WAR CONSEQUENT ON DISSOLUTION.

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august conception, finely embodied; and I trust in God that it will, at no distant time, become a reality. I trust that the world will see, through all time, our people living not only under the laws of Alfred, but that they will be heard to speak, throughout our wide-spread borders, the language of Shakspeare and Milton. Above all, is it my prayer that, as long as our posterity shall continue to inhabit these mountains and plains, and hills and valleys, they may be found living under the sacred institutions of Christianity.

Put these things together, and what a picture do they present to the mental eye! Civilization and intelligence started in the East; they have traveled, and are still traveling, westward; but when they shall have completed the circuit of the earth, and reached the extremest verge of the Pacific shores, then, unlike the fabled god of the ancients, who dipped his glowing axle in the western wave, they will take up their permanent abode; then shall we enjoy the sublime destiny of returning these blessings to their ancient seat; then will it be ours to give the priceless benefits of our free institutions, and the pure and healthful light of the Gospel, back to the dark family which has so long lost both truth and freedom; then may Christianity plant herself there, and while with one hand she points to the Polynesian isles, rejoicing in the late-recovered treasure of revealed truth, with the other present the Bible to the Chinese.

It is our duty to aid in this great work. I trust we shall esteem it as much our honor as our duty. Let us not, like some of the British missionaries, give them the Bible in one hand and opium in the other, but bless them only with the pure word of truth. I hope the day is not distant, soon, soon may its dawn arise! to shed upon the farthest and the most benighted of nations the splendor of more than a tropical sun.

II. W. HILLIARD.

XV.-WAR CONSEQUENT ON DISSOLUTION.

MR. PRESIDENT, I have said what I solemnly believe tha the dissolution of the Union and war are identical and inseparable; that they are convertible terms. Such a war, too, as that would be, following the dissolution of the Union! Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none so furious, so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating, from the wars of Grecce down, including those of the commonwealth of England, and the revolution of France-none, none of them raged with such violence— none was ever conducted with such bloodshed and enormities as

must attend that war which shall follow the disastrous event. if that event ever happen - of dissolution.

And what would be its termination? Standing armies and navies, to an extent draining the revenues of each portion of the dissevered empire, would be created; exterminating wars would follow, not a war of two or three years, but of interminable duration, exterminating wars would follow, until some Philip or Alexander, some Cæsar or Napoleon, would rise to cut the Gordian knot, and solve the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the dissevered portions of this Union. Can you doubt it?

Look at history-consult the pages of all history, ancient or modern; look at human nature; look at the character of the contest in which you would be engaged in the supposition of a war following the dissolution of the Union, such as I have suggested, and I ask you if it is possible for you to doubt that the final but perhaps distant termination of the whole will be some despot treading down the liberties of the people? — that the final result will be the extinction of this last glorious light which is leading all mankind, who are gazing upon it, to cherish hope and anxious expectation that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be advanced throughout the civilized world? Can you lightly contemplate the consequences? Can you yield yourself to a torrent of passion, amid dangers which I have depicted in colors far short of what would be the reality, if the event should ever happen?

I con-jure' gentlemen, whether from the South or the North, by all they hold dear in the world, by all their love of liberty, by all their veneration for their ancestors, by all their regard for posterity, by all their gratitude to Him who has bestowed upon them such unnumbered blessings, by all the duties which they owe to mankind, and all the duties which they owe to themselves, by all these considerations I implore them to pause -solemnly to pause- at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and disastrous leap is taken in the yawning abyss below, which will inevitably lead to certain and irretrievable destruction. And, finally, I implore, as the best blessing which heaven can bestow upon me on earth, that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle.

CLAY.

The long u in such words as gratitude, duty, student, tumult, &c., has a y sound, as in mute. But after r in the same syllable long u has the sound of long oo in food; as in rule, brute, rude, intrude, &c.

ON THE FORCE BILL.

XVI. ON THE FORCE BILL.

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FOR what purpose is the unlimited control of the purse and of the sword to be placed at the disposition of the executive? To make war against one of the free and sovereign members of this confederation, which the bill proposes to deal with, not as a State, but as a collection of banditti or outlaws; thus exhibiting the impious spectacle of this government, the creature of the States, making war against the power to which it owes its existence.

Do I say that the bill declares war against South Carolina? No! It decrees a massacre of her citizens ! War has something ennobling about it, and, with all its horrors, brings into action the highest qualities, intellectual and moral. It was, perhaps, in the order of Providence, that it should be permitted for that very purpose. But this bill declares no war, except, indeed, it be that which savages wage; a war, not against the community, but the citizens of whom that community is composed. But I regard it as worse than savage warfare- -as an attempt to take away life, under the color of law, without the trial by jury, or any other safeguard which the constitution has thrown around the life of the citizen! It authorizes the President, or even his deputies, when they may suppose the law to be violated, without the intervention of a court or jury, to kill without mercy or discrimination.

It has been said, by the senator from Tennessee, to be a measure of peace! Yes, such peace as the wolf gives to the lamb, the kite to the dove! Such peace as Russia gives to Poland, or death to its victim! A peace by extinguishing the political existence of the State, by awing her into an abandonment of the exercise of every power which constitutes her a sovereign community! It is to South Carolina a question of self-preservation; and I proclaim it, that, should this bill pass, and an attempt be made to enforce it, it will be resisted at every hazard — even that of death itself!

Death is not the greatest calamity; there are others, still more terrible to the free and brave, and among them may be placed the loss of liberty and honor. There are thousands of her brave sons who, if need be, are prepared cheerfully to lay down their lives. in defense of the State, and the great principles of constitutional liberty for which she is contending. God forbid that this should become necessary! It never can be, unless this government is resolved to bring the question to extremity; when her gallant sons will stand prepared to perform the last duty — to die nobly!

CALHOUN,

XVII. - THE PUBLIC LAND BILL.

MR. PRESIDENT, I rise to ask leave to introduce a bill to appropriate, for a limited time, the pro'ceeds of the sales of the public lands of the United States, and for granting lands to certain States. Sir, I have ever regarded with feelings of the profoundest regret the decision which the President of the United States felt himself induced to make on the bill of 1833. If that bill had passed, about twenty millions of dollars would have been, during the last three years, in the hands of the several States, applicable by them to the beneficent purposes of internal improvement, education, or colonization. What immense benefits might not have been diffused throughout the land by the active employment of that large sum! What new channels of commerce and communication might not have been opened! What industry stimulated, what labor rewarded! How many youthful minds might have received the blessings of education and knowledge, and been rescued from ignorance, vice, and ruin! How many descendants of Africa might have been transported from a country where they never can enjoy political or social equality, to the native land of their fathers, where no impediment exists to their attainment of the highest degree of elevation, intellectual, social, and political-where they might have been successful instruments, in the hands of God, to spread the reli gion of his Son, and to lay the foundation of civil liberty!

But, although we have lost three precious years, the Secretary of the Treasury tells us that the principal of this vast sum is yet safe; and much good may still be achieved with it. The spirit of improvement pervades the land in every variety of form,active, vigorous, and enterprising, wanting pecuniary aid as well as intelligent direction. The States are strengthening the Union by various lines of communication thrown across and through the mountains. As the general government withholds all direct agency from these truly national works, and from all new objects of internal improvement, ought it not to yield to the States, what is their own, the amount received from the public lands? It would thus but execute faithfully a trust expressly created by the original deeds of cession, or resulting from the treaties of acquisition. With this ample resource, every desirable object of improvement, in every part of our extensive country, may in due time be accomplished. Placing this exhaustless fund in the hands of the several members of the confederacy, their common federal head may address them in the glowing language of the British bard, and

THE PERMANENCE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY. 175

"Bid harbors open, public ways extend,
Bid temples worthier of our God ascend.
Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain,
The mole projecting break the roaring main.
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers through the land."

CLAY.

XVIII. — THE PERMANENCE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.

THE election of a chief magistrate by the mass of the people of an extensive community was, to the most enlightened nations of antiquity, a political impossibility. Destitute of the art of printing, they could not have introduced the representative principle into their political systems, even if they had understood it. In the very nature of things, that principle can only be coëxtensive with popular intelligence. In this respect, the art of printing, more than any invention since the creation of man, is destined to change and elevate the political condition of society. It has given a new impulse to the energies of the human mind, and opens new and brilliant destinies to modern republics, which were utterly unattainable by the ancients.

The existence of a country population, scattered over a vast extent of territory, as intelligent as the population of the cities, is a phenomenon which was utterly and necessarily unknown to the free states of antiquity. All the intelligence which controlled the destiny and upheld the dominion of republican Rome was confined to the 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. 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 population, than the commerce of disconnected continents could traverse the ocean without the art of navigation.

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 coöperate 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. It is obvious that liberty has a more extensive and durable foundation in the United States