Read Ebook: A Vagabond's Odyssey being further reminiscences of a wandering sailor-troubadour in many lands by Safroni Middleton A Arnold

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Mr. Blanchard having accepted the invitation of the Marshal, his Corps of Equestrians will be attached to the Third Division.

The procession will move up Baltimore to Eutaw street, up Eutaw to Fayette street, down Fayette to Howard street, up Howard to Franklin street, from Franklin to Hamilton street, down Hamilton to Calvert street, on Calvert street to Monument Square; when the ceremonies of the day will be performed in the following order.

Three pieces of Artillery, fired in quick succession, will be the signal for the commencement of the ceremonies of the day.

A National Air will then be played by the Band.

Mr. Wirt will then deliver an Oration.

After which General Smith will submit an Address expressive of the feelings of the Citizens of Baltimore, on the recent Triumph of Liberty in France.

The Marseilles Hymn will then be performed by the Band.

On the conclusion of the ceremonies, the Procession will be dismissed, and the several associations will leave the ground under charge of their respective marshals.

All those who shall unite in this procession are requested to wear a tri-coloured cockade and an appropriate badge.

The following gentlemen are appointed Aids and Marshals.

MARSHALS.

JAMES L. RIDGELY, EDWARD SPEDDEN, JESSE HUNT, GEN. BENJAMIN EDES, JAMES BIAYS, JR., MCCLINTOCK YOUNG, JONATHAN FITCH, GEORGE DOBBIN, W. P. MILLS, HENRY GREEN, CAPT. HENRY MYERS, R. D. MILLHOLLAND.

Captains Kelly, Myers, and Cook, assisted by William F. Small and Alcaeus B. Wolfe, Esqrs. are charged with the arrangements at the Monument Square.

When the Procession arrived at Monument Square, Col. S. MOORE, as Chairman of the Committee of Arrangement, announced that General SAMUEL SMITH, was appointed to act as Chairman and JOHN S. SKINNER, Esq. as Secretary to the meeting, with instructions to sign the Address on behalf of the Citizens of Baltimore, and forward the same to General LAFAYETTE, to be disposed of in such manner as he may see most proper.

MR. WIRT'S ADDRESS.

We have met, fellow citizens, to give public expression to the feelings which animate every bosom in our society, and to unite our congratulations on the triumph of liberty in France. On this subject, there is but one heart, one voice among us, and that a heart and voice of universal joy.

In the stern decision, in the rapid and resistless execution, in the thorough accomplishment of the purpose, and in the sudden and perfect calm that succeeded, tyrants may read a lesson that may well make them tremble on their thrones; for they see that it is only for the people to resolve, and it is done.

Had this story been told to us by some writer of romance, as the product of his own imagination, there is not a man among us who would not have condemned it as unnatural, improbable, a mere extravagance entirely out of keeping with the human character. And yet the thing has actually taken place; the work has been done, and well and nobly done.

The French have sometimes been spoken of as a light people, without depth or stability of character. Let those who thus describe them, open the annals of England and shew us there, a movement, from the period of their invasion by Julius Caesar to the present day, that can match this magnificent movement of the common people of Paris. No. In the enlightened motive, in the station of the actors, in the character of the action itself, and in its beautiful consummation, there is nothing in the archives of history, ancient or modern, nor even in the volumes of the boldest and wildest imagination, that will bear a comparison. It was for liberty they struck, and the blow was the bolt of heaven. The throne of the tyrant fell before it. The work was done: and all was peace. Well may we be proud to claim such a people as our friends and allies, and to unite in this public demonstration of joy at their triumph.

Here let us pause, and endeavor to recover from the amazement with which such an event is calculated to overwhelm the mind, that we may contemplate it more calmly.

On the first arrival of the intelligence, we involuntarily asked ourselves, "Can this be a reality?" And when we could no longer doubt the evidence of the fact, the next anxious inquiry which pressed itself upon us, was "Will it stand, or are we again to be disappointed as we were by the revolution of 1789?"

This is not a question of mere idle and speculative curiosity with regard to which we are indifferent about the result. It is one in which our feelings are keenly interested; and more--it is one of deep and awful import to the liberties of the world. For if France is again to revolve through years and through seas of blood and crime, and to terminate, at last, at the point from which she set out--a despotism--despair will fill the European world, and the people will be disposed rather to bear the ills they have, than to encounter the unavailing horrors of the double precedent which France will have set. Let us look, therefore, calmly, for a few moments, at the very interesting question of the probable stability and success of this revolution.

Those of us who remember the revolution of 1789, are forcibly reminded of it by the late event, and from the catastrophe of the former struggle, are apt to draw a mournful presage of the present. It is not for human penetration to foretell, with certainty, the ultimate issue of such a movement. In a case so dependent on the capricious passions of man, there are too many contingencies that may arise to darken the fairest prospect and disappoint our hopes. But there seem to be fundamental points of difference between the two cases which forbid us to reason from the one to the other, and justify, now, the hope of a happy result. Let us attend for a moment to these points of difference.

In the first place, the state of political information in France, and in Europe at large, is widely different now from that which existed in 1789. France was not prepared for that revolution: nor were the people of Europe prepared to understand it, to second it, and to turn it to the best account. This is a grand and over-ruling distinction between the cases.

With regard to France, her people had been buried, for ages, in the night of despotism, and had no idea of the meaning of political liberty. I speak of the great body of the people. On the upper classes, it is true, that day had recently broken from the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and Raynal. But thick darkness still rested upon the lower classes. Their faculties were benumbed by its influence, and their spirits enslaved and debased by the habit of subjection. The condition of things which they saw around them, and which had been immemorially transmitted from father to son, seemed to them to be the natural condition, and they considered themselves born for the use of their prince and his nobles.

Such, too, was the general state of things in Europe. As to political rights, the body of the people were all in Egyptian darkness. The yoke had been fixed and locked upon them in far distant ages, of which they had no knowledge; they had borne it, time out of mind, and their necks had became so callous and accustomed to its pressure, that it never entered into their imaginations to question the right.

In this state of habitual subjection and inveterate ignorance, the sun of liberty suddenly arose upon France, in full glory; when, "blind with excess of light," and maddened by the too rapid circulation of the blood which had so long stagnated in their veins, they passed in a few years, from the extreme of despotism to the extreme of anarchy, and deeds of horror were perpetrated which humanity shudders to recall. They frightened the rest of Europe by their example, instead of alluring them to an imitation of it.

But widely different is the state of information at this day. That revolution itself, dreadful as it was, has awakened the whole continent from the sleep of ages, and put them upon inquiry into the foundations of government, and the purposes for which it was ordained: and during nearly half a century which has since elapsed, a degree of light has been thrown upon the great subject of the rights of man which has found its way into every hamlet and every cottage of southern Europe, and is advancing to the north with such increasing lustre as will ere long scatter the gloom that yet hangs over Siberia and Kamschatka. Hence the people of France, certainly, and perhaps of the whole south of Europe, are now prepared for the temperate enjoyment of liberty, under the administration of a regular government, for which they were totally unfitted in 1789.

There is another striking difference between the cases, and a most important one it is, as it affects the question before us.

France has now the benefit of her own past experience before her eyes: she had no such lamp to light her steps in 1789. Yes; that dreadful lesson is fresh in her recollection. She has had full time to study it: to discover every false step that was then taken, and to observe the causes which led to the miscarriage of that revolution. And to satisfy us that she has profited by this study, a comparison of her very different conduct on those two occasions will suffice.

It was this slow, vacillating, indecisive course of the former revolution which generated all the causes that conspired to defeat it. The Bastile was stormed in 1789. It was not until the latter part of 1792 that the unfortunate monarch was deposed. During these three years, though strokes of great boldness were struck, one after another, yet none of them were of a decisive character: none of them indicated a fixed point at which the revolution was to stop: while they were all of a character to alarm, to exasperate and to raise up powerful enemies to the revolution both at home and abroad.

Thus, in 1789 privileges and distinctions of orders were abolished, and the hitherto sacred revenues of the church suffered a deep encroachment.

These infamous men infused suspicions into the minds of the people against their best friends, and even Lafayette had to defend himself against their accusations.

In 1792 the king was tried, condemned and deposed, and a republic was established; but it was a republic of bedlamites. The revolution now assumed a most dreadful form. France, delivered up, at once, to the fury of a foreign and a civil war, and at the same time rent asunder by the most frightful anarchy, exhibited a picture which the heart quails to contemplate even at this distance of time. All was chaos and confusion, and Lafayette perceiving that the great object for which he had contended was lost, retired from the kingdom, and was doomed to mourn, for years, in an Austrian dungeon, the disappointment of his patriot hopes.

In 1793 the amiable and unfortunate king was torn from his family, and bade adieu, on the scaffold, to all the troubles of life; and thenceforth the guillotine streamed with the blood of the best patriots of France. No confidence existed any where. Every one was distrusted. Generals, whose victories had shed the highest glory upon their country, were called from the head of their armies to perish in disgrace. Denunciation and massacre were the order of the day. Suspicion became full proof, and every accusation was fatal. To consummate the horror of the scene, the christian religion was formally abolished, and a sort of heathen worship was substituted in its place. The republic was dissolved, the government was declared to be revolutionary, and a dictatorship was established, compared with which those of Marius and Sylla formed a golden age. Terror, death, and rapine walked abroad in triumph, and the diabolical spirits which had set the mischief afoot, hovered over the bloody spectacle and mocked at the misery which they had created.

In 1794 the ruffians, Danton and Robespierre, fell in succession, and expiated their crimes on that guillotine which they had so often deluged with the blood of innocence, even of female innocence and beauty. But the reign of terror still held on its course. The government was continually shifting its form. In truth, there was virtually no

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