American Eloquence Volume I Part 5

The whole period was a succession of great events. The acquisition of Louisiana, stretching from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, laid, in 1803, the foundations of that imperial domain which the steamboat and railroad were to convert to use in after-years. The continental empire of Napoleon and the island empire of Great Britain drifted into a struggle for life or death which hardly knew a breathing s.p.a.ce until the last charge at Waterloo, and from the beginning it was conducted by both combatants with a reckless disregard of international public opinion and neutral rights which is hardly credible but for the official records.

Every injury inflicted on neutral commerce by one belligerent was promptly imitated or exceeded by the other, and the two were perfectly in accord in insisting on the convenient doctrine of international law, that, unless neutral rights were enforced by the neutral against one belligerent, the injury became open to the imitation of the other. In the process of imitation, each belligerent took care to pa.s.s at least a little beyond the precedent; and thus, beginning with a paper blockade of the northern coast of the continent by the British Government, the process advanced, by alternate "retaliations," to a British proclamation specifying the ports of the world to which American vessels were to be allowed to trade, stopping in England or its dependencies to pay taxes en route. These two almost contemporary events, the acquisition of Louisiana and the insolent pretensions of the European belligerents, were the central points of two distinct influences which bore strongly on the development of the United States.

The dominant party, the republicans, had a horror of a national debt which almost amounted to a mania. The a.s.sociations of the term, derived from their reading of English history, all pointed to a condition of affairs in which the rise of a strong aristocracy was inevitable; and, to avoid the latter, they were determined to pay off the former. The payment for Louisiana precluded, in their opinion, the support of a respectable navy; and the remnants of colonialism in their party predisposed them to adopt an ostrich policy instead. The Embargo act was pa.s.sed in 1807, forbidding all foreign commerce. The evident failure of this act to influence the belligerents brought about its repeal in 1809, and the subst.i.tution of the Non-intercourse act. This prohibited commercial intercourse with England and France until either should revoke its injurious edicts. Napoleon, by an empty and spurious revocation in 1810, induced Congress to withdraw the act in respect to France, keeping it alive in respect to England. England refused to admit the sincerity of the French revocation, to withdraw her Orders in Council, or to cease impressing American seamen. The choice left to the United States was between war and submission.

The federalist leaders saw that, while their party strength was confined to a continually decreasing territory, the opposing democracy not only had gained the ma.s.s of the original United States, but was swarming toward and beyond the Mississippi. They dropped to the level of a mere party of opposition; they went further until the only article of their political creed was State sovereignty; some of them went one step further, and dabbled in hopeless projects for secession and the formation of a New England republic of five States. It is difficult to perceive any advantage to public affairs in the closing years of the federal party, except that, by impelling the democratic leaders to really national acts and sympathies, it unwittingly aided in the development of nationality from democracy.

If the essential characteristic of colonialism is the sense of dependence and the desire to imitate, democracy, at least in its earlier phases, begets the opposite qualities. The Congressional elections of 1810-11 showed that the people had gone further in democracy than their leaders. "Submission men" were generally defeated in the election; new leaders, like Clay, Calhoun, and Crawford, made the dominant party a war party, and forced the President into their policy; and the war of 1812 was begun. Its early defeats on land, its startling successes at sea, its financial straits, the desperation of the contest after the fall of Napoleon, and the brilliant victory which crowned its close, all combined to raise the national feeling to the highest pitch; and the federalists, whose stock object of denunciation was "Mr. Madison's war,"

though Mr. Madison was about the most unwilling partic.i.p.ant in it, came out of it under the ban of every national sympathy.

The speech of Mr. Quincy, in many points one of the most eloquent of our political history, will show the brightest phase of federalism at its lowest ebb. One can hardly compare it with that of Mr. Clay, which follows it, without noticing the national character of the latter, as contrasted with the lack of nationality of the former. It seems, also, that Mr. Clay's speech carries, in its internal characteristics, sufficient evidence of the natural forces which tended to make democracy a national power, and not a mere adjunct of State sovereignty, wherever the oblique influence of slavery was absent. For this reason, it has been taken as a convenient introduction to the topic which follows, the Rise of Nationality.

THOMAS JEFFERSON,

OF VIRGINIA, (BORN 1743, DIED 1826.)

INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

MARCH 4, 1801

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:

Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here a.s.sembled, to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness, that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments, which the greatness of the charge, and the weakness of my powers, so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye; when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair, did not the presence of many, whom I see here, remind me, that, in the other high authorities provided by our Const.i.tution, I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal, on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those a.s.sociated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked, amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.

During the contest of opinion through which we have pa.s.sed, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Const.i.tution, all will of course arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression. Let us then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind, let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect, that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, if we countenance a political intolerance, as despotic, as wicked, and as capable of as bitter and b.l.o.o.d.y persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful sh.o.r.e; that this should be more felt and feared by some, and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety; but every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear, that this government, the world's best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.

Sometimes it is said, that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or, have we found angels in the form of kings, to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us then, with courage and confidence, pursue our own federal and republican principles; our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradation of the others, possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisition of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, grat.i.tude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

About to enter, fellow-citizens, upon the exercise of duties which comprehend every thing dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government, and consequently, those which ought to shape its administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compa.s.s they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole const.i.tutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace, and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of our debts, and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person, under the protection of the _habeas corpus_, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation, which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, and blood of our heroes, have been devoted to their attainment; they should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps, and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have a.s.signed me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this, the greatest of all, I have learned to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man, to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose pre-eminent services had ent.i.tled him to the first place in his country's love, and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional; and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not, if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage, is a great consolation to me for the past; and my future solicitude will be, to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others, by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.

Relying then on the patronage of your good-will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choices it is in your power to make. And may that infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe, lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.

JOHN RANDOLPH,

--OF VIRGINIA' (BORN 1773, DIED 1833.)

ON THE MILITIA BILL--HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DEC. 10, 1811.

MR. SPEAKER:

This is a question, as it has been presented to this House, of peace or war. In that light it has been argued; in no other light can I consider it, after the declarations made by members of the Committee of Foreign Relations.

The Committee of Foreign Relations have, indeed, decided that the subject of arming the militia (which has been pressed upon them as indispensable to the public security) does not come within the scope of their authority. On what ground, I have been, and still am, unable to see, they have felt themselves authorized to recommend the raising of standing armies, with a view (as has been declared) of immediate war--a war not of defence, but of conquest, of aggrandizement, of ambition--a war foreign to the interests of this country; to the interests of humanity itself. * * *

I cannot refrain from smiling at the liberality of the gentleman in giving Canada to New York in order to strengthen the northern balance of power; while, at the same time, he forewarns her that the western scale must preponderate. I can almost fancy that I see the Capitol in motion toward the falls of Ohio; after a short sojourn, taking its flight to the Mississippi, and finally alighting at Darien; which, when the gentleman's dreams are realized, will be a most eligible seat of government for the new republic (or empire) of the two Americas! But it seems that in 1808 we talked and acted foolishly, and to give some color of consistency to that folly we must now commit a greater.

I hope we shall act a wise part; take warning by our follies since we have become sensible of them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no more. It is, indeed, high time to give over such preposterous language and proceedings. This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition of territory and subjects, is to be a new commentary on the doctrine that republicans are dest.i.tute of ambition; that they are addicted to peace, wedded to the happiness and safety of the great body of their people.

But it seems this is to be a holiday campaign; there is to be no expense of blood, or of treasure on our part; Canada is to conquer herself; she is to be subdued by the principles of fraternity! The people of that country are first to be seduced from their allegiance and converted into traitors, as preparatory to making them good citizens! Although I must acknowledge that some of our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, I do not think the process would hold good with a whole community. It is a dangerous experiment. We are to succeed in the French mode, by the system of fraternization--all is French. But how dreadfully it might be retorted on the southern and western slave-holding States. I detest this subornation of treason. No; if we must have them, let them fall by the valor of our arms; by fair, legitimate conquest; not become the victims of treacherous seduction.

I am not surprised at the war spirit which is manifesting itself in gentlemen from the South. In the year 1805-6, in a struggle for the carrying trade of belligerent colonial produce, this country was most unwisely brought into collision with the great powers of Europe. By a series of most impolitic and ruinous measures, utterly incomprehensible to every rational, sober-minded man, the Southern planters, by their own votes, have succeeded in knocking down the price of cotton to seven cents, and of tobacco (a few choice crops excepted) to nothing; and in raising the price of blankets (of which a few would not be amiss in a Canadian campaign), coa.r.s.e woollens, and every article of first necessity, three or four hundred per centum. And now, that by our own acts, we have brought ourselves into this unprecedented condition, we must get out of it in any way, but by an acknowledgment of our own want of wisdom and forecast. But is war the true remedy? Who will profit by it? Speculators; a few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the lottery; commissaries and contractors. Who must suffer by it? The people. It is their blood, their taxes that must flow to support it.

I am gratified to find gentlemen acknowledging the demoralizing and destructive consequences of the non-importation law; confessing the truth of all that its opponents foretold, when it was enacted. And will you plunge yourselves in war, because you have pa.s.sed a foolish and ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? But our good friend, the French emperor, stands in the way of its repeal, and we cannot go too far in making sacrifices to him, who has given such demonstration of his love for the Americans; we must, in point of fact, become parties to his war. Who can be so cruel as to refuse him that favor? My imagination shrinks from the miseries of such a connection. I call upon the House to reflect, whether they are not about to abandon all reclamation for the unparalleled outrages, "insults, and injuries" of the French government; to give up our claim for plundered millions; and I ask what reparation or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they shall have made a tender of their person to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. We have, by our own wise (I will not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at Canada. Having done so much toward its improvement, by the exercise of "our restrictive energies," we begin to think the laborer worthy of his hire, and to put in a claim for our portion. Suppose it ours, are we any nearer to our point? As his minister said to the king of Epirus, "May we not as well take our bottle of wine before as after this exploit?" Go march to Canada! leave the broad bosom of the Chesapeake and her hundred tributary rivers; the whole line of sea-coast from Machias to St.

Mary's, unprotected! You have taken Quebec--have you conquered England?

Will you seek for the deep foundations of her power in the frozen deserts of Labrador?

"Her march is on the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep!"

Will you call upon her to leave your ports and harbors untouched only just till you can return from Canada, to defend them? The coast is to be left defenceless, while men of the interior are revelling in conquest and spoil. * * *

No sooner was the report laid on the table, than the vultures were flocking around their prey--the carca.s.s of a great military establishment. Men of tainted reputation, of broken fortune (if they ever had any), and of battered const.i.tutions, "choice spirits tired of the dull pursuits of civil life," were seeking after agencies and commissions, willing to doze in gross stupidity over the public fire; to light the public candle at both ends. Honorable men undoubtedly there are ready to serve their country; but what man of spirit, or of self-respect, will accept a commission in the present army? The gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) addressed himself yesterday exclusively to the "Republicans of the House." I know not whether I may consider myself as ent.i.tled to any part of the benefit of the honorable gentleman's discourse. It belongs not, however, to that gentleman to decide. If we must have an exposition of the doctrines of republicanism, I shall receive it from the fathers of the church, and not from the junior apprentices of the law. I shall appeal to my worthy friends from Carolina (Messrs. Macon and Stanford), "men with whom I have measured my strength," by whose side I have fought during the reign of terror; for it was indeed an hour of corruption, of oppression, of pollution. It was not at all to my taste--that sort of republicanism which was supported, on this side of the Atlantic, by the father of the sedition law, John Adams, and by Peter Porcupine on the other. Republicanism! of John Adams and William Cobbett! * * *

Gallant crusaders in the holy cause of republicanism. Such republicanism does, indeed, mean any thing or nothing. Our people will not submit to be taxed for this war of conquest and dominion. The government of the United States was not calculated to wage offensive foreign war; it was inst.i.tuted for the common defence and the general welfare; and whosoever should embark it in a war of offence, would put it to a test which it is by no means calculated to endure. Make it out that Great Britain has instigated the Indians on a late occasion, and I am ready for battle, but not for dominion. I am unwilling, however, under present circ.u.mstances, to take Canada, at the risk of the Const.i.tution, to embark in a common cause with France, and be dragged at the wheels of the car of some Burr or Bonaparte. For a gentleman from Tennessee, or Genesee, or Lake Champlain, there may be some prospect of advantage.

Their hemp would bear a great price by the exclusion of foreign supply.

In that, too, the great importers are deeply interested. The upper country of the Hudson and the lakes would be enriched by the supplies for the troops, which they alone could furnish. They would have the exclusive market; to say nothing of the increased preponderance from the acquisition of Canada and that section of the Union, which the Southern and Western States have already felt so severely in the Apportionment bill. * * *

Permit me now, sir, to call your attention to the subject of our black population. I will touch this subject as tenderly as possible. It is with reluctance that I touch it at all; but in cases of great emergency, the State physician must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical humanity, from probing the wound of his patient; he must not be withheld by a fastidious and mistaken delicacy from representing his true situation to his friends, or even to the sick man himself, when the occasion calls for it. What is the situation of the slave-holding States? During the war of the Revolution, so fixed were their habits of subordination, that while the whole country was overrun by the enemy, who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During a war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended.

But should we, therefore, be un.o.bservant spectators of the progress of society within the last twenty years; of the silent but powerful change wrought, by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination were broken up, even the poor slaves did not escape the general deluge. The French Revolution has polluted even them. * * *

Men, dead to the operation of moral causes, have taken away from the poor slave his habit of loyalty and obedience to his master, which lightened his servitude by a double operation; beguiling his own cares and disarming his master's suspicions and severity; and now, like true empirics in politics, you are called upon to trust to the mere physical strength of the fetter which holds him in bondage. You have deprived him of all moral restraint; you have tempted him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, just enough to perfect him in wickedness; you have opened his eyes to his nakedness; you have armed his nature against the hand that has fed, that has clothed him, that has cherished him in sickness; that hand which before he became a pupil of your school, he had been accustomed to press with respectful affection. You have done all this--and then show him the gibbet and the wheel, as incentives to a sullen, repugnant obedience. G.o.d forbid, sir, that the Southern States should ever see an enemy on their sh.o.r.es, with these infernal principles of French fraternity in the van. While talking of taking Canada, some of us are shuddering for our own safety at home. I speak from facts, when I say, that the night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond, that the mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom. I have been a witness of some of the alarms in the capital of Virginia. * * *

Against whom are these charges brought? Against men, who in the war of the Revolution were in the councils of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country. And by whom are they made? By runaways chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. It is insufferable. It cannot be borne. It must and ought, with severity, to be put down in this House; and out of it to meet the lie direct. We have no fellow-feeling for the suffering and oppressed Spaniards! Yet even them we do not reprobate. Strange! that we should have no objection to any other people or government, civilized or savage, in the whole world! The great autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates are very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity.

"Turks, Jews, and infidels"; Melimelli or the Little Turtle; barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom, we claim Shakespeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own inst.i.tutions has been borrowed: representation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence; against our fellow Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in religion, with ourselves. In what school did the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hanc.o.c.ks, Franklins, Rutledges of America, learn those principles of civil liberty which were so n.o.bly a.s.serted by their wisdom and valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots; not more by Washington, Hanc.o.c.k, and Henry, than by Chatham and his ill.u.s.trious a.s.sociates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. I trust that none such may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakespeare and a Milton upon my imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sidney upon my political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which, would to G.o.d I possessed in common with that ill.u.s.trious man! of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus upon my religion. This is a British influence which I can never shake off. I allow much to the just and honest prejudices growing out of the Revolution. But by whom have they been suppressed, when they ran counter to the interests of my country? By Washington. By whom, would you listen to them, are they most keenly felt? By felons escaped from the jails of Paris, Newgate, and Kilmainham, since the breaking out of the French Revolution; who, in this abused and insulted country, have set up for political teachers, and whose disciples give no other proof of their progress in republicanism, except a blind devotion to the most ruthless military despotism that the world ever saw. These are the patriots, who scruple not to brand with the epithet of Tory, the men (looking toward the seat of Col. Stewart) by whose blood your liberties have been cemented. These are they, who hold in such keen remembrance the outrages of the British armies, from which many of them are deserters. Ask these self-styled patriots where they were during the American war (for they are, for the most part, old enough to have borne arms), and you strike them dumb; their lips are closed in eternal silence. If it were allowable to entertain partialities, every consideration of blood, language, religion, and interest, would incline us toward England: and yet, shall they alone be extended to France and her ruler, whom we are bound to believe a chastening G.o.d suffers as the scourge of a guilty world! On all other nations he tramples; he holds them in contempt; England alone he hates; he would, but he cannot, despise her; fear cannot despise; and shall we disparage our ancestors?

But the outrages and injuries of England--bred up in the principles of the Revolution--I can never palliate, much less defend them. I well remember flying, with my mother and her new-born child, from Arnold and Philips; and we were driven by Tarleton and other British Pandours from pillar to post, while her husband was fighting the battles of his country. The impression is indelible on my memory; and yet (like my worthy old neighbor, who added seven buckshot to every cartridge at the battle of Guilford, and drew fine sight at his man) I must be content to be called a Tory by a patriot of the last importation. Let us not get rid of one evil (supposing it possible) at the expense of a greater; _mutatis mutandis_, suppose France in possession of the British naval power--and to her the trident must pa.s.s should England be unable to wield it--what would be your condition? What would be the situation of your seaports, and their seafaring inhabitants? Ask Hamburg, Lubec! Ask Savannah! * * *

Shall republicans become the instruments of him who has effaced the t.i.tle of Attila to the "scourge of G.o.d!" Yet, even Attila, in the falling fortunes of civilization, had, no doubt, his advocates, his tools, his minions, his parasites, in the very countries that he overran; sons of that soil whereon his horse had trod; where gra.s.s could never after grow. If perfectly fresh, instead of being as I am, my memory clouded, my intellect stupefied, my strength and spirits exhausted, I could not give utterance to that strong detestation which I feel toward (above all other works of the creation) such characters as Gengis, Tamerlane, Kouli-Khan, or Bonaparte. My instincts involuntarily revolt at their bare idea. Malefactors of the human race, who have ground down man to a mere machine of their impious and b.l.o.o.d.y ambition!

Yet under all the acc.u.mulated wrongs, and insults, and robberies of the last of these chieftains, are we not, in point of fact, about to become a party to his views, a partner in his wars? * * *

I call upon those professing to be republicans to make good the promises, held out by their republican predecessors, when they came into power; promises which, for years afterward, they honestly, faithfully fulfilled. We have vaunted of paying off the national debt, of retrenching useless establishments; and yet have now become as infatuated with standing armies, loans, taxes, navies, and war as ever were the Ess.e.x Junto!

ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA.