The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply,—I cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes, that he has passed," to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable,—from Assaye to Waterloo,—the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled to the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos? All his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory,—Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest—

Tell me—for you were there,—I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast;—tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance,—while death fell in showers when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset,—tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long been wisely checked was, at last, let loose,—when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault,—tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together;—in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate; and shall we be told as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out? R. L. Sheil.

LXXIV.

THE ILIAD AND THE BIBLE.

Of all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this world has been deluged, very few have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little mark upon that generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose impression can be traced through successive centuries, on the history of our species!

When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely incalculable; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer. Who can estimate the results produced by the incomparable efforts of a single mind? Who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song? Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivalled eloquence, and her matchless verse, all point us to that transcendent genius, who, by the very splendor of his own effulgence, woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages. It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the Senate; and, more than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a nation was cast into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad became the region of taste, the birthplace of the arts.

But, considered simply as an intellectual production, who will compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments? Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity and pathos which shall vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sublimity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job, or David, or Isaiah, or St. John? But I cannot pursue this comparison. I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects on whom the light of the holy oracles never shined.

If, then, so great results have flowed from this one effort of a single mind, what may we not expect from the combined efforts of several, at least his equals in power over the human heart? If that one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by a childish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from the supernatural efforts of preeminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Ghost? Dr. Wayland.

LXXV.

ON ADMITTING CALIFORNIA TO THE UNION.

A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of our own. To-day, she is a State, more populous than the least, and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty States. This same California, thus rich and populous, is here asking admission into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolution of the Union itself. No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embarrassments! No wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing responsibilities! No wonder if we are bewildered by the ever-augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes!

SHALL CALIFORNIA BE RECEIVED? For myself, upon my individual judgment and conscience, I answer—yes. Let California come in. Every new State, whether she come from the east or the west every new State, coming from whatever part of the continent she may, is always welcome. But, California, that comes from the clime where the west dies away into the rising east,—California, that bounds at once the empire and the continent,—California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold, is doubly welcome.

The question now arises, shall this one great people, having a common origin, a common language, a common religion, common sentiments, interests, sympathies and hopes, remain one political state, one nation, one republic; or shall it be broken into two conflicting, and, probably, hostile nations or republics? Shall the American people, then, be divided? Before deciding on this question, let us consider our position, our power, and capabilities. The world contains no seat of empire so magnificent as this; which, embracing all the varying climates of the temperate zone, and traversed by wide expanding lakes and long branching rivers, offers supplies on the Atlantic shores to the overcrowded nations of Europe, and, on the Pacific coast, intercepts the commerce of the Indies. The nations thus situated, and enjoying forest, mineral, and agricultural resources unequaled, if endowed, also with moral energies adequate to the achievement of great enterprises, and flavored with a government adapted to their character and condition, must command the empire of the seas, which, alone, is real empire.

We think we may claim to have inherited physical and intellectual vigor, courage, invention, and enterprise; and the systems of education prevailing among us, open to all the stores of human science and art. The Old World and the Past were allotted by Providence to the pupilage of mankind. The New World and the Future seem to have been appointed for the maturity of mankind, with the development of self-government, operating in obedience to reason and judgment.

We may, then, reasonably hope for greatness, felicity, and renown, excelling any hitherto attained by any nation, if, standing firmly on the continent, we lose not our grasp on either ocean. Whether a destiny so magnificent would be only partially defeated, or whether it would be altogether lost by a relaxation of the grasp, surpasses our wisdom to determine, and happily it is not important to be determined. It is enough, if we agree, that expectations so grand, yet so reasonable and so just, ought not in any degree to be disappointed. And now, it seems to me, that the perpetual unity of the empire hangs on the decision of this day and this hour.

California is already a State,—a complete and fully appointed State. She never again can be less than that. She never again can be a province or a colony; nor can she be made to shrink or shrivel into the proportions of a federal dependent territory. California, then, henceforth and forever, must be, what she is now,—a State.

The question whether she shall be one of the United States of America, has depended on her and on us. Her election has been made. Our consent alone remains suspended; and that consent must be pronounced now or never. W. H. Seward.

LXXVI.

A HIGHWAY TO THE PACIFIC.

Mr. President, I go for a national highway from the Mississippi to the Pacific. And I go against all schemes of individuals or of companies, and especially those who come here and ask of the Congress of the United States to give themselves and their assigns the means of making a road, and taxing the people for the use of it. If they should make it, they are to tax us for the use of it—tax the people eight or ten millions a year for using a road which their own money built. A fine scheme, that! But they would never build it, neither themselves nor their assigns. It would all end in stock-jobbing. I repudiate the whole idea, sir. I go for a national highway—no stock-jobbing.

We find all the localities of the country precisely such as a national central road would require. The Bay of San Francisco, the finest in the world, is in the centre of the western coast of North America; it is central, and without a rival. It will accommodate the commerce of that coast, both north and south, up to the frozen regions, down to the torrid zone. It is central in that respect. The commerce of the broad Pacific Ocean will centre there. The commerce of Asia will centre there. Follow the same latitude across the country, and it strikes the centre of the valley of the Mississippi. It strikes the Mississippi near the confluence of all the great waters which concentrate in the valley of the Mississippi. It comes to the centre of the valley;—it comes to St. Louis. Follow the prolongation of that central line, and you find it cutting the heart of the great States between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, Illinois, Indiana Ohio a part of Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania,—they are all traversed or touched by that great central line.

We own the country, from sea to sea, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and upon a breadth equal to the length of the Mississippi, and embracing the whole temperate zone. Three thousand milks across, and half that breadth, is the magnificent parallelogram of our domain. We can run a national central road through and through, the whole distance, under our flag and under our laws. Military reasons require us to make it; for troops and munitions must go there. Political reasons require us to make it; it will be a chain of union between the Atlantic and Pacific States. Commercial reasons demand it from us; and here I touch a boundless field, dazzling and bewildering the imagination from its vastness and importance. The trade of the Pacific Ocean, of this western coast of North America, and of eastern Asia, will all take its track; and not only for ourselves, but for posterity.

Sir, in no instance has the great Asiatic trade failed to carry the nation or the people which possessed it to the highest pinnacle of wealth and power, and with it, to the highest attainments of letters, art, and science. And so will it continue to be. An American road to India, through the heart of our country will revive upon its line all the wonders of which we have read, and eclipse them. The western wilderness, from the Pacific to the Mississippi, will spring into life under its touch. A long line of cities will grow up. Existing cities will take a new start. The state of the world calls for a new road to India, and it is our destiny to give it—the last and greatest. Let us act up to the greatness of the occasion, and show ourselves worthy of the extraordinary circumstances in which we are placed, by securing, while we can, an American road to India, central and national, for ourselves and our posterity, now and hereafter, for thousands of years to come. T. H. Benton.

LXXVII.

ADDRESS TO POLISH EXILES AT LONDON.

It is eighty-one years since Poland first was quartered by a nefarious act of combined royalty, which the Swiss Tacitus, John Mller, well characterized by saying that "God permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest—not the last—manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cabinets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, and not to despair.

And all along this time, you, proscribed patriots of Poland, were suffering, and did not despair. You stood up before the world, a living statue, with unquenchable life-flame of patriotism streaming through its petrified limbs; you stood up a protest of eternal right against the sway of imperious might; a "Mene Tekel Upharsin," written in letters of burning blood on the walls of overweening despotism. Time, misery, and sorrow have thinned the ranks of your scattered Israel; you have carried your dead to the grave, and those who survive went on to suffer and to hope. Wherever oppressed Freedom reared a banner, you rallied around;—the living statue changed to a fighting hero. Many of yours fell; and, when crime triumphed once more over virtue and right, you resumed the wandering exile's staff and did not despair. Many among you, who were young when they last saw the sun rise over Poland's mountains and plains, have your hair whitened and your strength broken with age, anguish, and misery; but the patriotic heart kept the freshness of its youth; it is young in love for Poland, young in aspirations for freedom, young in hope, and youthfully fresh in determination to break Poland's chains.

What a rich source of noble deeds patriotism must be, that has given you strength to suffer so much and never to despair! You have given a noble example to all of us,—your younger brother in the family of exiles. When the battle of Cann was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen Roman knights, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to Consul Terentius Varro for "not having despaired of the Commonwealth." Proscribed patriots of Poland! I thank you that you have not despaired of resurrection and of liberty. The time draws nigh when the oppressed nations will call their aggressors to a last account; and the millions of freemen, in the fulness of their right, and their self-conscious strength, will class judgment on arrogant conquerors, privileged murderers, and perjured kings. In that supreme trial, the oppressed nations will stand one for all, and all for one. L. Kossuth.

LXXVIII.

KOSSUTH ON HIS CREDENTIALS.

Let ambitious fools,—let the pigmies who live on the scanty food of personal envy, when the very earth quakes beneath their feet; let even the honest prudence of ordinary household times, measuring eternity with that thimble with which they are wont to measure the bubbles of small party interest, and, taking the dreadful roaring of the ocean for a storm in a water-glass;—let those who believe the weather to be calm, because they have drawn a nightcap over their ears, and, burying their heads in pillows of domestic comfort, do not hear Satan sweeping in a hurricane over the earth; let envy, ambition, blindness, and the pettifogging wisdom of small times,—let all these artistically investigate the question of my official capacity, or the nature of my public authority; let them scrupulously discuss the immense problem whether I still possess, or possess no longer, the title of my once-Governorship; let them ask for credentials, discuss the limits of my commission, as representative of Hungary. I pity all such frog and mouse fighting.

I claim no official capacity,—no public authority, no representation;—boast of no commission, of no written and sealed credentials. I am nothing but what my generous friend, the senator from Michigan, has justly styled me, "a private and banished man." But, in that capacity I have a nobler credential for my mission than all the clerks of the world can write,—the credential that I am a "man;" the credential that I am a "patriot;" the credential that I love with all sacrificing devotion my oppressed fatherland and liberty; the credential that I hate tyrants, and have sworn everlasting hostility to them; the credential that I feel the strength to do good service to the cause of freedom; good service, as perhaps few men can do, because I have the iron will, in this my breast, to serve faithfully devotedly, indefatigably, that noble cause.

I have the credential that I trust to God in heaven, to justice on earth; that I offend no laws, but cling to the protection of the laws. I have the credential of my people's undeniable confidence and its unshaken faith; to my devotion, to my manliness, to my honesty, and to my patriotism; which faith I will honestly answer without ambition, without interest, as faithfully as ever, but more skillfully, because schooled by adversities. And I have the credential of the justice of the cause I plead, and of the wonderful sympathy which, not my person, but that cause, has met, and meets, in two hemispheres. These are my credentials, and nothing else. To whom this is enough, he will help me, so far as the law permits and it is his good pleasure. To whom these credentials are not sufficient, let him look for a better accredited man.

LXXIX.

THE IDES OF MARCH.

To-day is the fourth anniversary of the Revolution in Hungary.

Anniversaries of revolutions are almost always connected with the recollections of some patriot's death,—fallen on that day, like the Spartans at Thermopyl, martyrs of devotion to their fatherland.

Almost in every country there is some proud cemetery, or some modest tombstone, adorned on such a day by a garland of evergreen,—the pious offering of patriotic tenderness. I passed the last night in a sleepless dream; and my soul wandered on the magnetic wings of the past, home to my beloved, bleeding land. And I saw, in the dead of the night, dark veiled shapes, with the paleness of eternal grief upon their brow—but terrible in the fearless silence of that grief—gliding over the churchyards of Hungary and kneeling down to the head of the graves, and depositing the pious tribute of green and cypress upon them; and, after a short prayer, rising with clenched fists and gnashing teeth, and then stealing away tearless! and silent as they came,—stealing away, because the bloodbounds of my country's murder lurks from every corner on that night, and on this day, and leads to prison those who dare to show a pious remembrance to the beloved. To-day, a smile on the lips of a Magyar is taken for a crime of defiance to tyranny; and a tear in his eye is equivalent to a revolt. And yet I have seen, with the eye of my home-wandering soul, thousands performing the work of patriotic piety.

And I saw more. When the pious offerers stole away, I saw the honored dead half risen from their tombs, looking to the offerings, and whispering gloomily, "Still a cypress, and still no flower of joy! Is there still the chill of winter and the gloom of night over thee, Fatherland? Are we not yet revenged?" And the sky of the east reddened suddenly, and quivered with bloody flames; and from the far, far west, a lightning flashed like a star-spangled stripe, and within its light a young eagle mounted and soared towards the quivering flames of the east; and as he drew near, upon his approaching, the flames changed into a radiant morning sun, and a voice from above was heard in answer to the question of the dead:

"Sleep yet a short while; mine is the revenge. I will make the stars of the west the sun of the east; and when ye next awake, ye will find the flower of joy upon your cold bed." And the dead took the twig of cypress, the sign of resurrection, into their bony hands, and lay down.

Such was the dream of my waking soul. And I prayed; and such was my prayer: "Father, if thou deemest me worthy, take the cup from my people, and give it in their stead to me." And there was a whisper around me like the word "Amen." Such was my dream, half foresight and half prophecy; but resolution all. However, none of those dead whom I saw, fell on the 15th of March. They were victims of the royal perjury which betrayed the 15th of March. The anniversary of our Revolution has not the stain of a single drop of blood. L. Kossuth.

LXXX.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

We, the elect of the nation, sat on that morning busily but quietly, in the legislative hall of old Presburg, and, without any flood of eloquence, passed our laws in short words, that the people shall be free; the burdens of feudalism shall cease; the peasant shall become free proprietor; that equality of duties, equality of rights, shall be the fundamental law; and civil, political, social, and religious liberty shall be the common property of all the people, whatever tongue it may speak, or in whatever church pray; and that a national ministry shall execute these laws, and guard with its responsibility the chartered, ancient independence of our Fatherland.

Two days before, Austria's brave people in Vienna had broken its yoke; and summing up despots in the person of their tool, old Metternich, drove him away; and the Hapsburgs, trembling in their imperial cavern of imperial crimes, trembling, but treacherous, and lying and false, wrote with yard-long letters, the words, "Constitution" and "Free Press" upon Vienna's walls; and the people in joy cheered the inveterate liars, because the people knows no falsehood.

On the 14th, I announced the tidings from Vienna to our Parliament at Presburg. The announcement was swiftly carried by the great democrat, the steam-engine, upon the billows of the Danube, down to old Buda and to young Pesth, and while we, in the House of Representatives, passed the laws of Justice and freedom, the people of Pesth rose in peaceful but majestic manifestation, declaring that the people should be free. At this manifestation all the barriers raised by violence against the laws, fell of themselves. Not a drop of blood was shed. A man who was in prison because he had dared to write a book, was carried home in triumph through the streets. The people armed itself as a National Guard, the windows were illuminated and bon fires burnt, and when these tidings returned back to Presburg, blended with the cheers from Vienna, they warmed the chill of our House of Lords, who readily agreed to the laws we pro posed. And there was rejoicing throughout the land. For the first time for centuries the farmer awoke with the pleasant feeling that his time was now his own—for the first time went out to till his field with the consoling thought that the ninth part of his harvest will not be taken by the landlord, nor the tenth by the bishop. Both had fully resigned their feudal portion, and the air was brightened by the lustre of freedom, and the very soil budding into a blooming paradise. Such is the memory of the 15th of March, 1848. L. Kossuth.

LXXXI.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

One year later, there was blood, but also victory, over the land; the people because free, fought like demi-gods. Seven great victories we had gained in that month of March. On this very day, the remains of the first ten thousand Russians fled over the frontiers of Transylvania, to tell at home how heavily the blow falls from free Hungarian arms. It was in that very month, that one evening I lay down in the bed, whence in the morning Windischgrtz had risen; and from the battle-field I hastened to the Congress at Debreczin, to tell the Representatives of the nation "It is time to declare our national independence, because it is really achieved. The Hapsburgs have not power to contradict it more." Nor had they.

But Russia, having experienced by the test of its first interference, that there was no power on earth caring about the most flagrant violation of the laws of nations, and seeing by the silence of Great Britain and of the United States, that she may dare to violate those laws, our heroes had to meet a fresh force of nearly two hundred thousand Russians. No power cheered our bravely-won independence by diplomatic recognition; not even the United States, though they always professed their principle to be that they recognize every de facto government. We therefore had the right to expect a speedy recognition from the United States. Our struggle rose to European height, but we were left alone to fight for the world; and we had no arms for the new battalions, gathering up in thousands with resolute hearts and empty hands.

The recognition of our independence being withheld, commercial intercourse for procuring arms abroad was impossible,—the gloomy feeling of entire forsakedness spread over our tired ranks, and prepared the field for the secret action of treachery; until the most sacrilegious violation of those common laws of nations was achieved, and. the code of "nature and of nature's God" was drowned in Hungary's blood. And I who on the 15th of March, 1848, saw the principle of full civil and religious liberty triumphing in my native land,—who, on the 15th of March, 1849, saw this freedom consolidated by victories,—one year later, on the 15th of March, 1850, was on my sorrowful way to an Asiatic prison. L. Kossuth.

LXXXII.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

But wonderful are the ways of Divine Providence. It was again in the month of March, 1851, that the generous interposition of the United States cast the first ray of hope into the dead night of my captivity. And on the 15th of March, 1852, the fourth anniversary of our Revolution, guided by the bounty of Providence, here I stand, in the very heart of your immense Republic; no longer a captive, but free in the land of the free, not only not desponding, but firm in confidence of the future, because raised in spirits by a swelling sympathy in the home of the brave; still a poor, a homeless exile, but not without some power to do good to my country and to the cause of liberty, as my very persecution proves. Such is the history of the 15th of March, in my humble life. Who can tell what will be the character of the next 15th of March?

Nearly two thousand years ago. the first Csar found a Brutus on the Ides or 15th of March. May be that the Ides of March, 1853, will see the last of the Csars fall under the avenging might of a thousand-handed Brutus—the name of whom is "the people"—inexorable at last after it has been so long generous. The seat of the Csars was first in the south, then from the south to the east, from the east to the west, and from the west to the north. That is their last abode. None was lasting yet. Will the last, and worst, prove luckier? No, it will not. While the seat of the Csars was tossed around and thrown back to the icy north, a new world became the cradle of a new humanity, where, in spite of the Csars the Genius of Freedom raised (let us hope) an everlasting throne. The Csar of the north and the Genius of Freedom have not place enough upon this earth for both of them; one must yield and be crushed beneath the heels of the other. Which is it? Which shall yield? America may decide. L. Kossuth.

LXXXIII.

THE MAYFLOWER AND THE PILGRIMS.

Methinks I see it now that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks, and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now, driven in fury before the raging tempest, in their scarcely seaworthy vessel. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their shipmaster for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea?—was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of lope? Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, a reality so important, a promise yet to be fulfilled so glorious? E. Everett.

LXXXIV.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

After years of fruitless and heart-sick solicitation, after offering, in effect, to this monarchy and to that monarch, the gift of a hemisphere. the great discoverer touches upon a partial success. He succeeds, not in enlisting the sympathy of his countrymen at Genoa and Venice, for a brave brother-sailor,—not in giving a new direction to the spirit of maritime adventure, which had so long prevailed in Portugal,—not in stimulating the commercial thrift of Henry the Seventh, or the pious ambition of the Catholic king. His sorrowful perseverance touches the heart of a noble princess, worthy the throne which she adorned. The New World, which was just escaping the subtle kingcraft of Ferdinand, was saved to Spain by the womanly compassion of Isabella.

It is truly melancholy, however, to contemplate the wretched equipment, for which the most powerful princess of Christendom was ready to pledge her jewels. Floating castles will soon be fitted out to convey the miserable natives of Africa to the golden shores of America; towering galleons will be despatched to bring home the guilty treasures to Spain. But three small vessels, one of which was without a deck, and neither of them, probably, exceeding the capacity of a pilot-boat, and even these impressed into the public service, composed the expedition fitted out under royal patronage, to realize that magnificent conceptions in which the creative mind of Columbus had planted the germs of a new world.

No chapter of romance equals the interest of this expedition. The most fascinating of the works of fiction which have issued from the modern press have, to my taste, no attraction compared with the pages in which the first voyage of Columbus is described by Robertson, and still more by our own Irving and Prescott, the last two enjoying the advantage over the Scottish historian of possessing the lately discovered Journals and letters of Columbus himself. The departure from Palos, where, a few days before, he had begged a morsel of bread and a cup of water for his wayworn child,—his final farewell to the Old World at the Canaries,—his entrance upon the trade winds, which then, for the first time, filled a European sail,—the portentous variation of the needle, never before observed, the fearful course westward and westward, day after day, and night after night, over the unknown ocean, the mutinous and ill-appeased crew; at length, when hope had turned to despair in every heart but one, the tokens of land,—the cloud-banks on the western horizon,—the logs of drift-wood,—the fresh shrub, floating with its leaves and berries,—the flocks of land-birds,—the shoals of fish that inhabit shallow water, the indescribable smell of the shore,—the mysterious presentiment that seems ever to go before a great event, and finally, on that ever-memorable night of the 12th of October, 1492, the moving light seen by the sleepless eye of the great discoverer himself, from the deck of the Santa Maria, and in the morning the real, undoubted land, swelling up from the bosom of the deep, with its plains, and hills, and forests, and rocks, and streams, and strange, new races of men;—these are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our Continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper. E. Everett.

LXXXV.

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.

We dismiss them not to the chambers of forgetfulness and death. What we admired, and prized, and venerated in them, can never be forgotten. I had almost said that they are now beginning to live; to live that life of unimpaired influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for which their talents and services were destined. Such men do not, cannot die. To be cold and breathless; to feel not and speak not; this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the channels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honors with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye? Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, cannot die. The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make it life to live," these cannot expire;—

"These shall resist the empire of decay, When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away; Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie, But that which warmed it once can never die."

E. Everett.

LXXXVI.

THE INDIAN CHIEF TO THE WHITE SETTLER.

Think of the country for which the Indians fought! Who can blame them? As Philip looked down from his seat on Mount Hope, that glorious eminence, that

——" throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,"—

as he looked down, and beheld the lovely scene which spread beneath, at a summer sunset, the distant hill-tops glittering as with fire, the slanting beams streaming across the waters, the broad plains, the island groups, the majestic forest,—could he be blamed, if his heart burned within him, as he beheld it all passing, by no tardy process, from beneath his control, into the hands of the stranger?

As the river chieftains—the lords of the waterfalls and the mountains—ranged this lovely valley, can it be wondered at, if they beheld with bitterness the forest disappearing beneath the settler's axe? the fishing-place disturbed by his saw-mills? Can we not fancy the feelings with which some strong-minded savage, the chief of the Pocomtuck Indians, who should have ascended the summit of the Sugar-loaf Mountain, (rising as it does before us, at this moment, in all its loveliness and grandeur,)—in company with a friendly settler, contemplating the progress already made by the white man, and marking the gigantic strides with which he was advancing into the wilderness, should fold his arms and say "White man, there is eternal war between me and thee! I quit not the land of my fathers, but with my life. In those woods, where I bent my youthful bow; I will still hunt the deer; over yonder waters I will still glide, unrestrained, in my bark canoe. By those dashing waterfalls I will still lay up my winter's store of food; on these fertile meadows I will still plant my corn.

"Stranger, the land is mine! I understand not these paper rights. I gave not my consent, when, as thou sayest, these broad regions were purchased, for a few baubles, of my fathers. They could sell what was theirs; they could sell no more. How could my father sell that which the Great Spirit sent me into the world to live upon? They knew not what they did.

"The stranger came, a timid suppliant,—few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bear-skin, and warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children; and now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchments over the whole, and says, 'It is mine.'

"Stranger! there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There is poison in the white man's cup; the white man's dog barks at the red man's heels. If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I fly? Shall I go to the south, and dwell among the graves of the Pequots? Shall I wander to the west, the fierce Mohawk,—the man-eater,—is my foe. Shall I fly to the east, the great water is before me. No, stranger; here I have lived, and here will I die; and if here thou abidest, there is eternal war between me and thee.

"Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction; for that alone I thank thee. And now take heed to thy steps; the red man is thy foe. When thou goest forth by day my bullet shall whistle past thee; when thou liest down by night, my knife is at thy throat. The noonday sun shall not discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood; thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes; thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after with the scalping-knife; thou shalt build, and I will burn,—till the white man or the Indian perish from the land." E. Everett.

LXXXVII.

THE MEN OF "SEVENTY-SIX."

If we look only at one part of the work of the men of '76 if we see them poring over musty parchments by the midnight lamp, citing the year-books against writs of assistance, disputing themselves hoarse, about this phrase in the charter of Charles the First, and that section in a statute of Edward the Third, we should be disposed to class them with the most bigoted conservatives that ever threw a drag-chain around the limbs of a young and ardent people. But, gracious heavens, look at them again, when the trumpet sounds the hour of resistance; survey the other aspect of their work. See these undaunted patriots, in their obscure caucus gatherings, in their town-meetings, in their provincial assemblies, in their continental congress, breathing defiance to the British Parliament and the British throne. March with their raw militia to the conflict with the trained veterans of the seven years' war. Witness them, a group of colonies, extemporized into a confederacy, entering with a calm self-possession into alliance with the oldest monarchy in Europe; and occupying, as they did, a narrow belt of territory along the coast, plainly peopled, partially cleared, hemmed in by the native savage, by the Alleghenies, by the Ohio, and the Lakes; behold them dilating with the grandeur of the position, radiant in the prospective glories of their career, casting abroad the germs of future independent States, destined, at no distant day, not merely to cover the face of the thirteen British colonies, but to spread over the territories of France and Spain on this continent, over Florida and Louisiana, over New Mexico and California, beyond the Mississippi, beyond the Rocky Mountains,—to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, the arctic and the torrid zones, in one great network of confederate republican government. Contemplate this, and you will acknowledge the men of Seventy-six to have been the boldest men of progress that the world has ever seen!

These are the men whom the Fourth of July invites us to respect and to imitate;—the James Otises and the Warrens, the Franklins and the Adamses, the Patrick Henrys and the Jeffersons, and him whom I may not name in the plural number, brightest of the bright and purest of the pure,—Washington himself. But let us be sure to imitate them, (or strive to do so) in all their great principles, in both parts of their noble and comprehensive policy. Let us reverence them as they reverenced their predecessors,—not seeking to build up the future on the ruins of all that had gone before, nor yet to bind down the living, breathing, burning present to the mouldering relics of the dead past,—but deducing the rule of a bold and safe progress, from the records of a wise and glorious experience. E. Everett.

LXXXVIII.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

We live at an era as eventful, in my judgment, as that of '76 though in a different way. We have no foreign yoke to throw off but in the discharge of the duty devolved upon us by Providence, we have to carry the republican independence which our fathers achieved, with all the organized institutions of an enlightened community, institutions of religion, law, education, charity, art, and all the thousand graces of the higher culture, beyond the Missouri, beyond the Sierra Nevada; perhaps, in time around the circuit of the Antilles; perhaps to the archipelagoes of the Central Pacific. The pioneers are on the way. Who can tell how far and fast they will travel? Who, that compares the North America of 1753, but a century ago, and numbering but little over a million of souls of European origin; or still more the North America of 1653, when there was certainly not a fifth part of that number; who that compares this with the North America of 1853, its twenty-two millions of European origin, and its thirty-one States, will venture to assign limits to our growth; will dare to compute the time-table of our railway progress, or lift so much as a corner of the curtain that hides the crowded events of the coming century?

This only we can plainly see; the Old World is rocking to its foundations. From the Gulf of Finland to the Yellow Sea, everything is shaken. The spirit of the age has gone forth to hold his great review, and the kings of the earth are moved to meet him at his coming. The band which holds the great powers of Europe together in one political league, is strained to its utmost tension. The catastrophe may for a while be staved off; but to all appearance they are hurrying to the verge of one of those conflicts which, like those of Pharsalia and Actium, affect the condition of States for twice ten centuries. The Turkish empire, encamped but for four centuries on the frontiers of Europe, and the Chinese monarchy, contemporary with David and Solomon, are alike crumbling.

While these events are passing in the Old World, a tide of emigration, which has no parallel in history is pouring westward, across the Atlantic, and eastward, across the Pacific to our shores. The real political vitality of the world seems moving to the new hemisphere, whose condition and fortune it devolves upon us and our children to mould and regulate.

It is a grand,—let me say, a solemn thought,—well calculated to still the passions of the day and to elevate us above the paltry strife of parties. It teaches us that we are called to the highest, and, I do verily believe, the most momentous trust that ever devolved upon one generation of men. Let us meet it with a corresponding temper and purpose,—with the wisdom of a well-instructed experience, and with the foresight and preparation of a glorious future; not on the narrow platforms of party policy and temporary expediency, but in the broad and comprehensive spirit of Seventy-six. E. Everett.

LXXXIX.

OUR COMMON SCHOOLS.

Sir, it is our common schools which gives the keys of knowledge to the mass of the people. Our common schools are important in the same way as the common air, the common sunshine, the common rain,—invaluable for their commonness. They are the corner-stone of that municipal organization which is the characteristic feature of our social system; they are the fountain of that widespread intelligence which, like a moral life pervades the country.

From the humblest village-school there may go forth a teacher who, like Newton, shall bind his temples with the stars of Orion's belt; with Herschel, light up his cell with the beams of before-undiscovered planets; with Franklin, grasp the lightning. Columbus, fortified with a few sound geographical principles, was, on the deck of his crazy caravel, more truly the monarch of Castile and Aragon, than Ferdinand and Isabella, enthroned beneath the golden vaults of the conquered Alhambra. And Robinson, with the simple training of a rural pastor in England, when he knelt on the shores of Delft Haven, and sent his little flock upon their Gospel errantry beyond the world of waters, exercised an influence over the destinies of the civilized world, which will last to the end of time.

Sir, it is a solemn, a tender, and sacred duty that of education. What, sir, feed a child's body, and let his soul hunger! pamper his limbs and starve his faculties! Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding-places in the sea, and spread out your wheatfields across the plain, in order to supply the wants of that body which will soon be as cold and as senseless as the poorest clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious capacities for improvement, languish and pine! What! build factories, turn in rivers upon the water-wheels, enchain the imprisoned spirits of steam, to weave a garment for the body, and let the soul remain unadorned and naked! What! send out your vessels to the farthest ocean, and make battle with the monsters of the deep, in order to obtain the means of lighting up your dwellings and workshops, and prolonging the hours of labor for the meat that perisheth, and permit that vital spark which God has kindled, which He has intrusted to our care, to be fanned into a bright and heavenly flame,—permit it, I say, to languish and go out!

What considerate man can enter a school and not reflect with awe, that it is a seminary where immortal minds are training for eternity? What parent but is, at times, weighed down with the thought, that there must be laid the foundations of a building which will stand, when not merely temple and palace, but the perpetual hills and adamantine rocks on which they rest, have melted away!—that a light may there be kindled, which will shine, not merely when every artificial beam is extinguished, but when the affrighted sun has fled away from the heavens! I can add nothing, sir, to this consideration. I will only say, in conclusion, Education,—when we feed that lamp, we perform the highest social duty! If we quench it, I know not where (humanly speaking), for time or for eternity,—"

I know not where is that Promethean heat That can its light resume! " E Everett.

XC.

WEBSTER'S GREATEST PARLIAMENTARY EFFORT.

The greatest parliamentary effort made by Mr. Webster, was his second speech on Foot's resolution,—the question at issue being nothing less than this; Is the Constitution of the United States a compact without a common umpire between confederated sovereignties; or is it a government of the people of the United States, sovereign within the sphere of its delegated powers, although reserving a great mass of undelegated rights to the separate State governments and the people? With those who embrace the opinions which Mr. Webster combated in this speech, this is not the time nor the place to engage in an argument; but those who believe that he maintained the true principles of the Constitution, will probably agree, that since that instrument was communicated to the Continental Congress, seventy-two years ago this day by George Washington as President of the Federal Convention, no greater service has been rendered to the country than in the delivery of this speech.

Well do I recollect the occasion and the scene. It was truly what Wellington called the battle of Waterloo, a conflict of giants. I passed an hour and a half with Mr. Webster, at his request, the evening before this great effort; and he went over to me, from a very concise brief, the main topics of the speech which he had prepared for the following day. So calm and unimpassioned was the memorandum, so entirely was he at ease himself that I was tempted to think absurdly enough, that he was not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of the occasion. But I soon perceived that his calmness was the repose of conscious power. He was not only at ease, but sportive and full of anecdote; and as he told the Senate playfully the next day he slept soundly that night on the formidable assault of his gallant and accomplished adversary. So the great Cond slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame.

As I saw him in the evening, (if I may borrow an illustration from his favorite amusement,) he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit, as some here have often seen him, while floating in his fishing boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and there, with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning he was like some mighty Admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad pendant streaming at the main, the stars and the stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak; and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his canvas strained to the wind and all his thunders roaring from his broadsides. E. Everett.

XCI.

WHAT GOOD WILL THE MONUMENT DO.

I am met with the great objection, What good will the Monument do? I beg leave, sir, to exercise my birthright as a Yankee, and answer this question by asking two or three more, to which, I believe, it will be quite as difficult to furnish a satisfactory reply. I am asked, What good will the monument do? And I ask, What good does anything do? What is good? Does anything do any good? The persons who suggest this objection, of course think that there are some projects and undertakings that do good; and I should therefore like to have the idea of good explained, and analyzed, and run out to its elements.

When this is done, if I do not demonstrate, in about two minutes, that the monument does the same kind of good that anything else does, I shall consent that the huge blocks of granite already laid, should be reduced to gravel, and carted off to fill up the mill-pond; for that, I suppose, is one of the good things. Does a railroad or canal do good? Answer, yes. And how? It facilitates intercourse, opens markets and increases the wealth of the country. But what is this good for? Why, individuals prosper and get rich. And what good does that do? Is mere wealth, as an ultimate end,—gold and silver, without an inquiry as to their use,—are these a good? Certainly not. I should insult this audience by attempting to prove that a rich man, as such, is neither better nor happier than a poor one. But as men grow rich, they live better. Is there any good in this, stopping here? Is mere animal life—feeding, working, and sleeping like an ox—entitled to be called good? Certainly not. But these improvements increase the population. And what? good does that do? Where is the good in counting twelve millions, instead of six, of mere feeding, working, sleeping animals? There is, then, no good in the mere animal life, except that it is the physical basis of that higher moral existence, which resides in the soul, the heart, the mind, the conscience; in good principles, good feelings, good actions (and the more disinterested, the more entitled to be called good) which flow from them. Now, sir, I say that generous and patriotic sentiments, sentiments which prepare us to serve our country, to live for our country, to die for our country,—feelings like those which carried Prescott, and Warren, and Putnam to the battle-field, are good,—good, humanly speaking, of the highest order. It is good to have them, good to encourage them, good to honor them, good to commemorate them;—and whatever tends to animate and strengthen such feelings does as much right down practical good as filling up low grounds and building railroads. This is my demonstration. E. Everett.

XCII.

EMANCIPATION OF THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.

This paper, gentlemen, insists upon the necessity of emancipating the Catholics of Ireland, and that is charged as a part of the libel. If they had waited another year, if they had kept this prosecution impending for another year, how much would remain for a jury to decide upon, I should be at a loss to discover. It seems as if the progress of public information was eating away the ground of the prosecution. Since the commencement of the prosecution, this part of the libel has unluckily received the sanction of the legislature. In that interval our Catholic brethren have obtained that admission, which, it seems, it was a libel to propose. In what way to account for this, I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been occasioned by the emancipation of our Catholic brethren? has the bigoted malignity of any individuals been crushed? Or, has the stability of the government, or has that of the country been weakened? Or, are one million of subjects stronger than three millions? Do you think that the benefit they receive should be poisoned by the stings of vengeance? If you think so, you must say to them, "You have demanded your emancipation and you have got it; but we abhor your persons, we are outraged at your success; and we will stigmatize, by a criminal prosecution, the adviser of that relief which you have obtained from the voice of your country."

I ask you, gentlemen, do you think, as honest men, anxious for the public tranquillity, conscious that there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized that you ought to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have been saved from their own Parliament by the humanity of their Sovereign? Or, do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you think it wise or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to your oaths; do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men honest and bold enough to propose that measure? to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses of the Church—the reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it—giving, I say, in the so much censured words of this paper, "Universal Emancipation!"

I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil—which proclaims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery;—the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation. J. P. Curran.

XCIII.

THE PUBLIC INFORMER.

But the learned gentleman is further pleased to say, that the traverser has charged the government with the encouragement of informers. This, gentlemen, is another small fact that you are to deny at the hazard of your souls, and upon the solemnity of your oaths. You are upon your oaths to say to the sister country, that the government of Ireland uses no such abominable instruments of destruction as informers. Let me ask you honestly, what do you feel, when in my hearing, when in the face of this audience, you are called upon to give a verdict that every man of us, and every man of you, know by the testimony of your own eyes to be utterly and absolutely false? I speak not now of the public proclamation of informers, with a promise of secrecy and of extravagant reward; I speak not of the fate of those horrid wretches who have been so often transferred from the table to the dock, and from the dock to the pillory; I speak of what your own eyes have seen day after day, during the course of this commission, from the box where you are now sitting—the number of horrid miscreants who avowed upon their oaths that they had come from the very seat of government from the castle, where they had been worked upon by the fear of death and the hopes of compensation to give evidence against their fellows. I speak of the well-known fact that the mild and wholesome councils of this government are holden over these catacombs of living death, where the wretch that is buried a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is then dug up a witness.

Is this fancy, or is it fact? Have you not seen him, after his resurrection from that tomb, after leaving been dug out of the region of death and corruption, make his appearance upon the table, the living image of life and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both? Have you not marked when he entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach? Have you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, in the undissembled homage of deferential horror? How his glance, like the lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and mark it for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and death—a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no antidote prevent. There was an antidote a juror's oath——but even that adamantine chain that bound the integrity of man to the throne of eternal justice, is solved and melted in the breath that issues from the informer's mouth. Conscience swings from her mooring, and the appalled and affrighted juror consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim. J. P. Curran.

XCIV.

RED JACKET'S SPEECH TO THE MISSIONARY.

Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. He had created the buffalo, file deer, and other animals for food. He had made the bear and the beaver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country, and taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this He had done for his red children, because He loved them. If we had some disputes about our hunting-ground, they were generally settled without the shedding of much blood. But an evil day came upon us. Your forefathers came across the great water, and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men, and asked for a small seat. We took pity on them; granted their request; and they sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return.

The white people, brother, had now found our country. Tidings were carried back, and more came amongst us. Yet we did not fear them. We took them to be friends. They called us brothers. We believed them and gave them a larger seat. At length their numbers had greatly increased. They wanted more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy. Wars took place. Indians were hired to fight against Indians, and many of our people were destroyed. They also brought strong liquor amongst us. It was strong and powerful and has slain thousands.

Brother, our seats were once large, and yours were small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You have got our country but are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind; and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. We are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while, and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest, and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said. Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at present. Cram.

XCV.

PARTITION OF POLAND.

Now, sir, what was the conduct of your own allies to Poland? Is there a single atrocity of the French, in Italy, in Switzerland, in Egypt, if you please, more unprincipled and inhuman than that of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in Poland? What has there been in the conduct of the French to foreign powers; what in the violation of solemn treaties; what in the plunder, devastation, and dismemberment of unoffending countries; what in the horrors and murders perpetrated upon the subdued victims of their rage in any district which they have overrun, worse than the conduct of those three great powers in the miserable, devoted, and trampled-on kingdom of Poland, and who have been, or are, our allies in this war for religion and social order, and the rights of nations? "Oh! but you regretted the partition of Poland! " Yes, regretted! You regretted the violence, and that is all you did. You united yourself with the actors; you, in fact, by your acquiescence, confirmed the atrocity. But they are your allies; and though they overran and divided Poland, there was nothing, perhaps, in the manner of doing it which stamped it with peculiar infamy and disgrace. The hero of Poland [Swarrow], perhaps, was merciful and mild! He was "as much superior to Bonaparte in bravery, and in the discipline which he maintained, as he was superior in virtue and humanity! " He was animated by the purest principles of Christianity, and was restrained in his career by the benevolent precepts which it inculcates! Was he? Let unfortunate Warsaw, and the miserable inhabitant's of the suburb of Praga in particular, tell! What do we understand to have been the conduct of this magnanimous hero, with whom, it seems, Bonaparte is not to be compared? He entered the suburb of Praga, the most populous suburb of Warsaw; and there he let his soldiery loose on the miserable, unarmed, and unresisting people. Men, women, and children, nay, infants at the breast, were doomed to one indiscriminate massacre. Thousands of them were inhumanly, wantonly butchered! And for what? Because they had dared to join in a wish to meliorate their own condition as a people, and to improve their Constitution, which had been confessed by their own Sovereign to be in want of amendment. And such is the hero upon whom the cause of religion and social order is to repose! And such is the man whom we praise for his discipline and his virtue, and whom we hold out as our boast and our dependence; while the conduct of Bonaparte unfits him to be even treated with as an enemy? C. J. Fox.

XCVI.

NATIONAL DISGRACE.

Sir, we may look in vain to the events of former times for a disgrace parallel to what we have suffered. Louis the Fourteenth, a monarch often named in our debates, and whose reign exhibits more than any other the extremes of prosperous and of adverse fortune, never, in the midst of his most humiliating distresses, stooped to so despicable a sacrifice of all that can be dear to man. The war of the succession, unjustly begun by him, had reduced his power, had swallowed up his armies and his navies, had desolated his provinces, had drained his treasures, and deluged the earth with the blood of the best and most faithful his subjects. Exhausted by his various calamities, he offered his enemies at one time to relinquish all the objects for which he had begun the war. That proud monarch sued for peace, and was content to receive it from our moderation. But when it was made a condition of that peace, that he should turn his arms against his grandson, and compel him by force to relinquish the throne of Spain,—humbled, exhausted, conquered as he was, misfortune had not yet bowed his spirit to conditions so hard as these.

We know the event. He persisted still in the war, until the folly and wickedness of Queen Anne's ministers enabled him to conclude the peace of Utrecht, on terms considerably less disadvantageous even than those he had himself proposed. And shall we, sir, the pride of our age, the terror of Europe, submit to this humiliating sacrifice of our honor? Have we suffered a defeat at Blenheim? Shall we, with our increasing prosperity, our widely diffused capital, our navy, the just subject of our common exultation, ever-flowing coffers, that enable us to give back to the people what, in the hour of calamity, we were compelled to take from them; flushed with a recent triumph over Spain, and yet more than all, while our old rival and enemy was incapable of disturbing us, shall it be for us to yield to what France disdained in the hour of her sharpest distress, and exhibit ourselves to the world, the sole example in its annals of such an abject and pitiful degradation? C. J. Fox.

XCVII.

A POLITICAL PAUSE.

Where, then, sir, is this war, which is prolific of all these horrors, to be carried? Where is it to stop? Not till we have established the house of Bourbon! Or, at least, not until we have had due "experience" of Bonaparte's intentions! And all this without an intelligible motive. All this because you may gain a better peace a year or two hence! So that we are called upon to go on merely as a speculation. We must keep Bonaparte for some time longer at war, as a state of probation! Gracious God, sir! is war a state of probation? Is peace a rash system? Is it dangerous for nations to live in amity with each other? Are your vigilance, your police your common powers of observation, to be extinguished by putting an end to the horrors of war? Cannot this state of probation be as well undergone without adding to the catalogue of human sufferings?

"But we must pause!" says the honorable gentleman. What! must the bowels of Great Britain be torn out her best blood be spilled—her treasures wasted—that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves oh! that you would put yourselves on the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of horrors that you excite! In former wars a man might, at least, have some feeling, some interest, that served to balance, in his mind, the impressions which a scene of carnage and of death must inflict.

If a man had been present at the battle of Blenheim, for instance, and had inquired the motive of the battle, there was not a soldier engaged who could not have satisfied his curiosity, and even, perhaps, allayed his feelings. They were fighting, they knew, to repress the uncontrolled ambition of the Grand Monarch.

But if a man were present now at the field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting—"Fighting!" would be the answer; "they aren't fighting; they are pausing." "Why is that man expiring? " Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury? " The answer must be, "You are quite wrong, sir, you deceive yourself—they are not fighting, do not disturb them they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agony—that man is not dead he is only pausing! Lord help you, sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see, sir, is nothing like fighting—there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it, whatever: it is nothing more than a political pause! It is merely to try an experiment—to see whether Bonaparte will not, behave himself better than heretofore; and in the mean time we have agreed to pause in pure friendship!"

And is this the way, sir, that you are to show yourselves the advocates of order? You take up a system calculated to uncivilize the world—to destroy order,—to trample on religion,—to stifle in the heart, not merely the generosity of a noble sentiment, but the affections of social nature; and in the prosecution of this systems you spread terror and devastation all around you. C. J. Fox

XCVIII.

WASHINGTON'S SWORD AND FRANKLIN'S STAFF.

The Sword of Washington! The Staff of Franklin! O, sir, what associations are linked in adamant with these names! Washington, whose sword was never drawn but in the cause of his country, and never sheathed when wielded in his country's cause! Franklin, the philosopher of the thunder-bolt, the printing-press, and the ploughshare! What names are these in the scanty catalogue of the benefactors of human kind! Washington and Franklin! What other two men whose lives belong to the eighteenth century of Christendom, have left a deeper impression of themselves upon the age in which they lived, and upon all after-time? Washington, the warrior and the legislator! In war, contending, by the wager of battle, for the Independence of his country, and for the freedom of the human race,—ever manifesting, amidst its horrors, by precept and by example, his reverence for the laws of peace, and for the tenderest sympathies of humanity; in peace, soothing the ferocious spirit of discord, among his own countrymen, into harmony and union, and giving to that very sword, now presented to his country, a charm more potent than that attributed, in ancient times, to the lyre of Orpheus.

Franklin! The mechanic of his own fortune; teaching, in early youth, under the shackles of indigence, the way to wealth, and, in the shade of obscurity, the path to greatness; in the maturity of manhood, disarming the thunder of its terrors, the lightning of its fatal blast; and wresting from the tyrant's hand the still more afflictive sceptre of oppression: while descending the vale of years, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, braving, in the dead of winter, the battle and the breeze, bearing in his hand the Charter of Independence, which he had contributed to form, and tendering, from the self-created nation to the mightiest monarchs of Europe, the olive-branch of peace, the mercurial wand of commerce, and the amulet of protection and safety to the man of peace, on the pathless ocean, from the inexorable cruelty and merciless rapacity of war.

And, finally, in the last stage of life, with fourscore winters upon his head, under the torture of an incurable disease, returning to his native land, closing his days as the chief magistrate of his adopted commonwealth, after contributing by his counsels under the Presidency of Washington, and recording his name under the sanction of devout prayer invoked by him to God,—to that Constitution under the authority of which we are assembled, as the Representatives of the North American People, to receive, in the name of them and for them, these venerable relics of the wise, the valiant, and the good founders of our great confederated Republic, these sacred symbols of our golden age. May they be deposited among the archives of our Government! And may every American, who shall hereafter behold them, ejaculate a mingled offering of praise to that Supreme Ruler of the Universe, by whose tender mercies our Union has been hitherto preserved, through all the vicissitudes and revolutions of this turbulent world; and of prayer for the continuance of these blessings, by the dispensations of Providence to our beloved country, from age to age, till time shall be no more! J. Q. Adams.

XCIX.

THE RIGHT OF PETITION BY WOMEN.

The gentleman says that women have no right to petition on political subjects; that it is discreditable, not only to their section of the country, but also to the national character; that these females could have a sufficient field for the exercise of their influence in the discharge of their duties to their fathers, their husbands, or their children—cheering the domestic circle, and shedding over it the mild radiance of the social virtues, instead of rushing into the fierce struggles of political life. I admit, sir, that it is their duty to attend to these things. I subscribe fully, to the elegant compliment, passed by him upon those members of the female sex who devote their time to these duties. But I say that the correct principle is, that women are not only justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their God. The mere departure of woman from the duties of the domestic circle, far from being a reproach to her, is a virtue of the highest order, when it is done from purity of motive, by appropriate means, and towards a virtuous purpose. That is the principle I maintain, and which the gentleman has to refute, if he applies the position he has taken to the mothers, the sisters, and the daughters of the men of my district who voted to send me here. The motive, the means, and the purpose of their petition will bear his scrutiny.

Why, sir, what does the gentleman understand by "political subjects?" Everything in which this House has an agency-everything which relates to peace and war, or to any of the great interests of society. Are women to have no opinions or actions on subjects relating to the general welfare? Where did the gentleman get this principle? Did he find it in sacred history—in the language of Miriam the Prophetess, in one of the noblest and most sublime songs of triumph that ever met the human eye or ear? Did the gentleman never hear of the deed of Jael, who slew the dreaded enemy of her country? Has he forgotten Esther, who, by her petition saved her people and her country? Sir, I might go through the whole sacred history, and find innumerable examples of women, who not only took an active part in the politics of their times, but who are held up with honor to posterity for doing so.

To go from sacred history to profane, does the gentleman there find it "discreditable" for women to take any interest or any part in political affairs? Has he forgotten the Spartan mother, who said to her son, when going out to battle, "My son, come back to me with thy shield, or upon thy shield?" Does he not remember Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, who declared that her children were her jewels? And why? Because they were the champions of freedom. Has he not read of Arria, who, under imperial despotism, when her husband was condemned to die by a tyrant, plunged the sword into her own bosom, and, handing it to her husband, said, "Take it, Ptus, it does not hurt," and expired?

To come to a later period, what names are more illustrious than that of Elizabeth, the great British queen, and that of Isabella of Castile, the patroness of Columbus, the virtual discoverer of this hemisphere, for without her that discovery would not have been made? Did they bring "discredit" on their sex by mingling in politics? And what were the women of the United States in the struggle of the Revolution? Were they devoted exclusively to the duties and enjoyments of the fireside? When the soldiers were destitute of clothing, or sick, or in prison, from whence did relief come? From the hearts where patriotism erects her favorite shrine, and from the hand which is seldom withdrawn when the soldier is in need. The voice of our history speaks trumpet-tongued of the daring and intrepid spirit of patriotism burning in the bosoms of the ladies of that day "Politics," sir, "rushing into the vortex of politics!" They gloried in being called rebel ladies, refusing to attend balls and entertainments, but crowding to the hospitals and prison-ships! And, sir, is that spirit to be charged here, in this hall where we are sitting, as being "discreditable" to our country's name? So far from regarding such conduct as a national reproach, I approve of it, and glory in it. J. Q. Adams.

C.

VALUE OF POPULARITY.

MY Lords, I come now to speak upon what, indeed, I would have gladly avoided, had I not been particularly pointed at for the part I have taken in this bill. It has been said by a noble lord on my left hand, that I, likewise, am running the race of popularity. If the noble lord means by popularity, that applause bestowed by after-ages on good and virtuous actions, I have long been struggling in that race; to what purpose, all-trying time can alone determine: but, if the noble lord means that mushroom popularity which is raised without merit, and lost without crime, he is much mistaken in his opinion.

I defy the noble lord to point out a single action of my life, in which the popularity of the times ever had the smallest influence on my determinations. I have a more permanent and steady rule for my conduct, the dictates of my own breast. Those that have foregone that pleasing adviser, and given up their mind to be the slave of every popular impulse, I sincerely pity: I pity them still more, if their vanity leads them to mistake the shouts of the mob for the trumpet of fame. Experience might inform them, that many who have been saluted with the huzzahs of a crowd one day, have received its execrations the next; and many who by the popularity of their times, have been held up as spotless patriots, have, nevertheless, appeared upon the historian's page,—when truth has triumphed over delusion,—the assassins of liberty.

True liberty, in my opinion, can only exist when justice is equally administered to all,—to the king and to the beggar. Where is the justice, then, or where is the law, that protects a member of Parliament more than any other man from the punishment due to his crimes? The laws of this country allow no place, nor employment to be a sanctuary for crimes; and where I have the honor to sit as judge, neither royal favor, nor popular applause shall ever protect the guilty. Lord Mansfield.

CI.

SCORN TO BE SLAVES.

The voice of your father's blood cries to you from the ground, "My sons, scorn to be slaves! In vain we met the frowns of tyrants; in vain we crossed the boisterous ocean, found a new world, and prepared it for the happy residence of liberty; in vain we toiled; in vain we fought; we bled in vain, if you, our offspring, want valor to repel the assaults of her invaders!" Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors; but, like them, resolve never to part with your birthright. Be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberty.

Follow not the dictates of passion, but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights; at least, prevent the curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memories. If you, with united zeal and fortitude, oppose the torrent of oppression; if you feel the true fire of patriotism burning in your breasts; if you, from your souls, despise the most gaudy dress which slavery can wear; if you really prefer the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed train, will hide her hideous head in confusion, shame, and despair.

If you perform your part, you must have the strongest confidence, that the same Almighty Being, who protected your pious, and venerable forefathers, who enabled them to turn a barren wilderness into a fruitful field, who so often made bare His arm for their salvation, will still be mindful of their offspring.

May that Almighty Being graciously preside in all our councils. May He direct us to such measures as He himself shall approve, and be pleased to bless. May we be ever favored of God. May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, "a name and a praise in the whole earth," until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the world in undistinguished ruin. J. Warren.

CII.

LOSS OF THE ARCTIC.

It was autumn. Hundreds had wended their way from pilgrimages; from Rome and its treasures of dead art, and its glory of living nature; from the sides of the Switzer's mountains, and from the capitals of various nations, all of them saying in their hearts, we will wait for the September gales to have done with their equinoctial fury, and then we will embark; we will slide across the appeased ocean, and in the gorgeous month of October, we will greet our longed-for native land, and our heart-loved homes.

And so the throng streamed along from Berlin, from Paris, from the Orient, converging upon London, still hastening toward the welcome ship, and narrowing every day the circle of engagements and preparations. They crowded aboard. Never had the Arctic borne such a host of passengers, nor passengers so nearly related to so many of us. The hour was come. The signal-ball fell at Greenwich. It was noon also at Liverpool. The anchors were weighed; the great hull swayed to the current; the national colors streamed abroad, as if themselves instinct with life and national sympathy. The bell strikes; the wheels revolve; the signal-gun beats its echoes, in upon every structure along the shore, and the Arctic glides joyfully forth from the jersey, and turns her prow to the winding channel, and begins her homeward run. The pilot stood at the wheel, and men saw him. Death sat upon the prow, and no eye beheld him. Whoever stood at the wheel in all the voyage, Death was the pilot that steered the craft, and none knew it. He neither revealed his presence nor whispered his errand.

And so hope was effulgent, and little gayety disported itself, and joy was with every guest. Amid all the inconveniences of the voyage, there was still that which hushed every murmur,—"Home is not far away." And every morning it was still one night nearer home! Eight days had passed. They beheld that distant bank of mist that forever haunts the vast shallows of Newfoundland. Boldly they made it; and plunging in, its pliant wreaths wrapped them about. They shall never emerge. The last sunlight has flashed from that deck. The last voyage is done to ship and passengers. At noon there came noiselessly stealing from the north that fated instrument of destruction. In that mysterious shroud, that vast atmosphere of mist, both steamers were holding their way with rushing prow and roaring wheels, but invisible.

At a league's distance, unconscious, and at nearer approach, unwarned; within hail, and bearing right towards each other, unseen, unfelt, till in a moment more, emerging from the gray mists, the ill-omened Vesta dealt her deadly stroke to the Arctic. The death-blow was scarcely felt along the mighty hull. She neither reeled nor shivered. Neither commander nor officers seemed that they had suffered harm. Prompt upon humanity the brave Luce (let his name be ever spoken with admiration and respect) ordered away his boat with the first officer to inquire if the stranger had suffered harm. As Gourley went over the ship's side, oh, that some good angel had called to the brave commander in the words of Paul on a like occasion, "Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved."

They departed, and with them the hope of the ship, for now the waters gaining upon the hold and rising upon the fires, revealed the mortal blow. Oh, had now that stern, brave mate, Gourley, been on deck, whom the sailors were wont to mind—had he stood to execute sufficiently the commander's will—we may believe that we should not have had to blush for the cowardice and recreancy of the crew, nor weep for the untimely dead. But, apparently, each subordinate officer lost all presence of mind, then courage, and so honor. In a wild scramble, that ignoble mob of firemen, engineers, waiters, and crew, rushed for the boats, and abandoned the helpless women, children, and men to the mercy of the deep! Four hours there were from the catastrophe of collision to the catastrophe of sinking!

Oh, what a burial was here! Not as when one is borne from his home, among weeping throngs, and gently carried to the green fields, and laid peacefully beneath the turf and the flowers. No priest stood to pronounce a burial-service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial-place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth. Down, down they sank, and the quick returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as if it had not been. H. W. Beecher.

CIII.

THE GLORY AND GRANDEUR OF PEACE.

Whatever may be the judgment of poets, of moralist, of satirists, or even of soldiers, it is certain that the glory of arms still exercises no mean influence over the minds of men. The art of war, which has been happily termed by a French divine, the baleful art by which men learn to exterminate one another, is yet held even among Christians, to be an honorable pursuit; and the animal courage, which it stimulates and develops, is prized as a transcendent virtue. It will be for another age, and a higher civilization, to appreciate the more exalted character of the art of benevolence, the art of extending happiness and all good influences, by word or deed, to the largest number of mankind, which, in blessed contrast with the misery, the degradation, the wickedness of war, shall shine resplendent, the true grandeur of peace. All then will be willing to join with the early poet in saying, at least,