walls of the great city. Even when her dominion extended beyond Italy to the utmost known limits of the inhabited world, the city was the exclusive seat both of intelligence and empire.

4. Without the art of printing, and the consequent advantages of a free press, that habitual and incessant action of mind upon mind, which is essential to all human improvement, could no more exist, among a numerous and scattered popula tion, than the commerce of disconnected continents could trav erse the ocean without the art of navigation.

5. Here, then, is the source of our superiority, and our just pride as a nation. The statesmen of the remotest extremes of the Union can converse together, like the philosophers of Athens, in the same portico, or the politicians of Rome, in the same forum. Distance is overcome, and the citizens of Georgia and of Maine can be brought to co-operate in the same great object, with as perfect a community of views and feelings, as actuated the tribes of Rome, in the assemblies of the people.

6. It is obvious that liberty has a more extensive and durable foundation in the United States than it ever has had in any other age or country. By the representative principle-a principle unknown and impracticable among the ancients-the whole mass of society is brought to operate, in constraining the action of power, and in the conservation of public liberty.

MCDUFFIE

SIR,

81. NEW TERRITORIES.

(IR, the territories which have come under our guardianship are, in my judgment, of more worth than to be made the mere make-weights in the scales of sectional equality. They are entitled to another sort of consideration, than to be cut up, and partitioned off, like trodden-down Poland, in order to satisfy the longings and appease the jealousies of surrounding States.

2. They are they ought certainly--to be disposed of and regulated by us, with a primary regard to the prosperity and welfare of those who occupy them now, and those who are destined to occupy them hereafter, and not with the selfish view of augmenting the mere local power or pride of any of us.

3. Mr. Chairman, I see in the territorial possessions of this Union the seats of new States, the cradles of new commonwealths, the nurseries, it may be, of new republican empires. I see in them the future abodes of our brethren, our children, and our children's children, for a thousand generations.

4. I see, growing up within our borders, institutions upon which the character and condition of a vast multitude of the American family, and of the human race, in all time to come, are to depend. I feel that, for the original shaping and moulding of these institutions, you and I, and each one of us who occupy these seats, are in part responsible. And I cannot omit to ask myself, what shall I do, that I may deserve the gratitude and the blessing, and not the condemnation and the curse, of that posterity, whose welfare is thus in some degree committed to my care?

5. Here, then, sir, I bring these remarks to a close. I have explained, to the best of my ability, the views which I enter tain of the great questions of the day. Those views may be misrepresented hereafter, as they have been heretofore; but they cannot be misunderstood by any one who desires, or who is even willing, to understand them.

6. One tie, however, I am persuaded, still remains to us all-a common devotion to the union of these States, and a common determination to sacrifice every thing but principle to its preservation. Our responsibilities are indeed great. This vast republic, stretching from sea to sea, and rapidly out growing every thing but our affections, looks anxiously to us, this day, to take care that it receives no detriment.

7. Nor is it too much to say, that the eyes and the hearts of the friends of constitutional freedom throughout the world are

at this moment turned eagerly here-more eagerly than ever before to behold an example of successful republican institu tions, and to see them come out safely and triumphantly from the fiery trial to which they are now subjected.

8. I have the firmest faith that these eyes and these hearts will not be disappointed. I have the strongest belief that the isions and phantoms of disunion which now appal us, will soon be remembered only like the clouds of some April morning, or "the dissolving views" of some evening spectacle. I have the fullest conviction that this glorious republic is destined to outlast all-all at either end of the Union, who may be plotting against its peace, or predicting its downfall.

"Fond, impious man! think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, can quench the orb of day?

To-morrow, it repairs its golden flood,

And warms the nations with redoubled ray !”

9. Let us proceed in the settlement of the unfortunate controversies in which we find ourselves involved, in a spirit of mutual conciliation and concession; let us invoke fervently upon our efforts the blessings of that Almighty Being who is "the author of peace and the lover of concord." And we shall still find order springing out of confusion, harmony evoked from discord, and peace, union, and liberty once more reassured to our land!

WINTHROP

་

82. THE DISINTERESTEDNESS OF WASHINGTON.

the pen of the historian must be resigned the more arduous and elaborate tribute of justice to those efforts of heroic and political virtue, which conducted the American people to peace and liberty. The vanquished foe retired from our shores, and left to the controlling genius who repelled them the gratitude of his own country, and the admiration of the world.

2. The time had now arrived which was to apply the touch stone to his integrity--which was to assay the affinity of his

principles to the standard of immutable right. On the one hand, a realm, to which he was endeared by his services, almost invited him to empire; and on the other, the liberty to whose protection his life had been devoted, was the ornament and boon of human nature.

3. Washington could not depart from his own great self. His country was free-he was no longer a general. Sublime spectacle ! more elevating to the pride of virtue than the sov ereignty of the globe united to the sceptre of ages!

4. Enthroned in the hearts of his countrymen, the gorgeous pageantry of prerogative was unworthy the majesty of his dominion. That effulgence of military character which in ancient states has blasted the rights of the people whose renown it had brightened, was not here permitted, by the hero from whom it emanated, to shine with so destructive a lustre. Its beams, though intensely resplendent, did not wither the young blossoms of our independence; and liberty, like the burning bush, flourished unconsumed by the glory which surrounded it.

5. To the illustrious founder of our republic was it reserved to exhibit the example of a magnanimity that commanded victory-of a moderation that retired from triumph. Unlike the erratic meteors of ambition, whose flaming path sheds a disastrous light on the pages of history, his bright orb, eclipsing the luminaries among which it rolled, never portended "fearful change" to religion, nor from its "golden tresses" shook pestilence on empire.

6. What to other heroes has been glory, would to him have been disgrace. To his intrepidity it would have added no honorary trophy, to have waded, like the conqueror of Peru, through the blood of credulous millions, to plant the standard of triumph at the burning mouth of a volcano. To his fame it would have erected no auxiliary monument, to have invaded, like the ravager of Egypt, an innocent though barbarous nation, to inscribe his name on the pillar of Pompey.

R. T. PAINE.

83. OUR REPUBLIC.

[THOMAS EWING has filled with honor some of the most important posts in the Union. At the bar of the Supreme Court, and in the Senate Hall, he holds a distinguished place as a powerful and brilliant orator.]

SIR,

IR, our republic has long been a theme of speculation among the savans of Europe. They profess to have cast its horoscope, and fifty years was fixed upon by many as the utmost limit of its duration. But those years passed by, and beheld us a united and happy people; our political atmosphere agitated by no storm, and scarce a cloud to obscure the serenity of our horizon; all of the present was prosperity; all of the future, hope.

2. True, upon the day of that anniversary two venerated fathers of our freedom and of our country fell; but they sank calmly to rest, in the maturity of years and in the fulness of time; and their simultaneous departure on that day of jubilee, for another and a better world, was hailed by our nation as a propitious sign, sent to us from Heaven.

3. Wandering the other day in the alcoves of the library, I accidentally opened a volume containing the orations delivered by many distinguished men on that solemn occasion, and I noted some expressions of a few who now sit in this hall, which are deep fraught with the then prevailing, I may say universal, feeling.

4. It is inquired by one, "Is this the effect of accident or blind chance, or has that God, who holds in his hand the des tiny of nations and of men, designed these things as an evidence of the permanence and perpetuity of our institutions?”

5. Another says, "Is it not stamped with the seal of divinity?" And a third, descanting on the prospects, bright and glorious, which opened on our beloved country, says, "Au spicious omens cheer us."

6. Yet it would have required but a tinge of superstitious gloom to have drawn from that event darker forebodings of that which was to come. In our primitive wilds, where the