society are as paramount to individual liberty, as the safety and well-being of the race is to that of individuals; and, in the same proportion, the power necessary for the safety of society is paramount to individual liberty. On the contrary, government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of government and the liberty of the citizen or subject, in the political state, which, as I have shown, is the natural state of man, the only one in which his race can exist, and the one in which he is born, lives, and dies.

It follows, from all this, that the quantum of power on the part of the government, and of liberty on that of individuals, instead of being equal in all cases, must necessarily be very unequal among different people according to their different conditions. For, just in proportion as a people are ignorant, stupid, debased, corrupt, exposed to violence within and danger without, the power necessary for government to possess, in order to preserve society against anarchy and destruction, becomes greater and greater, and individual liberty less and less, until the lowest condition is reached, when absolute and despotic power becomes necessary on the part of the government, and individual liberty extinct. So, on the contrary, just as a people rise in the scale of intelligence, virtue, and patriotism, and the more perfectly they become acquainted with the nature of government, the ends for which it was ordered, and how it ought to be administered, and the less the tendency to violence and disorder within and danger from abroad, the power necessary for government becomes less and less, and individual liberty greater and greater. Instead, then, of all men having the same right to liberty and equality, as is claimed by those who hold that they are all born free and equal, liberty is the noble and highest reward bestowed on mental and moral development, combined with favorable circumstances. Instead, then, of liberty and equality being

born with man,-instead of all men and all classes and descriptions being equally entitled to them, they are high prizes to be won; and are, in their most perfect state, not only the highest reward that can be bestowed on our race, but the most difficult to be won, and, when won, the most difficult to be preserved. -John C. Calhoun.

CXVI. THE TEACHER THE HOPE OF AMERICA.

LOOK abroad over this country; mark her extent, her wealth, her fertility, her boundless resources, the giant energies which every day develop, and which she seems already bending on that fatal race, tempting, yet always fatal to republics,-the race for physical greatness and aggrandizement. Behold, too, that continuous and mighty tide of population, native and foreign, which is forever rushing through this great valley towards the setting sun, sweeping away the wilderness before it like grass before the mower; waking up industry and civilization in its progress; studding the solitary rivers of the West with marts and cities; dotting its boundless prairies with human habitations; penetrating every green nook and vale; climbing to every fertile ridge; and still gathering and pouring onward, to form new States in those vast and yet unpeopled solitudes, where the Oregon rolls his majestic flood, and

"Hears no sound save his own dashing."

you hold

Mark all this, and then say by what bonds will together so mighty a people and so immense an empire? What safeguard will you give us against the dangers which must inevitably grow out of so vast and complicate an organization? In the swelling tide of our prosperity, what a field will open for political corruption! What a world of evil passions to control and jarring interests to reconcile!

What temptations will there be to luxury and extravagance! What motives to private and official cupidity! What prizes will hang glittering at a thousand goals to dazzle and tempt ambition! Do we expect to find our security against these dangers in railroads and canals, in our circumvallations and ships of war? Alas! when shall we learn wisdom from the lessons of history? Our most dangerous enemies will grow up from our own bosom. We may erect bulwarks against foreign invasion, but what power shall we find in walls and armies to protect the people against themselves?

There is but one sort of "internal improvement" (more thoroughly internal than that which is cried up by politicians), that is able to save this country. I mean the improvement of the minds and souls of her people. If this improvement shall be neglected, and shall fail to keep pace with the increase of our population and our physical advancement, one of two alternatives is certain: either the nation must dissolve in anarchy under the rulers of its own choice; or, if held together at all, it must be by a government so strong and rigorous as to be utterly inconsistent with constitutional liberty. Let the one hundred millions which, at no very distant day, will swarm our cities and fill up our great interior, remain sunk in ignorance, and nothing short of an iron despotism will suffice to govern the nation, to reconcile its vast and conflicting interests, control its elements of agitation, and hold back its fiery and headlong energies from dismemberment and ruin.

How, then, is this improvement to be effected? Who are the agents of it? Who are they who shall stand perpetually as priests at the altar of freedom, and feed its sacred fires by dispensing that knowledge and cultivation on which hangs our political salvation? I repeat, they are our teachers, the masters of our schools, the instructors in our academies and colleges, and in all those institutions, of whatever name, which have for their object the intellectual

and moral culture of our youth, and the diffusion of knowledge among our people.

Theirs is the moral dignity of stamping the great features of our national character; and, in the moral worth and intelligence which they give it, to erect a bulwark which shall prove impregnable in that hour of trial, when armies and fleets and fortifications shall be vain. And when those mighty and all-absorbing questions shall be heard, which are even now sending their bold demands into the ear of rulers and lawgivers, which are momentarily pressing forward to a solemn decision in the sight of God and of all nations, and which, when the hour of their decision shall come, will shake this country, the union, the constitution, as with the shaking of an earthquake, it is they who in that fearful hour will gather around the structure of our political organization, and, with uplifted hands, stay the reeling fabric till the storm and the convulsion be overpast. -Samuel Eells.

CXVII.—SIR ROBERT WALPOLE AGAINst Mr. Pitt.

I WAS unwilling to interrupt the course of this debate while it was carried on, with calmness and decency, by men who do not suffer the ardor of opposition to cloud their reason or transport them to such expressions as the dignity of this assembly does not admit. I have hitherto deferred answering the gentleman who declaimed against the bill with such fluency of rhetoric and such vehemence of gesture, who charged the advocates for the expedients now proposed with having no regard to any interests but their own, and with making laws only to consume paper, and threatened them with the defection of their adherents, and the loss of their influence, upon this new discovery of their folly and ignorance. Nor do I now answer him for any other purpose than to remind him how little the clamors of rage and the petulancy of invective contribute

to the end for which this assembly is called together; how little the discovery of truth is promoted, and the security of the nation established by pompous diction and theatrical emotion. Formidable sounds and furious declamation, confident assertions and lofty periods, may affect the young and inexperienced; and, perhaps, the gentleman may have contracted his habits of oratory by conversing more with those of his own age than with such as have more opportunities of acquiring knowledge, and more successful methods of communicating their sentiments. If the heat of his temper would permit him to attend to those whose age and long acquaintance with business give them an indisputable right to deference and superiority, he would learn, in time, to reason rather than declaim, and to prefer justness of argument, and an accurate knowledge of facts, to sounding epithets and splendid superlatives, which may disturb the imagination for a moment, but leave no lasting impression on the mind. He will learn that to accuse and prove are very different; and that reproaches, unsupported by evidence, affect only the character of him that utters them. Excursions of fancy, and flights of oratory, are, indeed, pardonable in young men, but in no other; and it would surely contribute more, even to the purpose for which some gentlemen appear to speak (that of depreciating the conduct of the administration), to prove the inconveniences and injustice of this bill, than barely to assert them, with whatever magnificence of language, or appearance of zeal, honesty, or compassion.

CXVIII.-REPLY OF MR. PITT.

THE atrocious crime of being a young man, which, with such spirit and decency, the honorable gentleman has charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with hoping that I may be one

K. N. E.-27.