Gazette Of The United States

Extract from President FITCH's valedictory Address to the Candidates for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts, at the first Commencement at Williams College, (Mass.) September 2, 1795.

"IN a country so extensive and growing, it is important that many should be well versed in jurai science. Our Laws protect us in the enjoyment of our dearest rights; and it is necessary that we have men, whose professional business it is, to understand and explain them.

"Jurisprudence is also highly useful and necessary as it relates to the important science of Legislation. In this you may be called to take an active part. In this we are deeply interested, as men, as citizens and as christians. We live under a form of government. the best in the theory and practice. that ever was devised by the wisdom of man. We are members of a Republic, which notwithstanding some present unfavorable appearances of groundless jealousy and disaffection, will probably one day become the most numerous, free, enlightened and happy people, that the sun ever saw united under one system of national policy. If this should not be the case, it will be chargeable to our own stupidity, folly and wickedness. No nation ever set out with such advantages for becoming great, virtuous and happy. No nation; in modern times, has experienced such signal interpositions of Providence. And if, after all, we sink into vice and crumble into factions—if, forsaking real Liberty, and the true spirit of our Constitution, we follow that ghastly Phantom of Liberty and Equality which stalked from the Pandemonium of the Jacobins, with eyes darting fury, and hands dipt in the blood of more than half a million, we shall see the same tragic scenes of devastation, bloodshed and horror re-acted in this peaceful country. We shall see our happy Constitution trampled in the dirt, and a despotism erected on its ruins more sanguinary and intolerable than that of Turkey. To ward off these evils, and to ensure the blessings which Heaven holds out to us, you are bound, young Gentlemen, to contribute your share of labor, wisdom and patriotism. Fix it in your minds that you can never do too much for the Country which gave you birth, which has afforded you the advantage of a liberal education, which embosoms your dearest friends, and which protects you in- the enjoyment of the best civil and religious rights. Reflect on the wisdom, fortitude, piety and patriotism of your ancestors, on the welfare of the present generation, and the happiness of unborn millions. Be the supporters of law, justice, and the constitution, the protectors of injured innocence, the patrons of virtue, and the benefactors of mankind."