Oration On The Life And Character Of Gilbert Motier De Lafayette - Delivered At The Request Of Both Houses Of The Congress Of The United States, Before Them, In The House Of Representatives At Washington, On The 31St December, 1834 Delivered at the Request of Both Houses of the Congress of the United States, Before Them, in the House of Representatives at Washington, on the 31st December, 1834

ORATION AT THE REQUEST OF BOTfI IJOUSES OF IF, CONGRESS OF THE UNlTED STATqB, 1 - t. IN TkIF, HOUSE OF REPRESEWL4TIVES AT TVA4SHINGTON, . 13YL J OHN QUINCY ADAMS, A BIEITE-OT TIIE IIOUSE - ORATION. Fellow-citizens of the Senate and Hottse of Representatives of the United States IF the authority by which I am now called to address you is one of the highest 11onors.that could be conferred. upon a citizen of this Union by his countrymen, I cannot dissemble to myself that it embraces at the same time ohe of the most ar- duous duties that could be imposed. Grateful to you for the honor conferred upon me by your invitation, a sentiment of irre- pressible and fearful diffidence absorbs every faculty of my soul in contemplating the magnitude, the difficulties, and the cblicacy of the task which it has been your pleasure to assign to me. b I am to speak to the Nortk American States and People, assembled here in the persons of their honored and- confidential I Lawgivers and Representatives. I am to speak to them, by their own appointment, upon the Life and Character of a man, . whose life was, for nearly threescore years, .the history of the civilized world-of a man, of whose character, to say that it is indissolubly identified with the Revolution of our Independence 1 9 I is little inore than to mark the features of his childhood-of a - man, the personified image of self-circumscribed liberty. Nor can it escape the llost superficial observation, that, in speaking to the fathers of the land upon the Life and Character of LAF-4Y.ETTE, I cannot forbear to touch upon topics which are yet deeply convulsing theworld, both of opinion and of action. 4 I am to walk between burning plouhshares-to treaduj3on fires which have not yet even collected cinders to cover them. If, in addressing their countrymen upon their most. important interests, the. Orators of Antiquity we accustomed to begin by I supplication to their gods tlmt nothing unsuitable to be. said or unworthy to be .heard might escape, fron their lips, how much more forcible is my obligation to invoke the favor of Hinl who touchpd Isaiahs hallowed lips with fire, not only to extinguish in the mind every conception unadapted to the grandeur and sublimity of the theme, butato dmv from- the bosom of the deep- est conviction thoughts congenial to. the inerits which it is the duty of the Discourse to unfold, and words not unworthy of the I dignity .of the Auditory before whom I aprear. In order to form a just estimate of the Life and Character of Lafayette, it may be, necessary to advert, not only to the circumstances connected with his birth, education, and lineage, but to the politica1 condition of his country and of Great Britain, her national rival and adversary, at the time of his birth, and during his years of childhood. On the sixth day of September, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven, the hereditary Monarch of the British Islauds was a native of Germany. rude, illiterate old soldier of, the wars for the Spanish succession little versed even in the language of the Nations over which he ruled educated to. the maxitns and principles of the Fqudal Law of openly li5entious life, and of moral character far from creditable -he styled t . . himself, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, Fritnce, ancl Ireland, King j but there was another and real King of France, no better, perhaps worse, tlian himself, and with whom hewas . then at war. This was Louis, the fifteenth of the name, great grandson of his immediate predecessor, Louis the Fourteenth, sometimes denominated the eat. These two Kings held their thrones by tlle law of hereditary succession, variously modified, in France by the Roman Catholic, and in Britain by rotei it ant Reformed Christianity. . ...