CCLXXII-PARTY SPIRIT.

THE WHITE HOUSE; the residence of the President of the United States. CREVASSE; (Cre-vas,) a break in the banks of a river, permitting the water to pass through.

NEVER, on any occasion, have I risen under feelings of such painful solicitude. I have witnessed many periods of great anxiety, of peril, and of danger, to this country, but I have never risen to address any assemblage, so oppressed, so appalled, and so anxious. I hope it will not be out of place to do here, what, again and again, I have done in my private chamber, to implore of Him who holds the destinies of nations and individuals in his hands, to bestow upon our country His blessing, to calm the violence and rage of party, to still passion, to allow reason once more to resume its empire.

I have said that I have witnessed other anxious periods in the history of our country. If I were to venture to trace to their original source the cause of all our present dangers, difficulties, and distraction, I should ascribe it to the violence of party spirit! of party spirit!

At a

It is impossible for us to be blind to the facts which are daily transpiring before us. It is impossible for us not to perceive that party spirit, and future elevation, mix, more or less, in all our affairs, in all our deliberations. moment when the White House itself is in danger of conflagration, instead of all hands uniting to extinguish the flames, we are contending about who shall be its next occupant. When a dreadful crevasse has occurred, which threatens inundation and destruction to all around, we are contesting and disputing about the profits of an estate which is threatened with total submersion.

It is passion, passion; party, party, and intemperance. That is all I dread in the adjustment of the great questions which, unhappily, at this time, divide our distracted country. At this moment, we have in the legislative bodies of this Capitol and in the States, twenty odd furnaces in full blast, emitting heat, and passion, and intemperance, and

diffusing them throughout the whole extent of this broad land. Two months ago, all was calm in comparison to the present moment. All now is uproar, confusion, and menace to the existence of the Union, and to the happiness and safety of the people.

I implore senators, I entreat them, by all that they expect hereafter, and by all that is dear to them here below, to repress the ardor of these passions, to look to their country, to its interests, to listen to the voice of reason. I implore them to listen to their own reason, their own judgment, their own good sense, in determining upon what is best to be done for our country, in the actual posture in which we find her. FROM HENRY CLAY.

CCLXXIII.-NATIONAL ANTIPATHIES.

I PROTEST against the doctrine, that the predominant sentiment of our people, is one of implacable hatred to any nation. I deny this, and protest against it. I say no, no, a thousand times no, to any sentiment of national antipathy.

Let the Highland clansman feel it, who cherishes a deadly feud, as he cherishes his own life. Let the Indian hand it down to his children, by I know not what emblems of alligators, and catamounts, and clubs, and tomahawks, smeared with the warm blood and brains of his victims. Let Poland, cloven down by oppression, with the grinding heel of tyranny on her forehead, deliver it as a pledge and memorial to her wandering exiles. Let the poor dispersed family of Israel hug it to their bosom, as they feel the contempt of a hostile world.

But should this American people, young, and inheriting from God's hand, a land teeming with every boon and bounty of his munificence, destined to a career, bright, resistless, and beneficent as the course of the heavenly spheres; shall America, in the dew and freshness of her national being, glorious and happy, shall she corrode her young

heart, and poison its life streams, by moping over the stamp act, and the tea tax, and the firing of the Leopard into the Chesapeake?

God forbid! I think we have settled all that. For what else was so much patriot blood spilt at Lundy's Lane, at Bridgewater, and Plattsburg, on the deck of the Constitution and the Java, and on all the other spots hallowed by the record of our fame? And after we have settled it, and done it boldly and bravely, shall we return sulky from the very field of honor?

We have been told that our people feel too deeply the remembrance of the past injuries of Britain. How so? If the feeling is worthy of us, can it be too deep, or too strong, in our bosoms? But, if it is an unworthy feeling, and has no real existence among us, how does any man dare to charge it upon the American people? I do believe that this is a feeling which belongs altogether to a past age. My younger countrymen do not, I am very sure, know what such a feeling means.

You were born under happier auspices, than to be the slaves of so sordid and dark a passion. You look upon England as you do upon other great nations, with eyes which fill with tears, not of sorrow, but of emulation of so much glory, and with no hatred. You never can brand their heart with so barbarous a feeling, for the sake of wrongs for which the brave have made the last expiation to the brave. FROM CHOATE.

CCLXXIV.-ON THE SUPPRESSION OF A MOB.

THIS is an extract from a speech delivered in the English parliament, upon a bill to punish the weavers of Nottingham for riot.

You call these men a mob, desperate, dangerous, and ignoble. You seem to think, that the only way to quiet it, is to lop off a few of its superfluous heads. But even a

mob may be better reduced to reason by a mixture of conciliation and firmness, than by additional irritation and redoubled penalties. Are we aware of our obligations to a

mob? It is the mob that labor in your fields, and serve in your houses; that man your navy, and recruit your army; that have enabled you to defy all the world; and can also defy you, when neglect and calumny have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob, but do not forget that a mob too often speak the sentiments of the people.

Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient on your statutes? Is there not blood enough upon your penal code, that more must be poured forth to ascend to heaven, and testify against you? How will you carry this bill into effect? Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scarecrows? Or will you proceed, by decimation? place the country under martial law? depopulate and lay waste all around you?

Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets, be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief it appears that you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will that, which could not be effected by your grenadiers, be accomplished by your executioners?

With all deference to the noble lords opposite, I think a little investigation, some previous inquiry, would induce even them to change their purpose. That most favorite state measure, so marvelously efficacious in many and recent instances,-temporizing, would not be without its advantage in this. When a proposal is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years, you temporize, and tamper with the minds of men. But a deathbill must be passed off-hand, without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am, that to pass the bill, would only add injustice to irritation, and barbarity to neglect.

But suppose it passed. Suppose one of these men, meager with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your lordships are, perhaps, about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame; suppose this

man surrounded by those children for whom he is unable to procure bread, at the hazard of his existence, dragged into court to be tried for this new offense, by this new law; still there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him. These are, in my opinion, twelve butchers for a jury, and a Jeffreys for a judge!

FROM BYRON.

CCLXXV. THE MURDERED TRAVELER.

WHEN spring, to woods and wastes around,
Brought bloom and joy again,

The murdered traveler's bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch above him hung
Her tassels in the sky;

And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled as he wrought
His hanging nest o'erhead;
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,
And gentle eyes, for him,

With watching many an anxious day,
Grew sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,

When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed, and hard beset;

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,

The mountain wolf and wild cat stole
To banquet on the dead;

Nor how, when strangers found his bones,

They dressed the hasty bier,

And marked his grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.