and ultimate object of social existence, is for man to act on man; and eloquence is the grandest medium of this action. It is not only the highest perfection of a human being, (for "the orator inust be a good man,") but it is that perfection in act. It is sublimity, beauty, genius, power, in their most glorious exercise.

Ex. CLXXIX.-AGAINST THE EMBARGO.

JOSIAH QUINCY.

I ASK, in what page of the Constitution you find the power of laying an embargo. Directly given, it is nowhere. Never before did society witness a total prohibition of all intercourse like this, in a commercial nation. But it has been asked in debate, "Will not Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty, submit to such privations ?" An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain nymph as a sea nymph. She was free as air. She could swim, or she could run. The ocean was her cradle. Our fathers met her as she came, like the goddess of beauty, from the waves. They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her while she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. But an embargo liberty, a hand-cuffed liberty, liberty in fetters, a liberty traversing between the four sides of a prison and beating her head against the walls, is none of our offspring. We abjure the monster! Its parentage is all inland.

Is embargo independence? Deceive not yourselves! It is palpable submission! Gentlemen exclaim, "Great Britain smites us on one cheek!" And what does Administration? "It turns the other, also." Gentlemen say, “Great Britain is a robber; she takes our cloak." And what says Administration? "Let her take our coat, also." France and Great Britain require you to relinquish a part of your commerce, and you yield it entirely! At every corner of this great city we meet some gentlemen of the majority wringing their hands, and exclaiming, "What shall we do? Nothing but an embargo will save us. Remove it, and what shall we do?" Sir, it is not for me, an humble and uninfluential individual, at an awful distance from the predominant influences, to suggest plans of government. But, to my eye, the path of our duty is as distinct as the Milky Way,-all studded with

living sapphires, glowing with cumulating light. It is the path of active preparation; of dignified energy. It is the path of 1776! It consists not in abandoning our rights, but in supporting them, as they exist, and where they exist,-on the ocean as well as on the land. But I shall be told, “This may lead to war." I ask, "Are we now at peace?" Certainly not, unless retiring from insult be peace; unless shrinking under the lash be peace! The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it. The idea that nothing on earth is so dreadful as war is inculcated too studiously among us. Disgrace is worse! Abandonment of essential rights is worse!

Ex. CLXXX.-JUSTIFICATION OF NEW ENGLAND.

C. CUSHING.

THE gentleman from South Carolina taunts us with counting the cost of that war in which the liberties and honor of the country, and the interests of the North, as he asserts, were forced to go elsewhere for their defense. Will he sit down with me and count the cost now? Will he reckon up how much of treasure the State of South Carolina expended in that war, and how much the State of Massachusetts ?-how much of the blood of either state was poured out on sea or land? I challenge the gentleman to the test of patriotism, which the army roll, the navy lists, and the treasury books, afford. Sir, they who revile us for our opposition to the last war have looked only to the surface of things. They little know the extremities of suffering which the people of Massachusetts bore at that period, out of attachment to the Union,their families beggared, their fathers and sons bleeding in camps, or pining in foreign prisons. They forget that not a field was marshaled, on this side of the mountains, in which the men of Massachusetts did not play their part as became their sires, and their "blood fetched from mettle of war proof." They battled and bled, wherever battle was fought or blood drawn.

Nor only by land. I ask the gentleman, who fought your naval battles in the last war? Who led you on to victory after victory, on the ocean and the lakes? Whose was the triumphant prowess before which the red cross of England paled with unwonted shames? Were they not men of New England? Were these not foremost in those maritime en

counters which humbled the pride and power of Great Britain? I appeal to my colleague before me from our common county of brave old Essex,—I appeal to my respected colleagues from the shores of the Old Colony. Was there a village or a hamlet on Massachusetts Bay which did not gather its hardy seamen to man the gun-decks of your ships of war? Did they not rally to the battle, as men flock to a feast?

I beseech the House to pardon me, if I may have kindled, on this subject, into something of unseemly ardor. I can not sit tamely by, in humble acquiescent silence, when reflections, which I know to be unjust, are cast on the faith and honor of Massachusetts. Had I suffered them to pass without admonition, I should have deemed that the disembodied spirits of her departed children, from their ashes mingled with the dust of every stricken field of the Revolution, from their bones moldering to the consecrated earth of Bunker's Hill, of Saratoga, of Monmouth,-would start up in visible shape before me, to cry shame on me, their recreant countryman! Sir, I have roamed through the world, to find hearts nowhere warmer than hers, soldiers nowhere braver, patriots nowhere purer, wives and mothers nowhere truer, maidens nowhere lovelier, green valleys and bright rivers nowhere greener or brighter; and I will not be silent, when I hear her patriotism or her truth questioned with so much as a whisper of detraction. Living, I will defend her; dying, I would pause, in my last expiring breath, to utter a prayer of fond remembrance for my native New England!

Ex. CLXXXI.-THE UNITY OF OUR REPUBLIC.

C. T. RUSSELL.

THE union of these states has been accomplished by the contributions of nations and centuries, for no transient or insignificant purpose. In its sublime and ultimate end it has a mission to humanity. In the language of Washington, "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people." Thus, as Madison has truly said, are we "responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political society." Ours is not the duty of forming, but preserving. The fathers were faithful to every

exigency, by which God created it; we are responsible for a like faithfulness to every exigency, by which He would preserve and perpetuate it. To such fidelity the past urges, the future calls, and the highest law commands us. Evils and defects within our Union we may well and earnestly seek to remove, by the development and operation of the principles upon which it rests. But whosoever lays his hand upon the fabric itself, or seeks, by whatever means, or under whatever pretence, or from whatever source, to undermine its foundations, is treacherous to humanity, false to liberty, and, more than all, culpable to God.

This is the inference of duty. To its performance hope, by its smile, encourages us. All efforts for the dissolution of our Union will be as disastrously unsuccessful as they are singularly criminal. Never in its existence has it been more earnestly and truly performing its appropriate work than now. A people, in the aggregate happy and blessed as the sun shines upon, repose in its protection. Every rolling tide brings to its shores multitudes seeking its shelter. Each receding wave carries back to the people they have left its liberalizing influence. Rising midway of the continent, and reaching to either ocean, it throws over both its radiant and cheering light. Intently the struggling nations contemplate its no longer doubtful experiment. Moral and religious truth are penetrating every part of its vast domain, and planting, in the very footsteps of the first settlers, the church, the school, and the college. Its Christian missionaries have girdled the globe with their stations, and in all of them heroic men and women, under its protection, with the religion of Jesus, are silently diffusing the principles of American liberty. Already a nation in the far-off islands of the Pacific has been redeemed by them from barbarism, assumed its place among the powers of the earth, and the very last mails tell us is at this moment seeking admission to our republic.

Thus meeting its grand purposes, it will not fall. Man alone has not reared it, the tabernacle of freedom, and man alone can not prostrate it, or gently, beam by beam, take it down. Heaven-directed in its formation and growth, while true to its origin it will be Heaven-protected in its progress and maturity. The stars of God will shine down kindly upon it, and angels on the beats of their silvery wings will linger and hover above it. To-day it is as firmly seated as ever in the affections of its citizens. Guarded by its hardly-seen power, reposing in its prosperity, not stopping to contemplate

the character of its origin, or to realize its transcendent purpose, men, for a moment, may cast its value, speculate on its duration, and even threaten its dissolution. In the administration of its affairs, conflicts of opinion will exist, sectional interests will become excited, and sometimes hostile. The views of ardent men will be maintained with the ardor in which they are held. A clear and fair field of combat will be left to error and truth. The largest freedom of discussion will be scrupulously observed. In the consequent excitement there may sometimes seem to be danger to the Union itself. But in the hour of peril experience shows, and ever will show, that a whole people will rally to its support, and sink its foes beneath a weight of odium a lifetime can not alleviate. The rain may descend, the floods come, and the winds blow and beat upon it, it will not fall, for it is founded upon a rock. It rests upon guarantees stronger than even laws and compromises. For it our interests combine in overwhelming potency; around it cluster the most glorious associations of our history; in it the hopes of humanity are involved; to it our hearts cling with undying love; for it religion, liberty and conscience plead; and, beyond all, upon it, in its riper years, as in its infancy, the protection of God rests, a sheltering cloud for its fiercer day, a pillar of fire in its darker night.

Ex. CLXXXII.-THE CONSEQUENCES OF DISUNION.

HENRY CLAY.

I HAVE been accused of ambition in presenting this mea sure. Ambition! inordinate ambition! If I had thought of myself only, I should have never brought it forward. I know well the perils to which I expose myself; the risk of alienating faithful and valued friends, with but little prospect of making new ones, if any new ones could compensate for the loss of those whom we have long tried and loved,—and tho honest misconceptions both of friends and foes. Ambition! If I had listened to its soft and seducing whispers, if I had yielded myself to the dictates of a cold, calculating and prudential policy, I would have stood still and unmoved. 1 might even have silently gazed on the raging storm, enjoyed its loudest thunders, and left those who are charged with the care of the vessel of state to conduct it as they could. I have been, heretofore, often unjustly accused of ambition. Low,