OLIVER HAZARD PERRY.—Ibid.

This anniversary of the great action of Oliver Hazard Perry is set apart for inaugurating a monument to his fame. Who has not heard how gallantly, forty-seven years ago, the young hero, still weak from a wasting fever, led his squadron to battle? As if shielded by a higher power, he encountered death on his right hand, and death on his left, ever in advance, almost alone for two hours fighting his ship, till it became a wreck, so that but one of its guns could be used any longer, and more than four-fifths of his crew lay around him wounded or killed; then unharmed, standing as beseemed his spirit, he passed in a boat to the uninjured Niagara, unfurled his flag, bore down within pistol-shot of his enemy, poured into them broadsides starboard and broadsides port, and while the sun was still high above the horizon, left no office to be done but that of mercy to the vanquished. If the comparison does not seem fanciful, I will call his conduct during those eventful hours a complete lyric poem, perfect in all its parts. Though he was carried away and raised above himself by the power with which he was possessed, the passion of his inspiration was tempered by the serene self-possession of his faultless courage; his will had the winged rapidity of fiery thought, and yet observed with deliberateness the combinations of harmony and the proportions of measured order.

Nor may you omit due honors to the virtues of the unrecorded dead; not as mourners who require consolation, but with a clear perception of the glory of their end. The debt of nature all must pay. To die, if need be, in defense of the country is a common obligation; it is granted to few to exchange life for a victory so full of benefits to their fellow-men. These are the disinterested, unnamed martyrs, who, without hope, or fame, or gain, gave up their lives in testimony to the all pleading love of country, and left to our statesmen the lesson to demand of others nothing but what is right, and to submit to no wrong.

"We have met the enemy," were Perry's words as he reported the result of the battle. And who was that enemy? A nation speaking another tongue? A state abandoned to the caprices of despotism? A people inimical to human freedom? No! they were the nation from whom most of us sprung, using the same copious language, cherishing after their fashion the love of liberty, enjoying internally the freest government that the world had known before our own. But the external policy of their government has been less controlled by regard for right than their domestic administration; and a series of wanton aggression, upon us, useless to England, condemned by her own statesmen and judges as violations of the law of nature and the law of nations, forced into a conflict two peoples whose common sympathies should never have been disturbed. And is this aggressive system forever to be adventured by her rulers? How long is the overshadowing aristocratic element in her government to stand between the natural affections of kindred nations.