Excerpt from Discourse on Education: Delivered at Braintree, Thursday, Oct; 24, 1839
The celebrated Historian of England, David Hume, in the account of his life written in the 65th year of his age by himself, says, "I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments); I was, I say, a man of mild disposition," &c. then giving his own character, according to his own estimate of it.
Men and women of Braintree! I have lived eight years longer in this world of vicissitudes and cares, than David Hume had lived when he felt himself bound to assume this style, and when he considered it as investing him with the privilege of speaking more boldly his sentiments, than he might have done while speaking in the present tense.
Am I not then authorised by his example, to invert the order of his transition from the present to the past, and to say - I was or rather I am one of yourselves? I was born at Braintree; and in the revolution of time, I am, one of the oldest inhabitants of that Town. In Braintree I first beheld the light of Heaven - first breathed the atmosphere of your granite rocks - first sucked with my mother's milk the love of Liberty, and the reverence for the Gospel of truth.
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