Oration,

Delivered at the Celebration of the Admission of California into the Union, Tuesday, October 29th, 1850.

BY NATHANIEL BENNETT.

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FELLOW-CITIZENS: The human heart is never in repose. moment it is oppressed with gloom; another, enlivened with gayety. It vibrates unceasingly, between the pangs of disappointment and the cheerful excitement of gratified desire. These varying emotions sometimes spring from individual causes, limited in their effects, and rarely extending beyond the precincts of individual interests; at other times, their sources flow from some great national blessing, or some great national calamity, and pervading alike all portions of the land, pour their flood of sweet or of bitter waters through every heart.

A few weeks ago we were congregated on this very spot. It was a day of mourning.* The head of the nation had been laid low in the earth. That heart which beat so warmly for us had ceased its friendly throbs in the embrace of death. The wave of sorrow starting from the Atlantic shores of the continent, and gathering accumulated force in its progress, had just burst over the hills and valleys of California, and its solemn murmurings were mingled with the surge of the Pacific. On the occasion to which I allude, emblems of mourning saddened our sight. The pall, the hearse, the drapery of black, the strains of martial music borne upon the air in tones of woe, and the sad thoughts speaking from the melancholy countenances of the vast assemblage-all proclaimed that the cherished hopes of a whole nation had been smitten down, and that the wail of a nation's anguish was ascending to heaven.

But two short months have elapsed, and we again stand upon the same spot. But how changed the scene! Cheerfulness has taken the place of sadness. Buoyancy of spirit has succeeded to despondency and regret. Badges of rejoicing everywhere greet the eye, and acclamations of pleasure salute the ear. Amid yon forest of a thousand masts, innumerable gay pennants and signals are flung to the breeze, in token that the sons of ocean, equally with the dwellers upon land, participate in the general jubilee. Banners and music, as of a triumphing army, mingle in our march. The deep voices of a hundred cannons proclaim our congratulations. Business stands still in the streets; and all the fair, the gay, hoary-headed age, and elastic youth, and vigorous manhood, have gathered here to-day, as from a strong and common impulse, to testify, in this imposing manner, their deep and abiding joy that California at length stands an equal among her sisters, the thirty-first State of the American Union.

At any time this would have been a source of hearty congratulation. Now, it is peculiarly so. For months had we waited in painful *For the death of Gen. Taylor.

anxiety, at one moment elated and again depressed, as cach successive steamer brought tidings of the prospect, more or less speedy, of our receiving the simple justice which we had a right to demand from Congress. And our anxiety was not without cause. We were placed in a strange and anomalous condition. Possessing within our borders the richest mineral region of the world, we had yet but a limited control over it, and Congress had neglected to provide the necessary regulations for the extraction of its treasures. The agricultural lands of our valleys were left to lie waste in consequence of uncertainty of ownership, and of doubt as to their ultimate disposition; and no provision being made for the survey of government lands, we could receive the benefit of no preemption laws, and could acquire no title to any portion of the national domain within our limits. We had a State government regularly organized in all its departments, with powers sufficiently enlarged to enable it to perform all the requisite functions of a State government under the federal constitution, but not comprehensive enough to subserve the pressing wants of an independent community. With a great maritime commerce, we yet had no admiralty courts; with extensive correspondence with the States and amongst ourselves, the postal facilities were miserably inadequate. Paying into the national treasury a tribute more than sufficient to defray the expense of the whole military force of the Union in this State and in Oregon, and the whole naval force on the Pacific station, we were nevertheless not permitted to enjoy those reciprocal benefits which alone could render such enormous taxation even tolerable. We were thus compelled to sustain the burdens of government, without being admitted to a participation in its blessings. We were taxed without representation; but our revolutionary sires resolved that taxation and representation should go hand in hand, and that the duty should not be enforced, unless the correlative right was granted. Claiming to be a State ourselves, and the administration of every department of our government being based upon such assumption, we were, nevertheless, not recognized as such by Congress, and could not have been so considered by the federal judiciary. We were in the awkward predicament of a State out of the Union, when justice dictated, and imperious necessity demanded, that we should be received to the enjoyment of the privileges of a State in the Union. We stood alone amongst the republican family of Anglo-Americans, whilst, at the same time, we were not of them. In addition to these manifold sources of disquiet in our midst, there were others which gave rise to no less apprehension. The portentous cloud of political contention had gathered over our heads, and party strife and sectional animosity hung, like lurid balls, on the skirts of our eastern horizon. Night seemed to settle upon our hopes. Some amongst us even felt as if the wave of necessity must drift us into an untried and dangerous sea; but patriotism still stood calm at the helm, and hope endeavored to pierce the thick darkness of the future. It was at such a time that the tidings of the event which we celebrate reached us; and the rebound of our feelings to-day is in proportion to the depth

of our past depression. If, when the tempest has gathered over the troubled waters, and the angry billows, lashed into fury, rave around the devoted bark, the winds are suddenly lulled, the waves hushed, and the warm sunshine again sleeps upon the bosom of the tranquil sea, the thrill of delight which the hardy mariner feels is enhanced by the recollection of the imminent dangers from which he has just escaped.

To the people of the old States the admission of a new one has always been a source of honest pride. They behold with gratification the spread of the empire of freemen; and their welcome voice has always been heard in the past, as in gay and glittering procession, and laden with varied gifts, State after State has gone thronging up for admission and been marshaled into the lists of the Union. How then could it be otherwise, when California, with her robe glowing with silver and a diadem of gold upon her brow, had so long and patiently waited for the privilege of being allowed to participate with her elder sisterhood in their hopes and fears, to share with them the common benefits and sustain her portion of the common burdens. The numerous manifestations of kindly feelings from our brethren of the East prove that their satisfaction is inferior only to our own-that they receive us into their embrace with sincere friendship, and with warm wishes for our continued prosperity and permanent welfare. The notes of their rejoicing at the consummation of our mutual wishes have not ceased to reverberate, when California takes up the strain; and in tones not less sincere and perhaps even more heartfelt, sends back to her elder sisters a pledge that she will never disgrace that Union into which she has been received, but will for ever continue to revere and cherish it, not merely as the highest honor to herself, but as a guaranty of blessings to the human race. This is due not only to herself, to the Union, and to humanity, but is doubly due to her friends, who, whether in private life, in the Legislatures of the respective States, or in the national councils, have defended her character from the false and impudent aspersions which have been cast upon it even in high places, and have asserted her rights with unfaltering zeal and determined boldness. To all such, it would be ungrateful did we not remember them in this the day of our triumph, and return them our hearty thanks, and assure them that the pledge they gave of our attachment to the Union was well founded. Indeed, it is impossible that the people of California should be otherwise than devoted to the Union. They are not outcasts, whom an overpopulous society has thrown from its bosom in order to secure the means of subsistence for the rest. They are not criminals, fleeing from punishment for transgression of law. They are not drones, whom an industrious community has chased from the common hive. They do not consist of the vicious and idle, who were incapable of procuring an honest competency upon their native soil. They are not the ignorant, banished by superior knowledge and talents and attainments from the refinements of civilized life. Such as these would scarcely have had the energy to undertake, or the persever

ance or ability to accomplish, a journey to this remote region. They do consist of the industrious laborer, the independent mechanic, the shrewd and intelligent merchant, the skillful physician, the learned lawyer, and the pious divine. They embrace as much of enterprise, as much of intelligence and learning, as much of business skill and capacity, as much of morality and love of good order, as any other community of equal numbers under the sun. They possess, in a higher degree than can be found anywhere else, the peculiar characteristics of Americans; an energy that never flags, and an indomitable resolution in surmounting all obstacles. They have not come from one State, nor from one section of the Union, but from all. East and West, North and South, almost every county and city, and village and town, of each of the thirty old States, have their representatives in our midst, identified with our weal or our woe. Nay, there are but few families in the Eastern States whose blood does not flow, either directly or collaterally, through the veins of some citizen of California. How, then, is it possible that we should not feel a deep interest in the preservation and perpetuity of the Union? And how is it possible that the welfare of California should not be bound, more closely than with links of steel, to the hearts of the whole American people? The electric chains of human sympathy, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic, stretching across the wide interval of mountain and plain, not a link weakened nor its brightness dimmed or tarnished by distance, must for ever bind the two portions of our common country indissolubly together. These are bonds of affection stronger than ties of mere political connection, and they can never be severed by sectional jealousies, nor by the mad schemes of disappointed ambition. Wherever, then, the Union may be disparagingly spoken of or sneeringly scoffed at-on whatever spot our national banner, which floats so gallantly in war and so gracefully in peace, may be trailed on the ground, and its glorious folds ignominiously trampled in the dust-California will never lift a sacrilegious hand to sever the common ties of interest, of friendship, and of kindred-she will, to the last, cling to the Union, not merely as the plank of her safety, but as the ark freighted with her brightest hopes for the future and her holiest remembrances of the past.

And who is there amongst us but feels proud that he is a member of this grand confederacy of freemen? Who would wish to sever his earliest patriotic impulses and associations, and form unto himself new and strange gods? Who would choose to forget the warm impressions of youth, when his ear first caught the strains of our martial music and his eye learned to look with pride upon the emblem of our national power and glory, as it was flung to the breeze of his native hills? Let us indulge the anticipation that the patriotic hopes which stirred the breast of childhood, which inspired the heart of youth, and which cheer the toils and struggles of manhood, may quicken the languid pulse of old age; and that Time, who, in his never-ceasing and yet imperceptible course, gradually and silently steals away, one by one, the impulses of early years,

may, even at three score and ten, leave untouched the thrill of enthusiasm at the sound of our national anthems and the sight of our national flag.

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And is not our country worthy of our sentiments of veneration and love? Not two centuries and a half have elapsed since our race first planted their steps on American soil. Only three quarters of a century a period which, though conducting the individual man to old age, is but a day in the history of a nation's existence-have passed away, since we took our place amongst the powers of the earth as a distinct and independent nation; and yet, during that brief period, we have made advances in national greatness which have required with other people the struggle of centuries to achieve. The sparse population scattered at wide intervals along the Atlantic coast has grown to an empire of twenty millions. The thirteen States which formed the Constitution have been multiplied to thirtyThe narrow belt of American civilization on the eastern slope of the Alleghanies has been constantly growing wider and wider, and pushing its bounds farther and farther. It has crossed the Sabine on the south and the Mississippi on the west. It has ascended the Rocky Mountains, and the snow-capped summits of the Sierra Nevada have been no impediment in its course. At length it laves its feet in the waters of the Pacific. It spans the entire continent, and the base of its arch rests on the shores of both oceans. We have a frontier line of eleven thousand miles; a sea coast of upwards of six thousand; a lake coast of more than two thousand. We have rivers twice as long as the Danube, the largest river in Europe, and bayous and creeks that shame the Thames and the Seine. We have single States larger than the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and harbors that would hold all the navies of Europe. From Maine to New Orleans, or from Washington to San Francisco, is farther than from London to Constantinople-a route that crosses England, Belgium, Prussia, Germany, Austria, and Turkey.

It would seem that the progress of our institutions westward was at length effectually closed by the ocean. But it may be we miscalculated even here. The peaceful islands of the sea, which yield their spontaneous productions without toil, with a climate as if tempered for the abode of the gods, where to live is pleasure and to breathe the pure air is bliss-it may be that in the lapse of time they will occupy the position which California now occupies, and become to the American people what we are now to the Eastern States. Nay, further: the vast continent which lies beyond, teeming with millions of semi-civilized inhabitants, and reeling under the heat of a tropical sun, may yet yield to the influence of American institutions, and repose beneath the shelter of American freedom. Empire is born, increases, wanes: its course hitherto has been westward; and it is not impossible that in the revolving cycle of ages, the seat of the last great empire may be on the very spot of the origin of the first, and the plains trodden by the Chaldean and Assyrian despot may echo the songs of American liberty.