our nature? We love the land of our adoption; so do we that of our birth. Let us ever be true to both; and always exert ourselves in maintaining the unity of our country, the integrity of the republic. Accursed, then, be the hand put forth to loosen the golden cord of union! thrice accursed the traitorous lips which shall propose its severance ! S. S. PRENTISS.* 114. THE TRUE REFORMERS. To the rightly constituted mind, to the truly developed man, there always is, there always must be opportunity-opportunity to be and to learn, nobly to do and to endure; and what matter whether with pomp and eclat, with sound of trumpets and shout of applauding thousands, or in silence and seclusion, beneath the calm, discerning gaze of heaven? No station can be humble on which that gaze is approvingly bent: no work can be ignoble which is performed uprightly, and not impelled by sordid and selfish aims. Not from among the children of monarchs, ushered into being with boom of cannon and shouts of revelling millions, but from amid the sons of obscurity and toil, cradled in peril and ignominy, from the bulrushes and the manger, come forth the benefactors and saviours of mankind. So when all the babble and glare of our age shall have passed into a fitting oblivion, when those who have enjoyed rare opportunities and swayed vast empires, and been borne through life on the shoulders of shouting multitudes, shall have been laid at last to rest in golden coffins, to molder forgotten, the stately marble their only monuments, it will be found that some humble youth, who neither inherited nor found, but hewed out his opportunities, has uttered the thought which shall render the age memorable, by extending the means of enlightenment and blessing to our race. great struggle for human progress and elevation proceeds noiselessly, often unnoted, often checked and apparently baffled, amid the clamorous and debasing strifes impelled by greedy selfishness and low ambition. In that struggle, maintained by the wise and good of all parties, all creeds, all climes, bear ye the part of men. Heed the lofty summons, and with souls serene and constant, prepare to tread boldly in the path of highest du * U. S. Representative from Mississippi. The ty. So shall life be to you truly exalted and heroic; so shall death be a transition neither sought nor dreaded; so shall your memory, though cherished at first but by a few humble, loving hearts, linger long and gratefully in human remembrance, a watchword to the truthful and an incitement to generous endeavor, freshened by the proud tears of admiring affection, and fragrant with the odors of heaven! HORACE GREELEY.* WE need a loftier ideal to nerve us for heroic lives. To know and feel our nothingness without regretting it; to deem fame, riches, personal happiness, but shadows of which human good is the substance; to welcome pain, privation, ignominy, so that the sphere of human knowledge, the empire of virtue, be thereby extended: such is the soul's temper in which the heroes of the coming age shall be cast. When the stately monuments of mightiest conquerors shall have become shapeless and forgotten. ruins, the humble graves of earth's Howards and Frys shall still be freshened by the tears of fondly admiring millions, and the proudest epitaph shall be the simple entreaty, "Write me as one who loved his fellow-men." Say not that I thus condemn and would annihilate ambition. The love of approbation, of esteem, of true glory, is a noble incentive, and should be cherished to the end. But the ambition which points the way to fame over torn limbs and bleeding hearts, which joys in the Tartarean smoke of the battle-field, and the desolating tramp of the war-horse,-that ambition is worthy only of "archangel ruined." To make one conqueror's reputation, at least one hundred thousand bounding, joyous, sentient beings must be transformed into writhing and hideous fragments, must perish untimely by deaths of agony and horror, leaving half a million widows and orphans to bewail their loss in anguish and destitution. This is too mighty, too awful a price to be paid for the fame of any hero, from Nimrod to Wellington. True fame demands no such sacrifices of others; it requires us to be reckless of the outward well-being of but It exacts no hecatomb of victims for each triumphal pile; for the more who covet and seek it, the easier and more abun one. * U. S. Representative from New York. dant is the success of each and all. With souls of the celestial temper, each human life might be a triumph, which angels would lean from the skies delighted to witness and admire. HORACE GREELEY.* 116. THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA. THE great questions which demand our consideration at this moment, are those which relate to our new territorial acquisitions; and the first of these questions is that which relates to California. 66 a What is California? But yesterday, sir, it was a colony in embryo. But yesterday-to use the language which Mr. Burke once applied to America-it was little speck, scarce visible in the mass of national interest; a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body." To-day, it presents itself to us an established commonwealth, and is knocking at our doors for admittance to the Union as a free and independent state. Shall it be turned away? Shall it be remanded to its colonial condition? Shall we attempt to crowd back this full-grown man into the cradle of infancy? And that, too, in spite of the express provision of the treaty by which it was acquired, "that at a proper time, it shall be incorporated into the Union?" Upon what pretence shall such a step be taken? Why is not this the proper time? Is it said that there has been some violation of precedents in her preparatory proceedings? Where will you find a precedent in any degree applicable to her condition? When has such a case been presented in our past history? When may we look for another such in our future progress "Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such thing? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once?" ? Is it said that she has not population enough? The best accounts which we can obtain estimate her population at more than a hundred thousand souls; and these, be it remembered, are nearly all full-grown persons, and a vast majority of them men, and voters. And what, after all, are any estimates of population worth in such a case? As the same great British orator, whom I have just quoted, said of the American colonies in 1775: "Such is the strength with which population shoots *U. S. Representative from New York. in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it." Is it said that her boundaries are too extensive? You did not find this fault with Texas. Texas, with the boundaries which are claimed by her, has three hundred and twenty-five thousand five hundred and twenty square miles; and, with any boundaries which are likely to be assigned to her, she will have more than two hundred thousand square miles. California, under her own constitution, has but one hundred and fifty-five thousand five hundred and fifty square miles of territory, of which one-half are mere mountains of rock and ice, and another quarter a desert waste! Is it said that these settlers are a wild, reckless, floating population, bent only upon digging gold, and unworthy to be trusted in establishing a government? Sir, I do not believe a better class of emigrants was ever found flocking in such numbers to any new settlement on the face of the earth. The immense distance, the formidable difficulties, and the onerous expense of the pilgrimage to California, necessarily confined emigration to men of some pecuniary substance, as well as to men of more than ordinary physical endurance. We have all seen going out from our own respective neighborhoods, not a few hardy, honest, industrious, patriotic young men, "Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs, and, in their name, sir, I protest against the constitution which they have adopted being condemned on any score of its paternity. I am And now, sir, entertaining such views, I need hardly add that, in my judgment, California ought to be admitted to the Union without more delay, as a separate, independent measure. opposed to any scheme for qualifying, or coupling it with other arrangements. It is unjust to California to embarrass, and perhaps peril, her admission, by mixing her up with matters of a controverted character. It is still more unjust to a large majority of this house, who desire to record their names distinctly for her admission as a state, to deny them the proper, legiti mate, parliamentary mode of doing so, by annexing to the same bill provisions against which not a few of them are solemnly pledged. Let the Southern gentlemen forbear to teach us bloody instructions, which may return to plague the inventor. The ingredients of the poisoned chalice may yet be commended to their own lips. Let them remember, that there may be a point of honor at the North as well as at the South. Let them remember that the same voice of patriotism which cries to the North "give up," says to the South also, "keep not back." ROBERT C. WINTHROP.* 117. NEW TERRITORIES. SIR, 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. 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. 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 sce in them the future abodes of our brethren, our children, and our children's children, for a thousand generations. 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 molding 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? Here then, sir, I bring these remarks to a close. I have explained, to the best of my ability, the views which I entertain 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. One tie, however, I am persuaded, still remains to us all * U. S. Representative from Massachusetts, |