tion. Stigmatize not opposition to your notions with offensive epithets. These prove nothing but your anger or your weakness; and they are sure to generate a spirit of moral resistance, not easily to be checked or tamed. Give to Presidential views Constitutional respect; but suffer them not to supersede the exercise of independent inquiry. Encourage instead of suppressing fair discussion, so that those who approve not may at least have a respectful hearing. Thus, without derogating a particle from the energy of your measures, you will impart a tone to political dissensions which will deprive them of their acrimony, and render them harmless to the Nation.

The nominal party distinctions, Sir, have become mere cabalistic It is no longer a question whether, according to the theory of our Constitution, there is more danger of the Federal encroaching on the State Governments, or the Democracy of the State Governments paralyzing the arm of Federal power. Federalism and Democracy have lost their meaning. It is now a question of commerce, peace and Union of the States. On this question, unless the honesty and intelligence of the Nation shall confederate into one great American party, disdaining petty office-keeping and office-hunting views, defying alike the insolence of party prints, the prejudices of faction, and the dominion of Executive influence, I fear a decision will be pronounced fatal to the hopes, fatal to the existence, of the Nation.

151. AGAINST THE EMBARGO, 1808.-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!

152. PREDICTIONS OF DISUNION, 1820.- Wm. Pinkney. Born, 1765; died, 1822. SIR, the People of the United States, if I do not wholly mistake their character, are wise as well as virtuous. They know the value of that Federal association which is to them the single pledge and guarantee of power and peace. Their warm and pious affections will cling to it, as to their only hope of prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by whomsoever inculcated, or howsoever seductive and alluring in their aspect. Sir, it is not an occasion like this, although connected, as, contrary to all reasonable expectation, it has been, with fearful and disorganizing theories, which would make our estimates, whether fanciful or sound, of natural law, the measure of civil rights and political sovereignty in the social state, it is not, I say, an occasion like this, that can harm the Union. It must, indeed, be a mighty storm that can push from its moorings this sacred ark of the common safety. It is not every trifling breeze, however it may be made to sob and howl in imitation of the tempest, by the auxiliary breath of the ambitious, the timid, or the discontented, that can drive this gallant vessel, freighted with everything that is dear to an American bosom, upon the rocks, or lay it a sheer hulk upon the ocean.

I may, perhaps, mistake the flattering suggestions of hope (the greatest of all flatterers, as we are told) for the conclusions of sober reason. Yet it is a pleasing error, if it be an error, and no man shall take it from me. I will continue to cherish the belief,—ay, Sir, in defiance of the public patronage given to deadly speculations, which, invoking the name of Deity to aid their faculties for mischief, strike at all establishments, I will continue to cherish the belief that the Union of these States is formed to bear up against far greater shocks than, through all vicissitudes, it is ever likely to encounter. I will continue to cherish the belief that, although, like all other human institutions, it may for a season be disturbed, or suffer momentary eclipse by the

transit across its disk of some malignant planet, it possesses a recuperative force, a redeeming energy, in the hearts of the People, that will soon restore it to its wonted calm, and give it back its accustomed splendor. On such a subject I will discard all hysterical apprehensions; I will deal in no sinister auguries; I will indulge in no hypochondriacal forebodings. I will look forward to the future with gay and cheerful hope, and will make the prospect smile, in fancy at least, until overwhelming reality shall render it no longer possible.

153. BRITISH INFLUENCE, 1811.-John Randolph. Born, 1773; died, 1833. John Randolph, an eccentric Statesman, but a man of marked talents, was a Virginian by birth, and a descendant, in the seventh generation, from the celebrated Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan, a great Indian chief.

IMPUTATIONS of British influence have been uttered against the opponents of this war. Against whom are these charges brought? Against men who, in the war of the Revolution, were in the Councils of the Nation, or fighting the battles of your country! And by whom are these charges made? By runaways, chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. The great autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his divan of Pirates are very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. "Turks, Jews and Infidels," Melimelli or the Little Turtle, barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowed, sentation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence; against our fellow-Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in religion, with ourselves.

repre

In what school did the worthies of our land-the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges, of America-learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots, not more by Washington, Hancock and Henry, than by Chatham, and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt Ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. I trust that none such may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon my im

agination; of a Locke, upon my understanding; of a Sidney, upon my political principles; of a Chatham, upon qualities which would to God I possessed in common with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus, upon my religion. This is a British influence which I can never shake off.

154. ON THE GREEK QUESTION, 1824. — Id.

PERHAPS one of the prettiest themes for declamation ever presented to a deliberative assembly is this proposition in behalf of Greece. But, Sir, I look at the measure as one fraught with deep and deadly danger to the best interests of the American People. Liberty and religion are objects as dear to my heart as to that of any gentleman in this or any other assembly. But, in the name of these holy words, by this powerful spell, is this Nation to be conjured and persuaded out of the highway of Heaven, out of its present comparatively happy state, into all the disastrous conflicts arising from the policy of European powers, with all the consequences which flow from them?

Sir, I am afraid that along with some most excellent attributes and qualities, the love of liberty, jury trial, the writ of habeas corpus, and all the blessings of free government, that we have derived from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, we have got not a little of their John Bull, or, rather, bull-dog spirit their readiness to fight for anybody, and on any occasion. Sir, England has been for centuries the game-cock of Europe. It is impossible to specify the wars in which she has been engaged for contrary purposes; and she will, with great pleasure, see us take off her shoulders the labor of preserving the balance of power. We find her fighting now for the Queen of Hungary, inveterate foe, the King of Prussia; now at war for the restoration of the Bourbons, - and now on the eve of war with them, for the liberties of Spain. These lines on the subject were never more applicable than they have now become:

"Now Europe's balanced-neither side prevails;

For nothing 's left in either of the scales."

then, for her

If we pursue the same policy, we must travel the same road, and endure the same burdens under which England now groans. But, glorious as such a design might be, a President of the United States would, in my apprehension, occupy a prouder place in history, who, when he retires from office, can say to the People who elected him, I leave you without a debt, than if he had fought as many pitched battles as Cæsar, or achieved as many naval victories as Nelson. And what, Sir, is debt? In an individual, it is slavery. It is slavery of the worst sort, surpass ing that of the West India Islands, - for it enslaves the mind as well as it enslaves the body; and the creature who can be abject enough to incur and to submit to it receives in that condition of his being an adequate punishment. Of course, I speak of debt, with the exception of unavoidable misfortune. I speak of debt caused by mismanagement, by unwarrantable generosity, by being generous before being just. I

know that this sentiment was ridiculed by Sheridan, whose lamentable end was the best commentary upon its truth. No, Sir: let us abandon these projects. Let us say to these seven millions of Greeks, "We defended ourselves, when we were but three millions, against a power, in comparison to which the Turk is but as a lamb. Go, and do thou likewise."

155. ON ALTERING THE VIRGINIA CONSTITUTION, 1829.—John Randolph. SIR, I see no wisdom in making this provision for future changes. You must give Governments time to operate on the People, and give the People time to become gradually assimilated to their institutions. Almost anything is better than this state of perpetual uncertainty. A People may have the best form of Government that the wit of man ever devised, and yet, from its uncertainty alone, may, in effect, live under the worst Government in the world. Sir, how often must I repeat, that change is not reform? I am willing that this new Constitution shall stand as long as it is possible for it to stand; and that, believe me, is a very short time. Sir, it is vain to deny it. They may say what they please about the old Constitution, the defect is not there. It is not in the form of the old edifice, neither in the design nor the elevation; it is in the material, it is in the People of Virginia. To my knowledge, that People are changed from what they have been. The four hundred men who went out to David were in debt. The partisans of Cæsar were in debt. The fellow-laborers of Catiline were in debt. And I defy you to show me a desperately indebted People, anywhere, who can bear a regular, sober Government. I throw the challenge to all who hear me. I say that the character of the good old Virginia planter — the man who owned from five to twenty slaves, or less, who lived by hard work, and who paid his debts is passed away. A new order of things is come. The period has arrived of living by one's wits; of living by contracting debts that one cannot pay; and, above all, of living by office-hunting.

Sir, what do we see? Bankrupts-branded bankrupts giving great dinners, sending their children to the most expensive schools, giving grand parties, and just as well received as anybody in society! I say that, in such a state of things, the old Constitution was too good for them, they could not bear it. No, Sif; they could not bear a freehold suffrage, and a property representation. I have always endeavored to do the People justice; but I will not flatter them, - I will not pander to their appetite for change. I will do nothing to provide for change. I will not agree to any rule of future apportionment, or to any provision for future changes, called amendments to the Constitution. Those who love change who delight in public confusion - who wish to feed the cauldron, and make it bubble vote, if they please, for future changes. But by what spell, by what formula, are you going to bind the People to all future time? The days of Lycurgus are gone by, when we could swear the People

may