on us, Mazeppa-like, to pay us home for all their injuries? I know, that in stating the dangers of the Far West, I shall not be heard with indifference, though I speak in the Far East. No-we are one body; and where one member suffers, all the rest suffer with it; or one member prospers, all the rest rejoice with it; and I hold it a high duty of those citizens who come from distant parts of our wide Union, to assure their fellow-citizens of the perfect sympathy and unanimity of feeling which pervades the entire people of this Confederacy. Yes we are one people, for weal or for woe. When I cannot come from Mississippi, and call the men of Boston my fellow-citizens, my kindred, my brethren, I desire no longer to be myself a citizen of the Republic. Yes-we are all embarked on one bottom; and whether we sink or swim, we will swim or we will sink Together!

ON THE MISSISSIPPI CONTESTED ELECTION Closing Paragraphs of a Speech delivered before the House of Representatives, January, 1838.

IF the July election was void, or extended only to the November election, then the latter election must inevitably be sustained, unless there is something averred and proven to vitiate it. It stands, otherwise, upon the same footing with the general elections of the other States which have occurred since the 4th. of March. There can be no sort of a doubt that one of the said elections in Mississippi was constitutional and valid; and I presume no one will advance the absurdity, that an unconstitutional and void election can vitiate a constitutional and valid election.

I have now done with the argument of this matter. It is for the grave judges around me to say whether I have established any of my propositions. I have detained the House, in this opening of the cause, longer, perhaps than its patience would warrant. But ample excuse, I trust, may be found in the magnitude of the principles involved, and the inexperience of the humble individual to whom their illustration has been committed. I have performed my duty; it now devolves upon you to perform yours. In the performance of that duty, let

me tell you, sir, no ordinary responsibility rests upon you. The eyes of the nation are directed to your action, with an anxiety commensurate with the importance of the subject to be affected by your decision. That subject is no less than the right of representation, the elective franchise, the Promethean spark which imparts life and soul to our whole political system; without which, all our institutions are but inanimate things; dull, cold, and senseless statutes. In your situation. even good intention will not justify error. At your hands the American people will require a strict account of that Constitution of which you are appointed guardians, and over whose most vital part a fatal stab is now impending. You cannot respond, as did the first fratricide, "Who made me the keeper of my brother Abel?" To you is entrusted the keeping of the Constitution; see that you rob it not of its richest treasure.

I advance here no personal claim; it is the claim of one of the sovereign States of this Confederacy which I advocate; her claim to the right of choosing her own Representatives. according to her own constitutional laws. Will you deny her this right? Will you rend the brightest and the strongest link in the golden chain of Union?

Sir, if you persist in denying to Mississippi that right to which she is entitled in common with every other State, you inflict upon her a wound which no medicine can heal. If you are determined to impose upon her a representation not of her choice, and against her will, go on, and complete the work of degradation; send her a proconsul for a Governor, and make taskmasters to rule over her.

Let her no longer sit with you, a young and fair member of this proud sisterhood; but strip off the robes of equality, and make of her a handmaid and a servant.

Better, far better, had she never emerged from the chrysalis condition of a Territory, to wear the gaudy honors and butterfly wings of a State, if you can thus, with your mere touch, brush her brightest tints away.

Sir, you may think it an easy and trifling matter to deprive Mississippi of her elective franchise; for she is young, and may not, perchance, have the power to resist; but I am much mistaken in the character of her chivalrous citizens, if you do not find that she not only understands her rights, but has both the

will and power to vindicate them. You may yet find, to your sorrow, that you have grasped a scorpion, where you thought you were only crushing a worm. This House would as soon put its head in a lion's mouth, as take the course which is threatened, towards the elder and more powerful states. And how happens it, that Representatives of the State which have always been the readiest in the assertion of their own rights, should now be most zealous in trampling upon the rights of Mississippi? What has she done that she should be selected as a victim? No State is or has ever been more ardently attached to the Union; and if she is placed beyond its pale, it will be your fault, and not her own. Sir, if you consummate this usurpation, you degrade the State of Mississippi; and if she submits, never again can she wear the lofty look of conscious independence. Burning shame will set its seal upon her brow; and when her proud sons travel in other lands, they will blush at the history of her dishonor, as it falls from the sneering lip of the stranger. Sir, place her not in that terrible and trying position, in which her love for this glorious Union will be found at war with her own honor, and the paramount obligation which binds her to transmit to the next generation, untarnished and undiminished, her portion of that rich legacy of the Revolution, which was bought with blood, and which should never be parted with for a price less than what it cost. Is there a State in this Union that would part with it; that would submit to have her Representatives chosen by this House, and forced upon her against her will? Come! what says the Bay State-time-honored Massachusetts? From the cradle in which young Liberty was first rocked, even from old Faneuil Hall, comes forth her ready answer, and, before it dies away, again it is repeated from Bunker Hill: "It was for this very right of representation our fathers fought the battles of the Revolution, and ere we will surrender this dear-bought right, those battles shall again become dread realities." Would Kentucky submit? Ask her, Mr. Speaker, and her Mammoth cavern will find a voice to thunder in your ear her stern response: "No sooner than submit to such an outrage, our soil shall be re-baptised with a new claim to the proud but melancholy title of the dark and bloody ground." And what says Virginia, with her high device-her "sic semper tyrannis,"

the loftiest motto that ever blazed upon a warrior's shield or a nation's arms? How would she brook such usurpation? What says the mother of States and State Right doctrines; she who has placed instruction as a guardian over representation; what says she to the proposition that this House can make Representatives, and force them upon a State in violation of its choice and will? And where is South Carolina, the Harry Percy of the Union? On which side in this great controversy does she couch her lance and draw her blade? I trust, upon the side of her sister State; upon the side, too, of the constitutional rights of all the States; and let her lend the full strength of her good right arm to the blow, when she strikes in so righteous a quarrel.

Upon all the States I do most solemnly call, for that justice to another, which they would expect for themselves. Let this cup pass from Mississippi. Compel her not to drink its bitter ingredients, lest, some day, even-handed justice should "commend the poisoned chalice" to your own lips. Rescind that resolution, which presses like a foul incubus upon the Constitution. You sit here, twenty-five sovereign States, in judgment upon the most sacred right of a sister State; that which is to a State what chastity is to a woman, or honor to a man. Should you decide against her, you tear from her brow the richest jewel which sparkles there, and forever bow her head in shame and dishonor. But, if your determination is taken; if the blow must fall; if the violated Constitution must bleed; I have but one request on her behalf to make. When you decide that she cannot choose her own representation, at that self-same moment blot from the spangled banner of this Union the bright star that glitters to the name of Mississippi, but leave the stripe behind, a fit emblem of her degradation.

THE LAW OF SELF-DEFENCE

Extracts from a Speech in defence of his Friend Judge Wilkinson, who had been indicted for murder, Louisville, Kentucky, 1839.

I CAME before you an utter stranger, and yet I feel not as a stranger towards you; I have watched during the course of the examination the various emotions which the evidence was so well calculated to arouse in your bosoms, both as men and as Kentuckians; and when I beheld the flush of honorable shame upon your cheeks, the sparkle of indignation in your eyes, or the curl of scorn upon your lips, as the foul conspiracy was developed, I felt that years could not make us better acquainted. I saw upon your faces the mystic sign which constitutes the bond of union among honest and honorable men; and I knew that I was about to address those whose feelings would respond to my own. I rejoiced that my clients were, in the fullest sense of the term, to be tried by a jury of their peers.

I am not aware that the Commonwealth of Kentucky is incapable of vindicating her violated laws or unwilling to prosecute and punish the perpetrators of crime. The districtattorney has given ample proof that she is provided with officers fully capable of asserting her rights and protecting her citizens; and with the exception of one or two remarks, which fell from him inadvertently, I accord to his observations my most unqualified approbation: he has done equal justice to the State and the defendants; he has acquitted himself ably, honorably, and impartially. But, gentlemen, though the State is satisfied, the prosecutor is not. Your laws have spoken through their constituted agent; now private vengeance and vindictive malice will claim to be heard. One of the ablest lawyers of your country, or of any country, has been employed to conduct the private part of this prosecution; employed, not by the Commonwealth, but by the real murderer; him whose forehead I intend, before I am done, to brand with the mark of Cain that in after life all may know and all may shun him: The money of the prosecutor has purchased the talent of the advocate; and the contract is, that blood shall be exchanged