At the festival in Washington Garden, after the delivery of the oration named at the head of this article, Col. C. G. Greene gave the complimentary sentiment to the orator of the day, that "his genius and eloquence will be associated with the recollections of one of the most glorious triumphs of Democracy—the inauguration of Andrew Jackson;" and Gov. Marcus Morton has been heard to remark of Mr. James, that he was the purest belles lettres scholar in the ranks of the Boston Democracy.

Mr. James was a tenacious opponent of the United States Bank, and prepared twenty-eight resolutions, adopted at a meeting in Faneuil Hall, March 31, 1834, William Foster moderator, declaring that a renewal of its charter would be injurious; "as it drains the country of its gold and silver, and imposes inconvertible and illegal drafts as substitutes, and charges the government giving credit to such paper with deranging the currency; it establishes a standing premium for the encouragement of forgery, by issuing myriads of such drafts, bearing an unknown number of signatures; and votes away its funds for the detection of counterfeiters, whose paper is as legal as the drafts they imitate, both issues being unknown to the law, and neither party punishable for the offence, causing, also, revulsions in business, by abundant emissions to-day and despotic contractions to-morrow." These resolutions were sent to Congress, together with a memorial signed by George Alexander Otis, and nearly three thousand residents of Boston. Mr. James was, at four several elections, a candidate for the Boston mayoralty, first in 1834; but the Democracy found no favor. He married Julia B., the only child of Ralph Huntington, Esq., April 14, 1836; and was a member of the State Board of Education from 1840 to 1849, during which period the active mind of Mr. James conceived the philanthropic object of an institution for the education of persons in mature life, who, from poverty and other causes, had never pursued a course of common school education, and who could neither read nor write in any language,—and more especially for the instruction of young persons of both sexes not admissible to public schools. He was devotedly seconded, in this enterprise, by the late Dr. John D. Fisher, Dr. Walter Channing, and George B. Emerson, all of whom were eminent in labors of philanthropy. In the winter of 1845, they originated the Boston Institution for the Education of Adults, which continued in active operation for more than three years. Our city government granted the use of the public ward-rooms during evening

hours, but all other expenses were defrayed by the society and its patrons. In the onset, it was delightful to observe the desire of people of various nations to receive instruction. Here you would notice the Irish, French, German and Italian, acquiring knowledge with the facility of youth, diverted from the haunts of city vice. Arrangements were made for a course of free lectures to the pupils, on Food and Clothing, Air and Ventilation, Morals and Political Economy, Human Physiology, Natural Philosophy, and Municipal Law. The pro

gramme of this institution, under fourteen specifications, adopted Jan. 31, 1845, is a model for every city and town in the Union. Unsuccessful endeavors have been devised to effect the adoption of evening adult schools, under the patronage of our city authorities; but, to the honor of New York and Philadelphia be it recorded, this noble project has been established by their city authorities, and thousands, of many nations, are reaping its benefits; and they and their posterity will have occasion to bless the generous Bostonians who originated, here, this new lever of moral power. The period is not remote when our municipality will adopt, also, this useful enterprise, as it will diminish the incitements to crime amongst us,- especially as a statute has been recently enacted by the State Legislature, authorizing every town in the State to tax the inhabitants for the support of such schools.

Prompted by this generous spirit of philanthropy, the natural germination of a pure scion of Bunker Hill stock, Mr. James was one of the originators and first president of the Boston Association of the Friends of Ireland, established November, 1840, an institution of American citizens and denizens, and natives of Ireland not naturalized, without distinction of sect or party (the president himself being a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church), for purposes connected with the suffering condition of the oppressed sons of Ireland. On the 22d of February, 1841, Mr. James reported an address, of seven columns in extent, unanimously adopted by the Boston Repeal Association, to be presented to the National Repeal Association of Ireland, wherein he stated that for some time the people of Ireland have desired a parliamentary separation from Great Britain, as the only means of individual comfort or national prosperity. "Anxious to be united by political ties, they wish to be legislatively separated, subject to one imperial crown, and that the English, yet each country to have its own domestic parliament, for the benefit of laws especially adapted to

the peculiar condition of each. In one word, Ireland demands the restoration of her ancient constitution, as irrevocably guaranteed to her by the English Parliament of 1782, but sacrilegiously violated by the fraudulent union of 1800,- of which alone they demand the repeal, as the basis of a new union, to which both the kingdoms may be consenting parties."

This document was read to the National Repeal Association of Ireland, at their meeting in Dublin, April 16, 1841; and, at the same time, a donation of one hundred pounds was announced from the assóciation of Boston, which was received with enthusiastic applause. We find it remarked in Mooney's History of Ireland, that "the address drawn up by John Warren James, Esq., will be preserved in the archives of Ireland while there is one memorial of her history existing. An unexpected vista opened, through which we could distinctly see our road to freedom;"- and Daniel O'Connell said, at this meeting: "It will be heard of along the ridges of the Himmalaya Mountains; it will be read by the Royal Irish at Chusan, or at China; it will be known at the Cape of Good Hope; it will cross over to South America; and it will resound again through the regions of North America. Wherever the English language is known, it, also, will be known, except in England, where, to the disgrace of that people be it spoken, their ignorance and horrible prejudices are too strong to permit of its being allowed to appear. up to scorn and contempt wherever it is seen. how it is that a people so brave, so temperate, so generous, and so moral, as the Irish, have suffered so much persecution; and that, too, from a nation who have never at any time inflicted anything but miseries upon us. Yes; I will stand on that document as on a pyramid, and, looking round to all the nations of the earth, I will demand of them to tell me a single good act which England ever did for Ireland. I tell English statesmen that one thing demonstrated by that lengthy document is this,—that it is not the expression, alone, of the feelings and thoughts of one individual, but that it expresses the feelings and thoughts of the country. For no one man could obtain all the details requisite to enable him to produce that document; they must be the familiar thoughts of the people, and the familiar subject of conversation with each other. It proves that the entire American mind must be impregnated with the same feeling and sentiments; and it proves, also, that not only are those their feelings, but they are ready to act upon

But they will be held The world will wonder

them. It came from Boston, the birth-place of American freedom, the grave of English tyranny; the spot where English force and violence shot down the unresisting Americans, and the spot to which the defeated English troops returned in disgrace and discomfiture, having begun the fight by assassination, and ended it by a flight."

We will quote an effective appeal to Queen Victoria, from the elaborate and argumentative "Address" of Mr. James, so splendidly panegyrized by O'Connell: "Protection and allegiance are reciprocal. This is the conditional tie between the governors and the governed. What has England done to discharge her part of this condition to the allegiance of Ireland? History answers the question, and humanity blushes at the response. And has Ireland, on her part, been a disloyal kingdom? The Tory champion of English loyalty answers, 'That noble race was made for loyalty and religion.' True; always true, and emphatically so now. The Irish are as loyal as generous hearts and warm imaginations can make them. They love their present royal mistress, as they ought to love an amiable, upright, and liberal-minded sovereign. Feeling that they are blessed with a good queen, they look for a completion of the blessing in a good constitution. Victoria owes them no less than this, as a debt of restitution on behalf of her ances→ tors. Irishmen demand no less than this, in the name of their progenitors, for the sake of the present generation, and in mercy to their posterity. And, while their hearts swell, and their imaginations kindle, with the cherished anticipation of this great act of retributive justice, it is but natural that they should behold in their youthful sovereign what the greatest of orators described in a sister potentate, as she appeared to him, 'cheering and decorating the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy.' O! may no sinister fortune darken this splendid vision, as its precursor was darkened; or harden the royal heart to the imperial luxury of living and reigning in the hearts of an enfranchised people,—a people whom Titus might have sighed to govern; whom Henry of Navarre would have struggled through a life of warfare to have supplied with a chicken in the pot; whom Alfred would have given his crown to have liberated; and to whom Washington would have been the father he was to Americans, and have gone down to the dust of the Emerald Isle with the prophetic consciousness that the redeemed of no age or nation would so consecrate his memory, or defend his acquisitions, as the coming generations of free and happy Irishmen."

JAMES TRECOTHIC AUSTIN.

JULY 4, 1829. FOR THE CITY AUTHORITIES.

1

"MASSACHUSETTS is the mother of the Revolution," says Mr. Austin. "Her efforts in its commencement are too honorable to be omitted in the heraldry of her fame. Earliest and alone, without aid, without allies, connections or confederacy,-singly, by her own will, she dissolved the royal powers within her own territory and over her own people, and assumed to herself the prerogative of independence. When her congress of delegates assembled at Watertown, in defiance of the royal charter, and spurned the representatives of the crown, and assumed the powers of civil government, and took possession of the public treasury, and levied taxes, and established a navy, and commissioned that American vessel of war that first captured a British ship on the ocean, and erected maritime courts, and appointed judges, and administered justice to belligerent and neutral by the law of nations, and raised an army, and nominated officers, and gathered soldiers under the pine-tree banner of Massachusetts, and poured out a rich libation of blood on the battle-field of freedom, the colonial character was at an end. The Revolution had begun. The State was then free, sovereign, and independent.

"Bring to the imagination that band of determined men, assembled at Watertown, unarmed and defenceless, within cannon-shot of a disciplined army; their fortunes in the camp of a military commander, whose dignity they had offended; their persons liable to be seized and sent to Europe, as traitors; their conduct impeached in a public proclamation, and two of them proscribed as rebels, whose offences were too heinous for the pardon of the king. Judge of their anxiety, in that time that tried men's souls; their immense responsibility to the country, whose destiny they directed; to their children, for the protection that was due to them; to posterity, for that political condition which would be a legacy of honor or of shame; to their God, before whom they were answerable, and felt themselves answerable, for all the blood of a war they might accelerate or prevent. How indistinct their vision of the future, even when a strong faith threw its light upon their souls! How difficult their task to keep up the courage of the timid, the hopes of the desponding, the strength of the feeble; to enlighten the ignorant,