matter and mind are too intimately connected to admit of exact partition. All the objects of human thought flow into one another. Moral and physical truths have many bonds and analogies, and, whilst the former are the chosen and noblest themes of literature, we are not anxious to divorce them from the latter, or to shut them up in a separate department. The expression of superior mind in writing we regard, then, as a nation's literature. We regard its gifted men, whether devoted to the exact sciences, to mental and ethical philosophy, to history and legislation, or to fiction and poetry, as forming a

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noble intellectual brotherhood; and it is for the purpose of quickening all to join their labors for the public good that we offer the present plea in behalf of a national literature.

To show the importance which we attach to the subject, we begin with some remarks on what we deem the distinction which a nation should most earnestly covet. We believe that more distinct apprehensions on this point are needed, and that, for want of them, the work of improvement is carried on with less energy, consistency, and wisdom, than may and should be brought to bear upon it. The great distinction of a country, then, is, that it produces superior men. Its natural advantages are not to be disdained. But they are of secondary importance. No matter what races of animals a country breeds, the great question is, Does it breed a noble race of men? No matter what its soil may be, the great question is, How far is it prolific of moral and intellectual power? No matter how stern its climate is, if it nourish force of thought and virtuous purpose. These are the products by which a country is to be tried, and institutions have value only by the impulse which they give to the mind. It has sometimes been said that the noblest men grow where nothing else will grow. This we do not believe, for mind is not the creature of climate or soil. But were it true, we should say that it were better to live among rocks and sands than in the most genial and productive region on the face of the earth.

As yet the great distinction of a nation on which we have insisted has been scarcely recognized. The idea of forming a superior race of men has entered little into schemes of policy. Invention and effort have been expended on matter much more than on mind. Lofty piles have been reared; the earth has groaned under pyramids and palaces. The thought of building up a nobler order of intellect and character has hardly crossed the most adventurous statesman. We beg that we may not be misapprehended. We offer these remarks to correct what we deem a disproportioned attention to physical good, and not at all to condemn the expenditure of ingenuity and strength on the outward world. There is a harmony between all our great interests, between inward and outward improvements; and by establishing among them a wise order all will be secured. We have no desire to shut up man in his own spiritual nature. The mind was made to act on matter, and it grows by expressing itself in material forms. We believe, too, that in proportion as

it shall gain intellectual and moral power it will exert itself with increased energy and delight on the outward creation; will pour itself forth more freely in useful and ornamental arts; will rear more magnificent structures, and will call forth new beauties in nature. An intelligent and resolute spirit in a community perpet tally extends its triumphs over matter. It can even subject to tself the most unpromising region. Holland, diked from the ocean,- Venice, rising amidst the waves,— and New England, bleak and rock-bound New England, converted by a few generations from a wilderness into smiling fields and opulent cities,- point us to the mind as the great source of physical good, and teach us that, in making the culture of man our highest end, we shall not retard, but advance the cultivation of nature.

The question which we most solicitously ask about this country is, what race of men it is likely to produce. We consider its liberty of value only as far as it favors the growth of men. What is liberty? The removal of restraint from human powers. Its benefit is that it opens new fields for action and a wider range for the mind. The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people's energy, intellect, and virtues. The savage makes his boast of freedom. But what is its worth? Free as he is, he continues for ages in the same ignorance, leads the same comfortless life, sees the same untamed wilderness spread around him. He is indeed free from what he calls the yoke of civil institutions. But other and worse chains bind him. The very privation of civil government is in effect a chain; for, by withholding protection from property, it virtually shackles the arm of industry, and forbids exertion for the melioration of his lot. Progress, the growth of power, is the end and boon of liberty; and, without this, a people may have the name, but want the substance and spirit of freedom.

We are the more earnest in enlarging on these views because we feel that our attachment to our country must be very much proportioned to what we deem its tendency to form a generous race of men. We pretend not to have thrown off national feeling; but we have some stronger feelings. We love our country much, but mankind more. As men and Christians, our first desire is to see the improvement of human nature. We desire to see the soul of man wiser, firmer, nobler, more conscious of its imperishable treasures, more beneficent and powerful, more

alive to its connection with God, more able to use pleasure and prosperity aright, and more victorious over poverty, adversity, and pain. In our survey of our own and other countries, the great question which comes to us is this, Where and under what institutions are men most likely to advance? Where are the soundest minds and the purest hearts formed? What nation possesses, in its history, its traditions, its government, its religion, its manners, its pursuits, its relations to other communi. ties, and especially in its private and public means of education, the instruments and pledges of a more resolute virtue and devotion to truth than we now witness? Such a nation, be it where it may, will engage our warmest interest. We love our country, but not blindly. In all nations we recognize one great family, and our chief wish for our native land is that it may take the first rank among the lights and benefactors of the human race.

These views will explain the vast importance which we attach to a national literature. By this, as we have said, we understand the expression of a nation's mind in writing. It is the action of the most gifted understandings on the community. It throws into circulation through a wide sphere the most quickening and beautiful thoughts which have grown up in men of laborious study or creative genius. It is a much higher work than the communication of a gifted intellect in discourse. It is the mind giving to multitudes, whom no voice can reach, its compressed and selected thoughts in the most lucid order and attractive forms which it is capable of inventing. In other words, literature is the concentration of intellect for the purpose of spreading itself abroad and multiplying its energy.

Such being the nature of literature, it is plainly among the most powerful methods of exalting the character of a nation, of forming a better race of men; in truth, we apprehend that it may claim the first rank among the means of improvement. We know nothing so fitted to the advancement of society as to bring its higher minds to bear upon the multitude; as to establish close connections between the more or less gifted; as to spread far and wide the light which springs up in meditative, profound, and sublime understandings. It is the ordinance of God, and one of his most benevolent laws, that the human race should be carried forward by impulses which originate in a few minds, perhaps in an individual; and in this way the most interesting relations and dependencies of life are framed. When a great truth is to be revealed, it does not flash at once on the