their axes on their shoulders, have been among the pioneers in the march of humanity; that young as she is, she has become the mother of populous states. What generous mind would sacrifice to a selfish preservation of local preponderance the delight of beholding civilized nations rising up in the desert; and the language, the manners, the principles in which he has been reared, carried, with his household gods, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains? Who can forget, that this extension of our territorial limits is the extension of the empire of all we hold dear; of our laws, of our character, of the memory of our ancestors, of the great achievements in our history? Whithersoever the sons of the thirteen States shall wander, to the southern or western climes, they will send back their hearts to the rocky shores, the fertile fields, the infant settlements of the Atlantic coast. These are placed beyond the reach of vicissitude. They have already become matter of history, of poetry, of eloquence.

Divisions may spring up, ill blood may burn, parties be formed, and interests may seem to clash; but the great bonds of the nation are linked to what is past. The deeds of the great men, to whom this country owes its origin and growth, are a patrimony, I know, of which its children will never deprive themselves. As long as the Mississippi and Missouri shall flow, those men, and those deeds, will be remembered on their banks. The sceptre of government may go where it will; but that of patriotic feeling can never depart from Judah. In all that mighty region which is drained by the Missouri and its tributary streams,—the valley coëxtensive, in this country, with the temperate zone,—will there be, as long as the name of America shall last, a father that will not take his children on his knee, and recount to them the events of the twenty-second of December, the nineteenth of April, the seventeenth of June, and the fourth of July ?

This then is the theatre on which the intellect of America is to appear, and such the motives to its exertion; such the mass to be influenced by its energies; such the glory to crown its success. If I err in this happy vision of my country's fortunes, I thank Heaven for an error so animating. If this be

false,

may I never know the truth.

PATRIOTIC APPEAL.

31

XVI-PATRIOTIC APPEAL.

J. M'DOWELL.

GIVE us but a part of that devotion which glowed in the heart of the younger Pitt, and of our own elder Adams, who, in the midst of their agonies, forgot not the countries they had lived for, but mingled with the spasms of their dying hour a las and imploring appeal to the Parent of all Mercies that he would remember, in eterual blessings, the land of their birth : give us their devotion, give us that of the young enthusiast of Paris, who listening to Mirabeau in one of his surpassing vindicatious of human right, and seeing him fall from his stand, dying, as a physician proclaimed, for the want of blood, rushed to the spot, and as he bent over the expiring man, bared his arm for the lancet, and cried again, and again, with impassioned voice-" Here, take it-take it- oh! take it from me, let me die, so that Mirabeau and the liberties of my country may not perish!" Give us something only of such a spirit as this--something only of such a love of country, and we are safe, forever safe: the troubles which shadow over and oppress us now, will pass away as a summer cloud. No measure of unalienable wrong, no measure of unconquerable disagreement, will be pressed upon us here. The fatal element of all our discord will be taken from amongst us. Let gentlemen be entreated to remove it as the one only and solitary obstacle to our perfect peace. Let them be adjured by the weal of this and coming ages-by our own and our children's good-by all that we love or that we look for in the progress and the glories of our land, to leave the entire subject of slavery, with every accountability it may impose, every remedy it may require, every accumulation of difficulty or pressure it may reach; to leave it all to the interest, to the wisdom, and to the conscience of those upon whom the providence of God and the Constitution of their country have cast it. Leave it to them now and forever, and stop, whilst it is yet possible to stop, the furious and blind head way of that wild and mad philanthropy, which is lighting up for the nation itself the fires of the stake, and which is rushing on, stride after stride, to an intestine struggle that may bring us all under a harder, and wickeder and more incurable slavery, than any it would extinguish.

XVII-CALIFORNIA AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.

THOMAS H. BENTON.

LET us vote upon the measures before us, beginning with the admission of California. Let us vote her in. Let us vote, after four months' talk. The people who have gone there have done houor to the American name. Starting from a thousand points, and meeting as strangers far removed from law and government, they have conducted themselves with the order, decorum and justice, which would have doue honor to the oldest established and best regulated community. They have carried our institutions to the furthest verge of the land-to the coast of the Pacific, and lit it up with the lights of religion, liberty, and science-lights which will shine across the broad ocean, and illuminate the dark recesses of benighted Asia. They have completed the work of the Pilgrim Fathers.

Would to God that those who landed on the Rock, and on the banks of the James river, more than two hundred years ago, and who crossed the stormy Atlantic in search of civil and religious liberty, and who did so much for both in their day and generation, could now see what has been done in our day! could look down from their celestial abodes, and see the spark which they struck from the flint now blazing with a light which fixes the gaze of the worldsee the mustard seed which they planted, now towering to the skies, and spreading its branches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With what rapture would they welcome the Pilgrims of California into the family circle, while we, their descendants, sit here in angry debate, repulsing our brethren, calculating the value of the Union, and threatening to rend it asunder if California is admitted.

XVIII-THE HONOR OF WAR.

W. E. CHANNING.

THAT the idea of glory should be associated strongly with military exploits, ought not to be wondered at. From the earliest ages, ambitious sovereigns and states have sought to spread the military spirit, by loading it with rewards.

THE HONOR OF WAR.

333

Badges, ornaments, distinctions, the most flattering and intoxicating, have been the prizes of war. The aristocracy of Europe, which cornmenced in barbarous ages, was founded on military talent and success; and the chief education of the young noble, was, for a long time, little more than a training for battle, hence the strong connection between war and honor. All past ages have bequeathed us this prejudice, and the structure of society has given it a fearful force. Let us consider it with some particularity.

The idea of honor is associated with war. but to whorn does the honor belong? If to any, certainly not to the mass of the people, but to those who are particularly engaged in it. The mass of a people, who stay at home, and hire others to fight-who sleep in their warm beds, and hire others to sleep on the cold and damp earth,-who sit at their well-spread board, and hire others to take their chance of starving--who nurse the slightest hurt on their own bodies, and hire others to expose themselves to mortal wounds and to linger in comfortless hospitals; certainly this mass reap little honor from war; the honor belongs to those immediately engaged in it Let me ask, then, what is the chief business of war? It is to destroy human life; to mangle the limbs; to gash and hew the body; to plunge the sword into the heart of a fellowcreature; to strew the earth with bleeding frames, and to trample them under foot with horses' hoofs. It is to batter down and burn cities; to turn fruitful fields into deserts; to level the cottage of the peasant and the magnificent abode of opulence; to scourge nations with famine; to multiply widows and orphans. Are these honorable deeds? Were you called to name exploits worthy of demons, would you not naturally select such as these? Grant that a necessity for them may exist; it is a dreadful necessity, such as a good man must recoil from with instinctive horror; and though it may exempt them from guilt, it cannot turn them into glory. We have thought that it was honorable to heal, to save, to mitigate pain, to snatch the sick and sinking from the jaws of death. We have placed among the revered benefactors of the human race, the discoverers of arts which alleviate human sufferings, which prolong, comfort, adorn, and cheer human life; and if these arts be honorable, where is the glory of multiplying and aggravating tortures and death?

2*

XIX-DANGER OF INDIAN HOSTILITIES.

FISHER AMES.

IF any should maintain that the peace with the Indians would be stable without the posts, to them I will urge another reply. From arguments calculated to procure con viction, will appeal directly to the hearts of those who hear me, and ask, whether it is not already planted there? I resort especially to the convictions of the Western gentlemen, whether, supposing no posts and no treaty, the settlers will remain in security? Can they take it upon them to say, that an Indian peace, under these circumstances, will prove firm? No, sir, it will not be peace, but a sword; it will be no better than a lure to draw victims within the reach of the tomahawk.

On this theme my emotions are unutterable. If I could find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every log house beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, wake from your false security; your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions are soon to be renewed; the wounds, yet unhealed, are to be torn open again; in the day-time your path through the woods will be ambushed; the darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a fathe--the blood of your sons shall fatten your corn-field you are a motherthe war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle.

On this subject you need not suspect any deception on your feelings; it is a spectacle of horror which cannot be overdrawn. If you have nature in your hearts, they will speak a language, compared with which, all I have said, or can say, will be poor and frigid. Will any one deny that we are hound, and I would hope to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Are republicans irresponsible? Have the principles on which you ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings, no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle declamation, introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the windows of that State House? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too