Hospital, at Worcester, on its establishment; a trustee, also, of the Massachusetts General Hospital, at Boston, and a Fellow of Harvard College from 1826 to 1836.

Mr. Gray is one of the most accomplished literary writers among us, and was an early contributor to the North American Review. His performance delivered for the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, in the year 1816, was printed in the third volume of that periodical. The oration at the head of this article is one of the best productions in the whole range of Boston oratory. In the year 1832 Mr. Gray pronounced a centennial oration on the birth of Washington, in the presence of the State authorities, in which he felicitously characterized the mind of Washington as of "exact proportions, and severe simplicity, without a fault for censure, an extravagance for ridicule, or a blemish for regret." Mr. Gray has somewhat devoted his mind to antiquarian pursuits. He is a devoted member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and has been an editor of several volumes of its published collections. He was the author of Remarks on the Early Laws of Massachusetts Bay; and was editor of the Code of 1641, known as the Body of Liberties, both of which are printed in the collections of this society. One of the productions of Mr. Gray, which indicates the greatest talent, is the treatise entitled "Prison Discipline in America," the basis of which comprises the arguments advanced by himself at the animated discussion on Prison Discipline Reform which occurred during a period of seven adjourned meetings, in the Tremont Temple, in the summer of 1847. Mr. Gray was a vice-president of the Prison Discipline Society, and had been several years chairman of the board of directors of the state-prison at Charlestown. He was a decided supporter of the social system of associated labor, an object of philanthropy to which he was tenaciously devoted, that has long prevailed in our stateprison. An admirable portrait of Mr. Gray, by Alexander, is in the family.

In an oration of Mr. Gray, for the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Brown University, delivered in 1842, in which he states that the generation now rising into active life in America is destined to exert a great influence, not only on the fortunes of our country, but of the whole human race, he points out the dangers and duties of the people. We find the following ingenious argument, in this excellent performance, in relation to the ability of the United States to sustain its political freedom. "The question which the statesmen of Europe wish to have

settled is this," says Mr. Gray; "whether a nation, extensive, populous, and wealthy enough to defend itself, unaided, against all aggression, and maintain its fleets and armies without summoning its citizens, on every alarm of war, from their daily occupations and their firesides, to the field, thus letting the mere sound of the trumpet interrupt all the pursuits of peace,-to make all the internal improvements which modern science is perpetually suggesting,-to establish the division of labor, and the competition for success in every pursuit, essential to the perfection of the useful arts,—to promote the cultivation of science and literature, and supply the innumerable wants of civilized life,— whether such a nation be capable of maintaining a system of government, under which the citizens possess equal rights and equal political power, without a degree of anarchy as intolerable as despotism itself.

"Where else in the world can they look for the solution of the question, but to this country, where only the elements of the problem are found united? Already its population has so increased that it is surpassed in this respect by only four European nations; and, at the end of the period we now contemplate, if the rate of increase be the same as hitherto on both sides of the Atlantic, it will be equalled by none but the gigantic empire of Russia. Without meaning to dwell on this point, there is one light in which I would present it to you, somewhat striking. So rapid has been our increase, that the number of persons of European descent now living on the surface of these United States is greater than the whole aggregate number of the dead, of all generations, of the same race, that lie buried beneath it. Surprising as this may seem, it is capable of mathematical demonstration, and this in a form so simple that I will venture to state it even here. Taking a generation to be the period during which as many persons die as existed at its commencement, and supposing the population to be exactly doubled in the period of a single generation; begin your settlement with one thousand inhabitants. At the end of the first generation, you have one thousand dead and two thousand living. At the end of the second generation, you add the same number two thousand-to both, making three thousand dead and four thousand living, which last number you add to both at the end of the third generation; and, as you add at the end of each generation the same number, that is, the number living at its commencement, both to the dead and to the living, the difference between them will always remain the same, and the living will always exceed the dead by the number with which you began. Now,

this is on the supposition that the population exactly doubles in the period of one generation. But our population is found to increase much faster. It doubles in less than twenty-four years, and has done so from the beginning; so that, in fact, the number of the living far very far exceeds the whole mighty congregation of the dead. As long as the same rate of increase shall continue,- and nothing has hitherto checked it, this will always be so; and the child that opens its eyes to the light this day, and lives to see old age, will close them on an empire of one hundred and seventy millions of people. Should our institutions, therefore, be henceforth successfully administered, it will no longer be objected that the population is too small for a satisfactory experiment."

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FRANKLIN DEXTER.

JULY 4, 1819. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES.

"THE colonists became independent," says Mr. Dexter, "because they had always been free; for it is only by the long enjoyment of liberty that men could be formed, for a contest of liberty was their ruling passion; — and, though they disclaimed any wish to be independent until they solemnly declared themselves so, they were always actuated by a spirit that could not leave them long dependent on a foreign power. It was a clear understanding of the principles of civil liberty, and an ardent attachment to it, that were the sole and consistent causes of the Revolution. Not the mere impatience of oppression that sometimes wakes even a degraded people to resistance, to avenge their wrongs, rather than to assert their rights, which groans and struggles in confinement, till there is no longer anything to be lost, and then breaks out in violence and uproar,- not to change the government, but to annihilate it; not to redress the evils of society, but to sweep away society itself. We have seen such a revolution, and we may be proud that ours had nothing in common with it. We have seen a great nation shaken to its foundations, and bursting like a volcano, only to shower down destruction itself, leaving its colossal form

dark, bare and blasted, with no grandeur but its terrors. Such was not our Revolution; but, like the fire in our own forests, not scattered

by the hand of accident or fury, but deliberately to the root of the growth of ages, which tottered and fell before it, only that from its ashes might rise a new creation, when all was green and fair and flourishing. The world has learned, by these experiments, that civil liberty is not a mushroom, that grows up in a night from the fallen, rotten trunk of despotism; but a hardy plant, that strikes deep, in a sound soil, and slowly gathers strength with years, till oppression withers in its shadow. Our present situation is a living proof of the difference of the two events. Liberty never yet was the work of an outraged and incensed populace, as well might a whirlwind plant a paradise!"

Franklin Dexter was born in Charlestown, and was son of Samuel Dexter, the profound civilian and famous orator,-of whom Callender unjustly said that "he has a great deal of that kind of eloquence which struts around the heart, without ever entering it," and was a warm advocate of the war with Great Britain. Samuel Dexter and Theophilus Parsons were at one time against each other in the court at Dedham. Rufus Green Amory had hunted up all the authorities, and placed a mark at each. Mr. Dexter requested his attorney to take a seat beside him, and hand the authorities as he wished them, which afforded the best possible opportunity of hearing every word that escaped the lips of that great man. Placing one foot upon a chair, and folding his arms across his breast, Mr. Dexter began; and such a stream of reasoning, without noise and without effort, as he poured out for four hours, one never heard before; it was like pouring water from a flask. Parsons made several attempts to interrupt him. At last, Mr. Dexter turned to him and said: "Mr. Parsons, if you have an overflow of wit, have the goodness to reserve it for the close; you have already driven several ideas out of my head." The Chief Justice, Dana, remarked, "Never mind, Mr. Dexter; if he should deprive you of as many more, you would still have enough left for Mr. Parsons." Mr. Dexter was accustomed to pursue his studies in the evening, without the use of a lamp, often till towards eleven o'clock; and so absorbed was his mind that he would quit his office without locking the door, and his landlord, the bookseller on the lower floor, often found it necessary to wait until Mr. Dexter left the office, in order to make it secure for the night. Samuel Dexter is said to have written a condensed analysis of the evidences of Christianity, which is one of the most conclusive arguments ever written by a civilian.

Franklin Dexter graduated at Harvard College in 1812, on which occasion he took part in the discussion, whether extensiveness of territory be favorable to the preservation of a republican government. He is a counsellor-at-law, and married Catharine Elizabeth, a daughter of Hon. William Prescott. He was a member of the city Council in 1825; was commander of the New England Guards, a representative and senator in the State Legislature, and the United States District Attorney for Massachusetts.

When, in July, 1841, the venerable Judge Davis resigned the judicial station, Mr. Dexter was requested, by the members of the Suffolk bar, to make known to him their high sense of respect and veneration; and he performed the duty with felicitous grace, in highly effective terms. "It can rarely happen," said he, "that a judge who is called upon to decide so many delicate and important questions of property and personal right should have so entirely escaped all imputation of prejudice or passion, and should have found so general an acquiescence in his results. Our filial respect and affection for yourself have constantly increased with increasing years; and, while we acknowledge your right to seek the repose of private life, we feel that your retirement is, not less than it ever would have been, a loss to the profession and the public. May you live long and happily, as long as life shall continue to be a blessing to you, and so long will that life be a blessing to your friends and society."

Mr. Dexter has been an eminent pleader at the bar; and the ingenuity with which he contended against the searching Webster, in the trial of the Knapps for the murder of White, is in the memory of many. Possessing brilliant talents and strong reasoning powers, Mr. Dexter would have risen to elevated public life, had he not retired to the enjoyment of literary ease. The beautiful criticism on landscape painting, from his polished hand, extending through thirty-five pages of the North American Review, in which he discerns no reason why painters should not arise in our day to surpass all that was effected by Claude, Gaspar, or Salvator, and expresses the decided opinion that he has seen no landscapes painted since the days of Titian superior to those of Allston, indicate him to be as tasteful in the fine arts as he has been profound in legal learning. We are of opinion that we neither overstate, nor exaggerate, in the remark that Mr. Dexter has been one of the most acute, logical reasoners at the Suffolk bar, and but few competitors felt safe in an argument with him.

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