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Will not the people of the South look at these facts, and pause before they do the fatal deed that must seal forever their own destruction In this Union, the gentleman from South Carolina has every thing to hope: his name may go down to posterity among the most distinguished men of the age: his talents may adorn its highest offices, to which he has a just right to aspire; and much as I may differ with that gentleman, both as to men and measures, yet such is my opinion of his talents and his worth, that I would rejoice to see him at this moment filling the highest of the executive departments of this government, or the highest of its diplomatic stations. That gentleman may be carried away by momentary excitement; still I cannot doubt his attachment to this Union, which I trust he will never sacrifice to imaginary evils. The blessings of this government, and the value of this Union, I have never heard so forcibly urged, or so eloquently portrayed, as by the gentleman from South Carolina himself; and I cannot, in conclusion, better express my own feelings than by repeating the very words uttered by that gentleman in concluding an able and eloquent speech on another occasion, when he said—“The liberty of this country is a sacred depository-a vestal fire, which Providence has committed to our hands for the general benefit of mankind. It is the world's last hope: extinguish it, and the earth will be covered with eternal darkness; but once put out that light, I know not where is that Promethean heat that shall that light relume.'

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I appeal to the gentleman-I ask him, is he prepared to destroy that "sacred depository," the Union and liberties of his country? Is he prepared to extinguish, in fraternal blood, that "vestal fire committed to his hands by Providence, for the benefit of mankind?" Is he prepared to destroy "the world's last hope;" to put out and extinguish forever that great and glorious light of liberty and union now blazing up to the heavens, illumining the path and cheering the onward march of the friends of freedom throughout the world, and thus to cover the earth with eternal darkness? Is he prepared for this? I pause for a reply. ANDREW STEWART.*

*U. S. Representative from Pennsylvania.

TRISTAM BURGES.

95

69. FREE DISCUSSION.

SIR, admit-for we must admit-that free discussion has ever been odious to the tyrant, and to all the minions of licentious power; but can we ever forget how eloquent, how enchanting the voice of that same freedom of speech has, in all ages, been, wherever its tones have fallen on the ear of freemen?

Free discussion, and liberty itself, eloquence and freedom of speech, are contemporaneous fires, and brighten and blaze, or languish and go out, together. Athenian liberty was, for years, protracted by that free discussion, which was sustained and continued in Athens. Freedom was prolonged by eloquence. Liberty paused and lingered, that she might listen to the divine intonations of her voice. Free discussion, the eloquence of one man, rolled back the tide of Macedonian power, and long preserved his country from the overwhelming deluge.

When the light of free discussion had, throughout all the Grecian cities, been extinguished in the blood of those statesmen by whose eloquence it had been sustained, young Tully, breathing the spirit of Roman liberty on the expiring embers, relumed and transmitted, from the banks of the Ilissus to those of the Tiber, this glorious light of freedom. This mighty

master of the forum, by his free discussions, both from the rostrum and in the senate-house, gave new vigor, and a longer duration of existence, to the liberty of his country. Who, more than Marcus Tullius Cicero, was loved and cherished by the friends of that country? Who more feared and hated by traitors and tyrants?

Freedom of speech, Roman eloquence, and Roman liberty, expired together, when, under the proscription of the second triumvirate, the hired bravo of Mark Antony placed in the lap of one of his profligate minions the head and the hands of Tully, the statesman, the orator, the illustrious father of his country. After amusing herself some hours by plunging her bodkin through that tongue which had so long delighted the senate and the rostrum, and made Antony himself tremble in the midst of his legions, she ordered that head and those hands, then the trophies of a savage despotism, to be set up in the forum.

"Her last good man, dejected Rome adored;

Wept for her patriót slain, and cursed the tyrant's sword."

English statesmen and orators, in the free discussions of the

English parliament, have been formed on those illustrious models of Greek and Roman policy and eloquence. Multiplied by the teeming labors of the press, the works of the master and the disciple have come to our hands; and the eloquence of Chatham, of Burke, of Fox, and of the younger Pitt, reaches us, not in the feeble and evanescent voice of tradition, but preserved and placed before the eye on the more imperishable page. Neither these great originals, nor their improved transcripts, have been lost to our country. The American political school of free discussion has enriched the nation with some distinguished scholars; and Dexter, and Morris, and Pinkney will not soon be forgotten by our country, or by the literary world.

Some men who now live may hereafter be found deserving of that life, in the memory of posterity, which very great men have thought no unworthy object of a glorious ambition. Who can censure this anxious wish to live in human memory? When we feel ourselves borne along the current of time; when we see ourselves hourly approach that cloud, impenetrable to the human eye, which terminates the last visible portion of this moving estuary; who of us, although he may hope, when he reaches it, to shoot through that dark barren into a more bright and peaceful region, yet who, I say, can feel himself receding swiftly from the eye of all human sympathy, leaving the vision of all human monuments, and not wish, as he passes by, to place on those monuments some little memorial of himself— some volume of a book—or, perhaps, but a single page, that it may be remembered,

"When we are not, that we have been?"

Sir, these models of ancient and modern policy and eloquence, formed in the great schools of free discussion, both in earlier and later time, are in the hands of thousands of those youths who are now, in all the parts of our country, forming themselves for the public service. This hall is the bright goal of their generous, patriotic, and glorious ambition. Sir, they look hither with a feeling not unlike that devotion felt by the pilgrim as he looks towards some venerated shrine. Do not-I implore you, sir, do not-by your decision this day, abolish the rites of liberty, consecrated in this place. Extinguish not those fires on her altar, which should here be eternal. Suffer not, suffer not the rude hand of this more than Vandal violence to demolish, "from turret to foundation-stone," this last sanctuary of freedom. TRISTAM BURGES.*

* U. S. Representative from Rhode Island.

C. C. NAYLOR.

97

70. NORTHERN LABORERS.

SIR, the gentleman has misconceived the spirit and tendency of northern institutions. He is ignorant of northern character. He has forgotten the history of his country. Preach insurrec tion to the northern laborers! Who are the northern laborers? The history of your country is their history. The renown of your country is their renown. The brightness cf their doings is emblazoned on its every page. Blot from your annals the deeds and the doings of northern laborers, and the history of your country presents but a universal blank.

Sir, who was he that disarmed the Thunderer; wrested from his grasp the bolts of Jove; calmed the troubled ocean; became the central sun of the philosophical system of his age, shedding his brightness and effulgence on the whole civilized world; whom the great and mighty of the earth delighted to honor; who participated in the achievement of your independence; prominently assisted in moulding your free institutions, and the beneficial effects of whose wisdom will be felt to the last moment of 66 recorded time?" Who, sir, I ask, was he? A northern laborer-a Yankee tallow-chandler's son-a printer's runaway boy!

And who, let me ask the honorable gentleman, who was he that, in the days of our revolution, led forth a northern armyyes, an army of northern laborers-and aided the chivalry of South Carolina in their defence against British aggression, drove the spoilers from their firesides, and redeemed her fair fields. from foreign invaders? Who was he? A northern laborer, a Rhode Island blacksmith-the gallant General Greene-who left his hammer and his forge, and went forth conquering and to conquer in the battle for our independence! And will you preach insurrection to men like these?

Sir, our country is full of the achievements of northern laborers! Where is Concord, and Lexington, and Princeton, and Trenton, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill, but in the north? And what, sir, has shed an imperishable renown on the neverdying names of those hallowed spots, but the blood and the struggles, the high daring and patriotism, and sublime courage, of northern laborers? The whole north is an everlasting monument of the freedom, virtue, intelligence, and indomitable independence of northern laborers! Go, sir, go preach insurrection to men like these!

The fortitude of the men of the north, under intense suffering

for liberty's sake, has been almost godlike! History has so recorded it. Who comprised that gallant army, that, without food, without pay, shelterless, shoeless, penniless, and almost naked, in that dreadful winter-the midnight of our revolution— whose wanderings could be traced by their blood-tracks in the snow; whom no arts could seduce, no appeal lead astray, no sufferings disaffect; but who, true to their country and its holy cause, continued to fight the good fight of liberty, until it finally triumphed? Who, sir, were these men? Why, northern laborers! Yes, sir, northern laborers!

But it is idle to

Who, sir, were Roger Sherman andenumerate. To name the northern laborers who have distinguished themselves, and illustrated the history of their country, would require days of the time of this house. Nor is it necessary. Posterity will do them justice. Their deeds have been recorded in characters of fire!

C C. NAYLOR.*

71. THE DESTINY OF AMERICA.

WE may betray the trust reposed in us-we may most miserably defeat the fond hopes entertained of us. We may become the scorn of tyrants and the jest of slaves. From our fate, oppression may assume a bolder front of insolence, and its victims sink into a darker despair.

In that event, how unspeakable will be our disgrace! with what weight of mountains will the infamy lie upon our souls! The gulf of our ruin will be as deep, as the elevation we might have attained is high. How wilt thou fall from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! Our beloved country with ashes for beauty; the golden cord of our union broken; its scattered fragments presenting every form of misrule, from the wildest anarchy to the most ruthless despotism; our "soil drenched with fraternal blood ;" the life of man stripped of its grace and dignity; the prizes of honor gone, and virtue divorced from half its encouragements and supports ;-these are gloomy pictures, which I would not invite your imaginations to dwell upon, but only to glance at, for the sake of the warning lessons we may draw from them.

Remember that we can have none of those consolations which

U. S. Representative from Pennsylvania.

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