'^^ .^^ 
 
 
 
 -./ 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 
 >c> 
 
 
 
 
 
 •>. 
 
 
 
 
 
 0" . 
 
 
 ^- 
 
 
 
 Ci ^^ 
 
 
 1 
 
 ■^ 
 
 0^' 
 
 
 
 
 J> 
 
 ■''^ 
 
 V'/' 
 
 .^, 
 
 
 
 
 
 %-'- " ■! ^ .N* 
 
 
 / 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 <^'^' 
 
 
 
 
 : .s^^' 
 
 •^/>. 
 
 
 
 "'■^^ .^^^ 
 
 .0^ 
 
 
 .0 o. 
 
 
 
 v'?-" '^ 
 
 
 \> V - t> "^ d> < 
 
 
 
 c°\^ 
 
 a\ N c . -^ ' . . •> -; 
 
 .■■^'' 
 
 0' X 
 
 
 
 
 .0^ 
 
 r-. ^:<m^^ 
 
 
 
 
 > ^ /^^^^ %. v^ 
 
 -i>^"' 
 ^ ^ 
 
 'b tV . ^1 
 
 '0- o. ■ * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ''y 
 
 x^ .^'?- 
 
 
 
 ..^^^■' 
 
 .•V'- 
 
 
 J', -V 
 
 
 
 
 ^, .-^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 %^^'- 
 
 ..V^^' % 
 
 
 %.yS:M^ .^ 
 
 \0 o. 
 
 V . ^^ ^ '■ * -^-o 
 
 /,><,'-'' ^-o 
 
 c^.~": 
 
 oo^ 
 
 
 '^tJJ'- 
 
 \ 
 
 
 '•f. 
 
 -\> .^' 
 

 
 </■ 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 .c,-^ 
 
 >t 
 
 / 
 
 
 . -. 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 .^•>'' 
 
 ^^• 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 ,0 
 
 
 y 
 
 
 
 ■^OO"" 
 
 
 
 
 .<^ 
 
 -"^^ 
 
 
 
 
 s^' '^^. 
 
 
 
 •^ 
 
 
 o 0^ 
 
 .0 c. 
 
 
 -V-. " -> s 
 
 ,0- 
 
 x"*-' 
 
 
 A'^'■ '% 
 
 \ * \V , . <'. ^ •) M O 
 
 
 
 
 ,■0' 
 
 " ^ C> \' 
 
 <?' .V. * 
 
 
 ..^^ 
 
 % 
 
 >o 
 
 ■^ -^ (J , V, 
 
 * - \ 
 \ 
 
 
 r H. ""' 
 
 ■ - nO^ 
 
 ' V, 
 
 , ;5.- '^ 
 
 -^^ 
 
 ^N^' 
 
 v^" ''-^^ 
 
 "^^ c^"- 
 
 •^^. .0 
 
 ■ «'"» ''' 
 
 -!. '-^ ^y^^^' -^ .Q^' 
 
 
 -'o , V •* 
 
 
 
 '^^- v^'' 
 
 •-oo^ : 
 
 . --^ <^ . ; 
 
 xO^.. 
 
 
 
 ^ ^ "^ "a 
 
 
 =1 
 
 
 
 
 \0 
 
 O 
 
 r. y 
 
 \- 
 
 .- ^ 
 
 
 \ 
 
 y- 
 
 d- 
 
 y *"" 
 
 SS^^ c 
 
 -O 
 
 
 
 ^^. 
 
 * 
 
 N ^ .^^- 
 
 
 
 > ^ 
 
 
 C\ 
 
 
 o ■< 
 
 " 
 
 X 
 ^ * 
 
 % 
 
 /" 
 
 r 
 
 
 <' ' 
 
 *■ 
 
 .&^' 
 
 '% 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : ...^' %■ 
 
SPEECH 
 
 F 
 
 J 
 
 JOSEPH HOLT, 
 
 , ■) DELIVERED AT 
 
 DEMOCRATIC MEETING HELD AT THE COURT HOUSE, 
 
 IN THE CITY OF LOUISVILLE, 
 
 ON THE EVENING OF THE 19TH OF OCTOBER, 1852. 
 
 1^^ 
 
 LOUISVILLE: 
 
 HARirlKT dt HUGHES, PRINTERS, DEMOCRAT BUILDINQa. 
 
 1853. 
 

 /^ 
 
SPEECH. 
 
 After a few introductory remarks, Mr. Holt con- 
 tinued as follows: — 
 
 Fellow Citizens: — In the observations, neces- 
 sarily somewhat desultory, which I may have the 
 honor of submitting to your consideration to-night, 
 it will be my endeavor to confine myself to a dis- 
 cussion of what I conceive to' be the true issues 
 which have been for years, and I verily believe are 
 still pending between the two great poUtical parties 
 — discarding all personalities, as unworthy of en- 
 tering into the controversy. And to such of our 
 Whig friends as have paid us the compliment of 
 being present on this occasion, I would say, in all 
 frankness, that whatever of criticism or of denun- 
 ciation may escape me, must find its interpretation 
 in reference to principles, not men. To the Whigs, 
 as a party, I unhesitatingly accord integrity and 
 patriotism — nothing doubting but that they cherish 
 their principles as sincerely as do I my convictions 
 of the disastrous consequences to which those prin- 
 ciples, if pursued, must ultimately lead. 
 
 At the threshold, I must be permitted to say — 
 which I do in no unkind or invidious spirit — that 
 the Whigs have sought (and it is to be feared, but 
 too successfully) to make the present canvass for 
 the presidency, strictly personal in its character — 
 thus concealing from the public eye, the real prin 
 ciples which are boimd up with it, and which must 
 abide its results. Hence their orators, so far at 
 least as they have fallen under my notice, generally 
 begin their speeches by relating a large number of 
 very small and very stale jokes, upon the fall of 
 General Pierce from his horse during the Mexican 
 campaign, and immediately thereafter, they shoot 
 forth, like so many blazing rockets into the heaven 
 of heavens of oratory, in glorification of the mili- 
 tary exploits of General Scott. This, so far as I 
 can gather it, is about the sum total of the argu- 
 ment — just as though the American people could 
 be induced to decide the great and absorbing 
 question of the Presidency of the Republic, upon 
 grounds like these? If I do not follow the course 
 thus indicated, of personal adulation on the one 
 hand, and personal crimination on the other, it 
 will be, first, because I have no taste for such 
 things, and secondly, because, having entire con- 
 fidence in the strength of our priticiples, and in 
 the capacity of the people to understand and ap- 
 preciate them, I, for one am willing, and desire 
 that the canvass, shall proceed and be determined 
 upon these principles — whose fate it involves — and 
 upon them only. 
 
 As far back as the light of history or tradition 
 conducts us, two great political parties have been 
 found to exist in all ages and countries, claiming to 
 be at all civilized. These parties stand out from 
 the pages of history, as distinctly and boldly as do 
 any mountain peaks from the undulating plains on 
 which they cast their shadows. They are, in their 
 nature and mission, essentially antagonistic; and 
 
 though their names have changed with the tastes, 
 the caprice or the necessities of the times, and their 
 forms have been modified by the pressure of sur- 
 rounding circumstances, yet the animating temper 
 and purpose of each, have ever remained the .same. 
 The one is the party devoted to power — the other, 
 the party devoted to the people. The one responds 
 to the Conservatism of the nineteenth century — 
 the other, to its Democracy. The one is based 
 upon a distrust of the popular intelligence and in- 
 tegrity, and a shrinking dread of the popular pow- 
 er; the other rests upon an abiding faith in the 
 head and heart of the laboring masses of mankind, 
 whose toil and spii'it make up this world's wealth 
 and glory — a conviction, that tlicse masses have 
 the right to regulate their own destiny, and a sub- 
 lime trust, that though delayed by the fraud and 
 violence of tyrants, tlie day of their deliverance 
 must ultimately come. The one party has ever re- 
 sisted all change, all amelioration iri the field of 
 politics, and often, of mere literature .uid science; 
 has striven unceasingly to aggrandiz<' the govern- 
 ment, and arm it with yet more ab.-olute powers. 
 This end it has effected, sometimes by ,m open re- 
 sort to arms, and sometimes by corrupt perversions 
 of existing charters and compacts. Ai:.'.in,by the 
 imposition of enormous burdens, and I'v cutting off 
 all sources of information from the people, the 
 masses have fallen an easy prey to the usurper, be- 
 cause thus rendered impoverished, ignorant and 
 brutalized. 
 
 The Democratic party, on the other hand, have 
 insisted and insist, that all government is, at best, 
 but a necessary evil, and that, as a general rule, that 
 nation is the best governed which is governed 
 the least; that all political power should be delega- 
 ted with caution and watched with unsleeping jeal- 
 ousy; that all charters and constitutions in which 
 such delegation is made, should be strictly constru- 
 ed, and that those powers which are not conferred 
 by the letter, but are only to be wrung from the 
 instrument by imphcation, should not be exercised. 
 
 The conservative party have sought their aims, 
 not merely by an appeal to arms, by perversions of 
 the fundamental laws, and by the alow, yet certain 
 process of demoraUzation, but also by laboring to 
 captivate the imaginations'of mcn,and by weakening 
 and finally extinguishing all sense of personal con- 
 sequence. Hence they have surrounded the gov- 
 ernment with the pomp of vast armies; its high 
 functionaries have dwelt in gorgeous palaces; its 
 cities have been filled with monuments; its liveried 
 officials have swarmed in the streets and upon the 
 highways, (as in France, where there is an officer 
 of state for every twenty souls,) its presence and 
 multiplied agencies have been rendered ubiquitous; 
 it has presided in the churches, at the theatres and 
 at all the public amusements of the people — in a 
 word, it has in a thousand ways, with more than 
 the eyes of Argua, and more than the hands of 
 
Briareus, sought to intermingle its insolent offices 
 with the afliiiis of social and private life. Men, 
 thus perpt-tualiy overshadowed by this colossal 
 power, and dazzk-d by its splendor, seem to them- 
 selves, ill time, lo breathe through the lungs of the 
 government, and exist, as it were, by its very coiir- 
 teay. A conviction of helplessness creeps over 
 them, and that self trust, which is the element of 
 all that is truly great in our nature, being gradu- 
 ally frittered away, they sink in appearance, as in 
 fact» into mere motes floating in the sunbeams of 
 political authority. In Europe, where Conserva- 
 tism is almost universally in tlie ascendant, noth- 
 ing strikes the American traveler so promptly and 
 so painfully, as the sense of personal depeiidancc 
 and personal insignificance, which everywhere pro- 
 rails. This state of things is yet more lamentably 
 apparent among the great minds of the Old World. 
 The statesmen, philosophers, civilians and giants 
 Iq the fields of literature, who in this country, ani- 
 mated by a lofty self respect and a noble thirst of 
 fame, would be building for themselves imperish- 
 able monuments of renown, are there, but crawling, 
 creeping parasites — devoting their lives and ener- 
 gies to the interests of a few debauched men and 
 •vomen, who claim that their feet were fashioned 
 of God, to tread upon the nocks of mankind. 
 
 The Democracy, assuming the opposite ground, 
 contend that all government should be simple in 
 its forms and administration; that it should be in- 
 visible, except when invoked to protect the weak 
 against the strong — the right against the wrong — 
 that it should be without vast standing armies, or 
 palaces, or espionage upon private or social life; 
 ihat its glory should consist in the nurture of per- 
 sonal sagacity, and enterprise, and consequence — 
 in the strengthening of personal virtues, and ex- 
 altation of personal character — in the develop- 
 ment of all those qualities, which throw around 
 the career of man, when freed from artificial and 
 brutalizing restraints, so much that is beautiful and 
 grand. Those arc the monuments, in which the 
 government should make its boast — not those of 
 aenselesa piles of marble scattered over the Euro- 
 pean continent, inscribed with fulsome falsehoods, 
 and on each of which have been wasted treasures, 
 which distributed, would have made bright and 
 happy a thousand humble homes. 
 
 These parties being, as I have said, essentially 
 antagonistic, the conflict between them has ever 
 been maintained — often upon the battle field — 
 sometimes in the popular assemblies — through the 
 press and in the schools of philosophy; and when 
 driven from all these theatres of human thought 
 and action, the Democratic faith has still lingered, 
 humbly, but in hope, in the bosoms of the lovers of 
 ;hcir land ami of their race. Its greatest triumph 
 — unparalleled in it^ annals, for its completeness 
 and splendor — was in the issues of the American 
 Revolution, and the oraganization of our present 
 constitutional form of government. So powerful 
 were the guarantees thus furnished for popular 
 rights, that it might have been well anticipated 
 that the party of power would disappear forever 
 from our shores. Not so. It came forth at once 
 upon the political arena, and displayed those traits, 
 for which it has been di&tiuguiahed through every 
 
 peilod of its history. Clamorously urging, as i\ 
 ever does, that the government was too weak, and 
 fearing the power of the people, it openly assailed 
 the fundamental principles of our institutions. Tho 
 party assumed the name of Federalists, and 
 through its instrumentality, our prisons were for a 
 time hallowed by the presence of martyrs to the 
 freedom of speech and of the press. Expelled 
 fiom place, by the election of Mr. Jefferson, we 
 meet this party again in the halls of Congress, de- 
 nouncing the war, and sympathising more with the 
 English constitution than with that of our Repub- 
 lic. Yet again, we find the same party, under 
 a new name — that of National Republicans — du- 
 ring the administration of John Quincy Adams. — 
 Profiling, however, by its past experience, and 
 lowering its tone, it no longer attacks, for the mo- 
 ment, the freedom of speech or of the press, but 
 forms a gigantic system of measures, recommended 
 by plausible and patriotic pretences, which, though 
 slow in their operation, were sure in the end, to 
 reach the same results, for which this party has 
 ever toiled. Baffled once more by the election of 
 General Jackson, the National RepubUcaus "shuf- 
 fled off, ' in obedience to the command of their 
 great leader, not their "mortal coil" but their name, 
 and adopted that of Whigs — a name doubtless 
 chosen as a bait to popular credulity, because con- 
 secrated in our fatherland, by its association with 
 much that is renowned in the struggle for human 
 rights. But names are not things, as we shall 
 have occasion to see. It will now be my endeavor 
 by a rapid examination of the prominent measures 
 of the Whig party, to show that, though modified 
 in temper and tactics, by the "body of the times," 
 and the peculiar institutions of our country, yet 
 that it is in very deed the Party of Power, whose 
 characteristics I have attempted to sketch — that it . 
 is animated by its aggressive, centralising spirit, 
 and that as such, it devolves upon us, as a duty of 
 patriotism, to resist it. 
 
 Among the boldest and most memorable of 
 these measures, may b^ enumerated: a NationsJ 
 Bank; a system of Internal Improvements by the 
 Federal Government; a high Protective Tariff; and 
 hostiUty to the Veto power; as conferred by the ■ 
 constitution. 
 
 You all remember something of the character of 
 the Bank of the United States, and of the obsti- 
 nate and angry contest, which resulted in its over- 
 throw. I remember it right well; and, in my hum- 
 ble judgment, that great Chieftain, General Jack- 
 son, did not strike a more glorious blow for hia 
 country, when at the battle of New Orleans, he 
 smote the British lion in the face, and drove him 
 howling fiom our shores, than he did, when ho 
 grappled with and trampled to the earth, this po- 
 litical and financial monster. You must well re- 
 collect, in what an odour of sanctity, this institutioa 
 had managed to enshrine itself with the American 
 people — so much so, that when General Jackson 
 breathed the first suspicion of its integrity, and 
 threw out the first intimation that its charter should 
 not be renewed, the National Republican party in 
 mass held up their hands in holy horror, while he 
 was denounced as a calumniator and a miscreant, 
 as though he had slandered pure and helpless wo- 
 
man herself! But the old Chief's vision went a lit- 
 tle bejoud the surface of things; and when in the 
 might of his mission he laid his hand vipon that 
 whited sepulchre, and tore away its covering, it was 
 found to be filled with something worse tlian 'rot- 
 tenness and dead men's bones.' The stench of its 
 fathomless iniquities, has not yet died in the pub- 
 lic nostrils. It grew like the Banyan tree, and as 
 its branches, spreading in all directions, touched 
 the earth, they took root — took root in the cupidity 
 and corruptibility of men. When the question of 
 its re-charter was moved, humble as had been its 
 beginnings, and brief as had been its existence, it 
 was found to have become already, as it were, a i ow- 
 er in the state. It openly took the field against the 
 government and the people — scattering its largesses 
 broad-cast — and (passing strange to tell,) statesmen 
 and orators, who had held wondering multitudes 
 and listening senates entranced by their eloquence, 
 while they demonstrated the unconstitutionality, 
 and denounced the pernicious tendencies of this 
 institution, were now found transformed into faith- 
 ful attorneys and zealous champions, under whose 
 advocacy, it proved, indeed, more difficult to sub- 
 due, than 'an army with banners.' Like a Boa, it 
 had wound itself around and around the entire 
 body and limbs of the commercial and monied 
 classes — toying with and caressing them to-day, 
 and crushing them in its envenomed folds to-mor- 
 row. These classes were heard, at one moment 
 singing hosaniias to it, as to their temporal saviour, 
 while at another, they were seen standing before it, 
 stricken and cowering, as in the presence of an 
 avenging Diety. They gathered tremblingly around 
 its portals, and if they did not lay their bodies, they 
 did their souls, in the dust before it, and shouted, 
 if not from their lips, certainly from the depths of 
 their hearts, in the abject language of oriental ad- 
 ulation — "0 ! Bank, live forever." The picture is 
 not overdrawn. Those who recall the terific scenes 
 of agitation, alaim and suffei'ing through which 
 this countiy then passed, when the very heart- 
 strings of the nation, night and morn, were 
 played upon by the felon fingers of this almost de- 
 moniac institution, will say that in nothing do I ex- 
 aggerate. The authoiity to charter a National 
 Bank, the Democratic party hold to be no where 
 granted by the Constitution; and even if such au- 
 thority were conferred, as the institution has proved 
 to be one of the deadliest foes to the purity of the 
 elective franchise, ever known in this country, wc 
 maintain that it would have been unwise and un- 
 patriotic, to re-establish it. The power must be 
 conceded by all, to be one of, at least a doubtful char- 
 acter. Mr. Clay, in one of the most vigorous and 
 luminous arguments of his life — an argument 
 clothed with the noon-day splendors of an eloquence 
 which time had not chilled or dimmed — pronounced 
 it to be "a vagabond power," which had wandered 
 from one end of the Constitution to the other, and 
 had found no resting place. Yet this institution 
 has ever been a darling of the Whig party, and 
 its restoration is one of its favorite schemes — espe- 
 cially is it a favorite scheme with General Scott, 
 the Whig nominee for the Presidency, as disclosed 
 in his letter of the 25th of October, 1841. It is 
 true, that no mention of it is made in the Whig 
 
 platform, as set forth at Baltimore — but for very 
 obvious reasons. That platform was framed with 
 reference to its availability, as was chosen the can- 
 didate under it; hence this and other offensive 
 measures, so often voted down by the people at 
 the polls, have been adroitly omitted. But though 
 omitted for the purposes of this canvass, rest as- 
 sured, that it has never been abandoned. In proof 
 of this, I need but remind you, that the last mo- 
 ment the whigs had the majority in Congress, and 
 were able to carry through tlicir cherished schemes, 
 was during the administBation of John Tyler, and 
 that they signalised that epoch, by the passage of 
 a bill chartering a National Bank, which, but for 
 the Veto of tlie President — to whom be immortal 
 honor for it — would, with all its corruptions and 
 despotism, be now tyrannizing over our country. — 
 And there can be no better evidence of what a po- 
 litical idol, a National Bank is wi h the Whigs, 
 than the intense rancour and calumny with which, 
 from that hour to this, that they have pursued the 
 administration and fame of President Tyler. In 
 nothing had he offended save this, yet uuto this 
 very moment, his name is never taken upon the 
 lips of whig orators, nor admitted into the columns 
 of whig journals, but in connection with obloquy 
 and execration. 
 
 In supporting this institution, the Whigs are 
 true to their instincts and missi^'U, as the Party of 
 Power. It treads down the constitution, and while 
 increasing overwhelmingly the volume of govern- 
 mental influence, it substitutes for that popular 
 virtue and intelligence, in which the Party of 
 Power have never had confidence, an instrumen- 
 tality of political rule, probably the most potent 
 and certainly the most unscrupulous, which our 
 country has ever known. 
 
 The next flivorite scheme with the Whigs, is a 
 system of Internal Improvements by the General 
 Government. These improvements, according to 
 the system as framed and insisted upon, were to 
 extend, not merely to our harbors and rivers and 
 great thoroughfares, but were to be made at the 
 discretion of the Federal authoiities. They were 
 to pervade every state and county and neighbor- 
 hood in the Union, and the glittering bait would, 
 in the end, have been laid at the door of almost 
 every dwelling in the land. The system once be- 
 gun, its progress would have been wholly irresis- 
 tible. It would indeed have been as the letting 
 out of waters — as the opening of a crevasse in one 
 of the levees of the Mississippi — every day and 
 hor.r of its existence, would have deepened and 
 darkened the flow of the current and widened the 
 spread of the inundation. You all nnist well know, 
 how measures under such systems, are swept 
 through legislative bodies. They move as vast 
 snow-balls, gathering as they go — every project 
 of every member, the great and small, the impor- 
 tant and the insignificant, being thrown into one 
 heap, and cohering together only by a common 
 sentiment of plunder. Under the operations of 
 such a system, the National Treasuiy would long 
 since have been bankrupted ten times over; but 
 this would have been the least deploiable result. 
 The Federal legislature, and with it, vast masses 
 of our countrymen, would have been utterly de- 
 
moralized. The employees of the General Oov- 
 ernment, of every grade — and the links of the chuin 
 would have heeu infinite— would have swai nied 
 alonK our rivers, creeks, highways and by-ways, 
 until every road to mill and to meeting, would 
 have been shadowed by their presence and strewed 
 with their corrupting largesses. You might as 
 well attempt to unseat the eternal Andes, as to 
 dislodge a paity from power, armed with a pa- 
 tronag'e like this. Its armies of hirelmgs and de- 
 pend;uits, bought and debased like the people of 
 Europe, with their own money, would, at the bid- 
 ding of the Government, have swept to the polls 
 as au avaliinche, and who could have resisted them? 
 General Jackson met this gigantic system at the 
 threshold and arrested its onward progress, by 
 his Veto upon the Lexington and Maysviile road — 
 a highway in no respect national, but serving 
 merely to connect two of the smaller towns of 
 Kentucky. la his message returning the bill to 
 Con"-ress, he laid down the doctrine to which the 
 Democratic party have ever since adhered— that 
 Buch improvements, unless strictly national in their 
 character, cannot be legitimately made by the Fed- 
 eral Government. For this, the Whig journals, 
 during his administration, and indeed while he 
 lived,°continued to heap upon him mountains of 
 reproach. In this scheme, we have disclosed yet 
 more boldly, the distinguishing characteristics of 
 the Party of Power. Here is laid bare, until its 
 palpitations meet the eye, the ardent desire ever 
 che'rished by that party, to aggrandize the Govern- 
 ment at the expense of the Constitution, to render 
 it overshadowing in its magnificence, and ultimate- 
 ly unlimited in its authoiity — thus introducing in- 
 to our system, a venal and fearfully powerful in- 
 strumentality of government, not based upon the 
 virtue or intelligence of the people, but upon sor- 
 did despicable appeals to their avarice and to their 
 local prejudices. Yet this, in the estimation of 
 the Whigs, is the grandest pillar in the temple of 
 the Auferican system; and although again and 
 a^ain overthrov.m by the vote of the people, the 
 fanatics of the party may still be seen watering its 
 base with their tears and throwmg their arms 
 wildly around its shattered shaft. 
 
 The Democrats insist that all these improve- 
 ments, save the class designated, should be left to 
 the states, or (which in the majority of cases would 
 hi still better) to individual sagacity and enterprise. 
 They would then be well made, cheaply made, and 
 there would be no demoralization on the one hand 
 or on the other. 
 
 In passing, I must notice in this connection, an 
 attempt to modify the Whig creed on this point, as 
 exhibited in the construction of their late Balti- 
 moic Platform. The framer? of that instrument, 
 in issuing what claims to be the "last edition" of 
 the Whig faith, in contempt of all the antecedents 
 of the party, have deckred that the improvements 
 made by the Federal Government should "in every 
 instance be national and general in their charac- 
 ter." Verily this annunciation must have sound- 
 ed strangely, in the dying cars of the Father of 
 the American system — the daring and unsparing 
 leader of ihe remorseless crusade against General 
 Jackson, for having vetoed an appropriation to 
 
 the petty road connecting Maysviile and Lexing- 
 ington. It may be safely affirmed that this modi- 
 fication, which now sees the light for the first time, 
 is altogether without authority. When we wish 
 to know what the Whig creed is, we naturally 
 look to the history of the Whig party; to its ac- 
 tion while in power; to the messages of its Presi- 
 dents; the speeches and votes of its leaders in 
 Congress; the language of its most distinguished 
 jonrnals; and in view of all these, I do not hesi- 
 tate to asseit, that this resolution does not present 
 the Whig f\iith, as it has ever been manifested, in 
 its many and sore conflicts with the Democracy of 
 the nation. It is a clap-trap modification made 
 to meet the exigencies of the present canvass — a 
 ladder destined to be kicked away, the moment it 
 has been mounted. Who elected the Whig Na- 
 tional Convention, and who are bound by their 
 action? Nobody! That assemblage rose up as a 
 mist of the morning, and like that mist, it has dis- 
 appeared. If in after years, that party should come 
 nto power, and this resolution should be quoted to 
 arrest the progress of a system of Internal Im- 
 provements without limitation by the General Gov- 
 ernment, the reference would serve but to excite 
 the sneers and laughter of Whig statesmen. Who, 
 they would jeeringly ask, authorized the Baltimore 
 convention to change the Whig confession of faith, 
 which, like the law of the Medes and the Persians, 
 altereth not? And who could answer that ques- 
 tion? 
 
 The Whig party advocate now, as ever, a high 
 protective Tariff. This advocacy has, in part, for 
 its foundation, one of the strangest delusions that 
 ever laid hold upon the mind of man. It is this: 
 that the true test of the prosperity of a nation, so 
 far as its foreign commerce is concerned, is the 
 proportion in which its exports exceed its imports. 
 If, during the current year, this country should 
 export to the value of one hundred millions of the 
 products of its industry, which, on arriving 
 abroad, should be sold for one hundred and twenty 
 millions, and this sum should be invested in for- 
 eign merchandise, which, on reaching our shores, 
 should be found to be worth one hundred and forty 
 million*, the nation, according to this doctrine, 
 would have lost forty millions — being the excess of 
 imports, and would be going at rail-road speed to 
 rui . Stiange to tell, many an elaborate page of po- 
 litical economy has been written in support of this 
 error. It was distinctly recognised by J. Q. Adams 
 in his fourth annual message, wherein he holds 
 this language: "It is indeed, a general law of pros- 
 perous conimerce, that the real value of exports 
 should by a small and only a small balance, exceed 
 that of "imports, that balance being a perma- 
 nent addition to the wealth of the nation." If a 
 "smiiU balai'.ce" could thus add to "the permanent 
 wealth of the nation," a great balance, it is suffi- 
 ciently clear, would necessarily make a correspond- 
 ingly great addition to the national wealth! The 
 "old man eloquent" doubtless died, a thorough be- 
 liever in the proposition which he thus announced 
 — a sad illustration of the enslaving power of the 
 past, over some of the greatest intellects which 
 the world has produced. As a corollary from the 
 position assumed, the higher the tariflF, the more cer- 
 
tainly the amount of imports would be diminished, 
 the excess of exports increased, and consequently 
 the prosperity of the country, in the same ratio 
 advanced — just as though it were possible for for- 
 eign nations to buy our products, unless we bought 
 theirs in return. This constitutes one of the 
 foundations on which the High Tariff system 
 rests. 
 
 Another ground upon which this system is ad- 
 vocated, is the patriotic pretence, that it is nec- 
 essary for the American people to be independent 
 of all other nations, in all tWngs — in humble imi- 
 tation, I suppo.-e, of the Japanese, from whom the 
 Whigs may have borrowed this magnificent con- 
 ception. To this end it follows, that they should 
 manufacture all articles of which they stand in 
 need, even though the process should cost them 
 double and treble the sum, for which these articles 
 could be purchased abroad. Here the Party of 
 Power, the pseudo aristocrats of the world, con- 
 descend to play the demagogue. 
 - The true ground, however, of the advocacy of 
 ■ this system is, that it furnishes through its sub- 
 sidies, a vast power to the government unknown 
 to the constitution, and builds up a numerous 
 class, privileged above all others — enriched, ex- 
 alted and almost ennobled, at the cost of the toil- 
 ing masses of mankind around them. The mem- 
 bers of this class, would liave multiplied thous- 
 ands in their employment; these operatives must 
 depend for their daily bread upon the pleasure of 
 their employers, who even now, in the infancy of 
 these establishments, drive them to the polls, al- 
 most as cattle are driven over the fields. 'If these 
 things are done in the green tree, what will be 
 done in the dry?' 
 
 The Democratic doctrine is: no monopoly, but 
 protection alike to every class, guarding if possible 
 with anxious care, the inc?c/)e«(/flMce o/aW. If, as 
 some political writers insist, these gigantic manu- 
 factories, with their attendant curses of demoral- 
 ization and servitude, are the legitimate fruits of a 
 dense population, let us at least not hasten the ad- 
 Tent of an era in our history so dark and deplora- 
 ble, by artificial means. Let us not force, in our 
 hot-houses, the growth of the Upas, as though it 
 were a flower of matchless beauty or a shrub of 
 aromatic odour. 
 
 In the three measures to which I have adverted, 
 there is glaringly manifested the dominant spirit 
 of whigery — a desire on all occasions, by the most 
 latitudinons, I had almost said by the wildest con- 
 struction, to add to the power of the Government. 
 Thatsectof politicians would wring power from this 
 tortured instrument, as you would wring water from 
 a sponge. And here we meet our adversaries face 
 to face, and glory in the position maintained by 
 the Democratic party, of a rigid, unshrinking ad- 
 herence, under all circumstances of pressure with- 
 in and of pressure without, to the letter of that 
 great charter of liberty- There is safety in noth- 
 ing else. It is the break-water which protects the 
 tranquil haven of social and political rights, from 
 the waves and the tempests which rage without. 
 Ilf the Whig party, judging from the past, could 
 have the ascendency for fifty years, they would 
 overwhelm the constitution of the Union be- 
 
 neath a mountain of constructions, perver- 
 sions and commentaries, just as the Jews have 
 buried tlieir scriptures, beneath the traditions 
 of the Talmud. The sentiment of_ profound 
 veneiation for written constitutions, is a senti- 
 ment nltogethcr Americ-m; it is unknown else- 
 wheie in the world. Look at the people of France, 
 certainly the most polished and possibly tho most 
 intellectual of nations; yet during the existence of 
 their recent short-lived republic, the language of 
 their statesmen and journalists shows, that they 
 had no more regard for their constitution, although 
 adopted with all the forms and ceremonies which 
 distinguished the adoption of our own, than they 
 had for an act of ordinary legislation. You know 
 the result. Let us then cherish this deep venera- 
 tion, and exalt it, if possible, into a religioas sen- 
 timent. But be assured, that just in proportion as 
 you become accustomed to the continual violations 
 of that instrument, to the continual exercise of 
 doubtful powers wiung from it, and to the daily 
 multiplication of those powers, will you weaken 
 and finally extinguish in your bosoms the sentiment 
 to which I have referred. If you would guard 
 your constitution in all its strength and in all its 
 purity, it should be hedged about in your hearts, 
 as was hedged Mount Sinai, when it quaked and 
 smoked and burned beneath the presence of the 
 descended Deity. None should be allowed to ap- 
 proach its flaming borders, and live. 
 
 Such, however, is not the feeling of the Whigs. 
 They have openly assailed and would sweep away, 
 as would their candidate for the Presidency, one 
 of the strongest bulwarks which the wisdom of 
 our Fathers has erected for the protection of the 
 constitution — I allude, of course, to the Veto pow- 
 er. Gen. Scott, in his letter of 25th October, 1841, 
 says: "I hope by an early amendment of the con- 
 stitution, to see a reduction of the President's ve- 
 to" — and snch is the hope of the party who have 
 selected him for their standard bearer in the pres- 
 ent contest. For myself, it must be confessed, 
 that I love the Veto power — first for its origin. — 
 You remember, when the laboring masses of Rome, 
 who enjoyed but little share in the government, 
 were oppressed beyond endurance by the upper 
 classes, they retired to Mount Sacer, in open re- 
 volt, and refused to return until their grievances 
 were r3dressed and a sufficient guarantee given for 
 their future protection. The result was the ap- 
 pointment of several officers, called Tribunes, who 
 represented the people, and by whom, all laws af- 
 fecting popular rights, were to be approved, before 
 they could be carried into execution. If the Tri- 
 bune regarded the measure proposed, as encroach- 
 ing upon the freedom or interests of the people, ho 
 responded in the language of that day: "Veto," i. 
 e. I forbid, and the measure fell to the ground. — 
 This is the origin of the Veto power, and it is en- 
 deared to me, because associated with one of the 
 grandest movements in behalf of popular rights, 
 which history has recorded. The President of the 
 United States is the Tribune of the American peo- 
 ple. 
 
 I love this power also, because of what it has 
 accomplished for the country in moments of great- 
 est peril to the Republic. During the administra- 
 
8 
 
 tions of Jackson, Tyler and Polk, it 13 well known 
 that its exercise, and that only, saved the land 
 from the scourge of a National Bank, and from the 
 cankering curse of that system of Internal Im- 
 provements, upon which I have commented. Our 
 government, you perfectly understand, is one of 
 checks and balances, and in this, consists its beauty, 
 its strength and its superiority over all the govern- 
 ments which have preceded it. The patriots who 
 framed it, threw around the constitution — justly 
 regarded as the Palladium of all our political bless- 
 ings — three distinct walls. First, beginning with 
 the outer — are the two Houses of Congress; next 
 is the President, armed with the Veto power, and 
 lastly, is the Judiciary. Over all these walls a 
 breach must be made, before the constitution can 
 be successfully invaded. But the experience of our 
 country proves, that, of these three walls, the out- 
 er is most accessible and least to be relied on. — 
 Bill after bill, most flagrantly unconstitutional, has 
 been carried through Congress, and it has devol- 
 vod upon the President in the exercise of his 
 sworn duty, to arrest them. Why it is so, it were 
 perhaps needless here to inquire. It may be, be- 
 cause, finding as we do, that the fidelity of public 
 servants is generally proportioned to their sense 
 of responsibility, as this responsibility is divided, 
 80 the force of its consciousness is correspondingly 
 diminished. A mob will commit outrages, which 
 no single member of it, would dare attempt; so 
 a legislative body will sometimes enact laws under 
 the same feeling, which no one member unsup- 
 ported, would have the hardihood to urge upon 
 the country. In the President, who stands alone, 
 we have a concentration of the highest sense of 
 responsibility — and the history of our institutions 
 shows, that with him too, has been found the 
 highest measure of fidelity. In wielding this 
 power, against which the Whigs have sought to 
 excite so much jealousy, he acts, not as Queen 
 Victoria or as any other foreign Prince or Poten- 
 tate would do. He acts not for himself, nor his 
 family nor his caste, but for and as the agent of 
 the people, by whom he is chosen, and to whom 
 he is directly responsible. When under the in- 
 fluence of profligate combinations, or passion or 
 panic, the outer wall gives way, and the storm and 
 the billow are sweeping madly on, the President 
 takes his stand, and in the name and strength, and 
 clothed with the majesty of the American people, 
 he says to that storm, "be still," and to that billow, 
 ♦'thus far shalt thou go and no further." Again 
 and again, that voice has been heard in the hour 
 of darkness and of threatened national disaster, 
 and again and again the wild wave has rolled back 
 at its bidding, baffled and broken, and the sunlight 
 of peace and safety has again bathed the turrets 
 of our blessed constitution. Who is here that 
 would tear this power from our Chief Magistrate, 
 our fdithful representative, and fling the charter of 
 our liberties beneath the feet of a reckless, passion- 
 led majority of Congress? 
 
 There are those who think the Whigs are opposed 
 to the Veto power, merely because it has been ex- 
 ercised by Democratic Presidents, and in arrest of 
 favorite Whig measures. Not so. That hostility 
 has yet a deeper foundation. Ours ia a goveriunent, 
 
 I have said, of checks and balances — a most em- 
 barrassing and inconvenient form of government, 
 for the Party of Power. Of the outer check or 
 wall, they have no dread, having again and again, 
 at will overleaped it. Could they but succeed in 
 destroying the second wall — the Veto power — the 
 third and last, the Judiciary — confessedly the 
 weakest branch of t'.ie system — would soon follow; 
 and then the Party of Power would have, what 
 they have ever labored for — a government absolute, 
 with no restraint upon the caprice, the interest, the 
 passion, or the dark ambition of the hour. 
 
 We are often told, in bland and coaxing tones, 
 by whig journalists and orators, that there is no 
 longer any real difference between the principles 
 of the two political parties now struggling for 
 mastery; and that as the public services and abili- 
 ties of General Scott far exceed those of General 
 Pierce — such is their assumption — the former 
 should be sustained by even Democratic suffrages. 
 Without pausing to measure the width and depth 
 of the gulf impassable, which separates us from 
 our political adversaries, I will state that I should 
 be most happy to have pointed out to me, in any 
 authorised edition ever issued of the Whig faith, 
 or in any of the phases through which the trans- 
 migratory spirit of that party has ever passed, 
 aught, at all analogous to those resolutions of the 
 Democratic platform, which declare that "Congress 
 has no power to charter a National Bank," and 
 "that such an institution is of deadly hostility to 
 the best interests of the country" — that "justice 
 and sound policy forbid the Federal Government to 
 foster one branch of industry, to the detriment of 
 any other" — "that the proceeds of the public lands 
 ought to be applied to the objects specified in the 
 constitution, and not distributed among the States" 
 — "that the Veto power as given by the constitu- 
 tion, should be maintained," — and that "the con- 
 stitution does not confer upon the General Govern- 
 ment the power to commence and carry on a gene- 
 ral system of internal improvements." But espe- 
 cially should I rejoice to find in the past of that 
 party, something in harmony with the following 
 Democratic resolution: 
 
 Resolved, That the war with Mexico, upon all 
 the principles of patriotism and the law of nations, 
 was a just and necessary war on our part, in which 
 every American should have shown himself on the 
 side of his country, and neither morally nor physical- 
 ly, by word or deed, have given "aid and comfort to 
 the enemy." 
 
 We wonld not wantonly play the resurrection- 
 ist, and cause the deeds of our Whig friends to 
 pass as 
 
 "■ A slovenly, unhandsome corse. 
 Between the wind and their nobility." 
 
 yet it must be endured, that the Democratic party 
 shall refer with pride and pleasure, to the part 
 which they and their leaders played in that event- 
 ful drama. It is profitable and just too, on the 
 other hand, to remember the obstinate and bitter 
 opposition which the whigs, as a party, offered to 
 the Mexican war. The history of popular govern- 
 ments shows that such a course of conduct, is never 
 forgotten by the people. There is in my mind's 
 
9 
 
 eye, a striking illustration of this fact. When our 
 country, by sea and land, was engaged in a con- 
 flict with a powerful and atrocious foe, when de- 
 feat htjd followed on defeat, until every patriotic 
 bosom was chilled, and every patriotic fireside was 
 covered with gloom, there rose up in the Halls of 
 Congress, one of the most gifted of her statesmen 
 — but he rose there, not to counsel his countrymen 
 with his wisdom, nor to comfort or animate them 
 by his great eloquence — he rose to mock and to 
 sneer! It is lamentably true; and from that hour 
 his countrymen shrank from him, and, although 
 for many years gone by, he has labored zealously 
 in behalf of the Constitution and the Union, and 
 those labors have excited the admiration and the 
 gratitude of all, yet, unto this moment, he remains 
 unforgiven. His fame and intellect tower before 
 us, colossal in their proportions, but mournful in 
 their isolation, as some pyramid rising amid desert 
 sands. Over the arid waste that thus encircles him, 
 there flows no current, there trickles no drop of 
 tAe popular sympathy. So it must ever be. All other 
 offences can be pardoned by the people, save this. 
 Let the public man ridicule and denounce his coun- 
 try, her measures and her statesmen, if he will, in 
 the sunny hour of her prosperity, but when her 
 children's blood is flowing upon her battle fields, 
 and darkness and disaster have fallen upon her 
 arms, he who then stands up in her councils with 
 words of mocking and contempt upon his lips, 
 hath written for himself a doom, which centuries 
 of afler patriotic labor, will not suffice to reverse. 
 So mote it be! Let young ambition, whether 
 found in Whig or Democratic ranks, look upon the 
 fate of this magnificent but wrecked statesman, 
 and be admonished. 
 
 We cannot recall without a blush, the terms in 
 which Whig statesmen and Journalists reprobated 
 that eminently patriotic war. One of them, now a 
 member of the Cabinet, expressed the impious 
 hope, that the Mexicans would "welcome our ar- 
 mies with bloody hands and to hospitable graves" — 
 while a leading Whig journal in Ohio, spoke of 
 Gen. Scott as the "chief Mexican butcher in a 
 land-pirate war." This is but a fair exhibition of 
 the spirit, by which the opposition was character- 
 ised. It will be urged in extenuation, that when 
 the clash of arms came, the Whigs were found, 
 «de by side with the Democrats, upon the tented 
 field, and in the "red rift of battle." This is not 
 denied. But it is a truth, and not the less so, be- 
 cause announced by a poet, that 
 
 "Thrice is lie armed that hath his quarrel just." 
 This is especially true in this age, when there has 
 been erected a tribunal, exalted above all princi- 
 pahties and powers, to which men, and nations and 
 sceptred monarchs, are ahke amenable — the tri- 
 bunal of public opinion. When, therefore, the 
 opposition denounced the Mexican war as unholy 
 and piratical, they unnerved their country in the 
 presence of that tribunal, tarnished the glory of 
 her victories, and thus inflicted upon her a wrong, 
 for which no daring on the battle field could ever 
 atone. 
 
 The war, begun and prosecuted by a Democratic 
 administrntion, closed, and what were its fruits? The 
 national honor was vindicated; another proof was 
 
 given of the capability of our institutions to abide 
 the shock of arms; another refutation was afforded 
 of that stale calumny of kings, that great standing 
 armies are alike indispensable for purposes of na- 
 tional defence, and for the successful prosecution of 
 foreign wars; an empire, in point of territory, was 
 added to the Repubhc; the inexhaustible mines of 
 California have been opened to American enter- 
 prise, and the foundations laid of a commerce, des- 
 tined to gather into its lap, the gorgeous treasures 
 of the Oriental World. 
 
 Before examining the claims of General Scott to 
 the high office for which he has been nominated, it 
 is proper that I should pay my respects to Presi- 
 dent Fillmore. True, he is not a candidate for re- 
 election, but as his administration has been con- 
 stantly obtruded upon public attention, as em- 
 bodying pre-eminently the spirit and graces of 
 whiggery, and as, indeed, a very modi^l in its kind, 
 it is altogether permissible, if not incumbent upon 
 me, as such, to speak to it. Of the domestic as- 
 pects of that administration, I will say nothing; if 
 evil had been designed — which I am far from charg- 
 ing — the overwhelming Democratic mnjority in 
 both Houses of Congress, would have prevented it. 
 It is to its foreign policy, over which that majority 
 conld exert no perceptible influence, that I would 
 invite your special attention. In treatins briefly, 
 as I must do, this branch of our subject, no at- 
 tempt will be made ot inflame your pas^^ions, but I 
 shall content myself with the recital of a few well 
 authenticated facts, leavmg it for you to draw the 
 proper inferences. You, the people, are emphati- 
 cally the statesmen of this country, and it devolves 
 upon you, as a duty of patriotism, to think, to feel, 
 and to act up to your proud position. You are the 
 guardians of the national honor, a jewel, which, it 
 left to the care of truckling and trimming politi- 
 ans, must suffer, be assured, a fate calamitous in- 
 deed. 
 
 For many years, there has subsisted between Rus- 
 sia and the United States, a treaty stipulating, that 
 citizens of this country shall enjoy the same priv- 
 ilege of entering the Russian Empire, and of trav- 
 eling and sojourning there, as is enjoyed by Rus- 
 sian subjects, within the territories of our Republic; 
 yet, since the French revolution of 1848, His Ma- 
 jesty, the Emperor, has thought proper to disre- 
 gard this treaty, and American travelers have been t- 
 met at the frontier and driven back, as men of in- 
 famous principles and of suspected reputation. — 
 Not many months since, Mr. Mann, accredited as 
 United States Charge to the Republic of Switzer- 
 land, called at the office of the Russian Embassy 
 at Paris, and with this treaty in his hand, demand- 
 ed, in pursuance of its provisions, that his passport 
 should be vised for St. Petersburg. He was flatly 
 refused, nor did the officer deign to assign any 
 other reason for the refusal, than that such was the 
 will of his Imperial master. It is true, that withm 
 the last two years, there has been some relaxation 
 of this insolent rigor, and Americans have been 
 permitted to visit the Russian capital, upon the 
 guarantee of the minister of their country, that 
 they would be of good behavior— a. guarantee in all 
 respects analagous to that required every day, in 
 our criminal courts, of loafers, vagabonds and stroll- 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 iag thicvLH. It is humiliating to know, that not ;i 
 few of our foliow-citizens have been found willing, 
 go f.ir to abase tlieniselves, a.s to comply with this 
 condition. Thus, from month to mouth, and from 
 year to year, in a poiut vital to the personal honor 
 of Americans, and insulting, and designed to be 
 so, to their republican principles, has this treaty 
 been trodden under foot, not only with impunity, 
 but without remonstrance and without rebuke. 
 
 It may not be unbecoming the occasion, to in- 
 quire who the Czar of all the Kussias is, and what 
 itre the claims which he presents to the extraordi- 
 naiy indulgence with which he has been treated 
 by the present administration of our republican 
 'rovermneiit. He furnishes in his person, the purest 
 and most intense illustration of an Asiatic Despot, 
 to be found on this side of the Bosphorus. His 
 dominions spread over about one-seventh of the 
 habitable globe, and he owns, as absolutely as does 
 any farmer in Kentucky the cattle in his fields, 
 some si.xty nii'.lions of human beings. lie asserts 
 it as his high mission, to put down all revolutions, 
 arid all popular systems of government; he has 
 decimated Poland, and peopled the wastes and 
 snows of Siberia, with the noblest of her inhabi- 
 itants; he has crushed struggling and bleeding 
 Hungary, and established everywhere the iron rule 
 of Legitimacy: he has (to borrow a thought from 
 Tacitus) viade Europe a solitude, aiid says that or- 
 der reii/ns. His system of espionage, is, for its 
 fearful ubiquity, without a parallel in the annals of 
 the worst days of the Roman Empire. No subject, 
 whatever his rank, can leave the Russian territory, 
 without a written permission from the imperial gov- 
 ernment, specifying the country or countries he is 
 permitted to visit, and how long it is the will of 
 the Czar that he shall be absent, and a default on 
 his pa;t in either of these particulars, is sure to be 
 followed by confiscation and exile. While jour- 
 neying in Palestine, in the spring of 1851, I made 
 the acquaintance of a Russian gentleman of fine 
 intelligence and education, who was the bearer of 
 one of tliese permits — "a pass" — to use the Amer- 
 ican phrase — such as the slaves of the South carry 
 when absenting themselves from their master's 
 plantation. When in the course of our conver- 
 sation, I spoke of the attractions of various local- 
 ities which I had embraced in my tour, and urged 
 him to extend his travels to the same points, he 
 replied, that he would be most happy to do so, but 
 that his limited term of absence was drawing to a 
 close, and he had no alternative but to return. A 
 cordon of police stations girdles the empire, vast 
 as it is, so that no one, even with the assent of the 
 proper officials formally obtained, can cross the 
 line, without being met and conducted to one of 
 these stations, where he is subjected to a series of 
 interrogatories, as searching as they are degrading. 
 He is compelled to disclose his name, age and his- 
 tory, whence he cometh and whither he goeth, his 
 business, kc, &c., and all these responses are care- 
 fully recorded, together with the size of his mouth 
 and chin, the length of his nose, the breadth of 
 his forehead, and the color of his hair and beard. 
 He ii not precisely cropped and branded, as are 
 cattle in this country, but marks are thus put upon 
 him, eiiually indelible. He is then turned loose, to 
 have his footsteps dogged by a Russian spy, trav- 
 
 elingwith him, wherever he may go, in the public 
 conve yances, and sitting unknown at his side, at 
 the tables of the hotels and boarding-houses. — 
 This system is not confined in its operations to the 
 empire,but embraces the civilized world. In our own 
 land Russian spies reside, with the rank and pay of 
 military officers, disguised, yet CTer active, serving 
 as so many eyes with which the great Embodiment 
 of Despotism, is looking into the heart of the na- 
 tions. 
 
 Such is the man, who, in violation of a solemn 
 treaty, with hands ever red with human slaughter, 
 dares hold up American citizens to public scorn, as 
 unworthy to tread upon Russian soil. 
 
 Soon after the French revolution of February, 
 1848, the electric spark which had exploded in 
 Paris, sped in hghtniug currents throughout the 
 greater part of Europe, crossed the Alps, and flash- 
 ing along the Italian coasts, might be seen blazing 
 forth from many a mountain height, in the watch- 
 fires of freedom — fires destined, alas, but too soon, 
 to be quenched in the blood of those by whom 
 they had been kindled. In view of this troubled 
 condition of that portion of the Old World, the 
 present administration issued a special order regu- 
 lating the conduct of our naval forces in the Med- 
 iterranean. What think you was its purport? 
 In the defence of Capt. Long, published in March 
 last, we have cited enough of this extraordinary 
 document, or rather of the general order of Com- 
 modore Morgan, based upon it, to know, incredi- 
 ble as it may seem, that it forbade in the most ex- 
 press terms, the officers and sailors to converse up- 
 on thdr ships or on shore, loith each other, or 
 with anybodij else, upon the revolutionary or polit- 
 ical topics of the day; and further that it forbade 
 them either by wordor act, toc/ive any intimation 
 that they sympathised with either of the parties — 
 those parties being, the people on the one side, 
 and their oppressors on the other. Such was the 
 bearing prescribed for American citizens — whose 
 constitution secures freedom of speech to all — to 
 to be observed on onr national ships, with the stars 
 and stripes floating at their mast-heads. They 
 were not merely struck dumb, but, by this order, 
 were made to stand on their decks as miserable cat- 
 aleptics, without power to move a muscle, lest the 
 soul within should betray itself. Was this neces- 
 sary, think you, to the preservation of our neu- 
 trality? It cannot be pretended, apparent as it is 
 to all, that this neutrality could not be violated by 
 mere icords, wheresoever or by whomsoever spo- 
 ken. As the wretched inhabitants of that country, 
 naturally looked upon our banner unfurled in their 
 harbors, with the same longing, anxious eyes, with 
 which the desert wanderers of old, gazed upon 
 the pillar of fire that lit up the night of their pil- 
 grimage, methinks that had our officers or sailors 
 met in the streets or lanes of the cities, any of these 
 fugitives pressed by their human hunters, they 
 might have taken them by the hand, or even whis- 
 pered, "God speed," into their ears, without com- 
 promising the dignity or good faith of our govern- 
 ment. Not so, thought President Fillmore. But 
 this apprehension of a breach of our neutrality, so 
 ostentatiously put forth, was but a pretence, and a 
 shabby one, at best. The true motive of this dis- 
 creditable, and I would fain believe, unparalleled 
 
ii 
 
 order, was a slavish fear of offenJiug, and a syco- 
 phantic desire of winning the smiles of such regal 
 monsters as the King of Naples, v.'lio was then 
 pursuing his insurgent subjects as so many wild 
 beasts, and who has since been engaged in driving 
 and herding them by thousands in his loathsome 
 prisons, where even now, amid untold agonies, they 
 are languishing and dying, with no more care for 
 them on his part, than you would have for so many 
 rats shut up in your cellars ! 
 
 When the frigate Mississippi, commanded by 
 Capt. Long, with Gov. Kossuth on board as a na- 
 tional guest, arrived at Marseilles, a crowd of boats 
 came out from the shore filled with enthusiastic 
 Frenchmen, who, gathering about tlie noble ves- 
 sel, sent up their cries, not merely in honor of the 
 illustrious Hungarian, but in honor, also, of our 
 own loved land. One of this multitude, more ar- 
 dent than the rest, drawing nigh to the ship, shout- 
 ed, "long hve the United States," and as the burn- 
 ing words escaped him, he threw a wreath of the 
 flower called the immorlelle^ which fell upon the 
 deck at the feet of the Commander, who, instead 
 of snatching it up and pressing it proudly to his 
 lips, kicked it contemptuously from his presence!* 
 Under the stringent order referred to, he felt con- 
 strained thus to act, lest he should give "intima- 
 tion" of "sympathy" with French republicanism. 
 This is one of the "examples," doubtless, by which 
 the whigs propose "to teach the advantages of free 
 institutions" and oxir devotion to them! 
 
 The receipt at Paris of the intelligence of Gen- 
 eral Taylor's death, was immediately followed by a 
 meeting of the Americans resident and sojourning 
 in that city, convened for the purpose of passing 
 the usual resolutions of respect to his memory. — 
 Mr. Rives, the Minister, being absent — as he gen- 
 erally is, when his countrymen are to be met — the 
 Secretary of Legation presided over the meeting. 
 In the progress of the proceedings, a gentleman 
 offered a resolution, declaring that Gen. Taylor, in 
 the simplicity of his public and private life, was a 
 model of the Chief Magistrate of a Republic. — 
 The presiding officer representing the present ad- 
 ministration, in apparent trepidation, begged that 
 the resolution might be withdrawn, saying, he was 
 apprehensive it might be deemed a rebuke to the 
 French Government — Louis Napoleon having even 
 at that early period of his career, surrounded him- 
 self with the guilty pageantries of royalty. So 
 earnestly was the request urged, that the mover of 
 the resolution yielded, and thus a body of Ameri- 
 can citizens, in the office of their own Legation, 
 and, as it were, upon their own soil, were fright- 
 ened from the assertion of a principle, true in itself, 
 and especially dear to every republican heart. 
 
 During the reign of Charles X — successor in 
 name to Charles IX, infimously memorable for the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew's day — our country 
 was represented, as now, at the court of St. Cloud, 
 by this same Mr. Rives. It is the custom, as 
 known to many of you, for the Americans in Paris, 
 on the arrival of the anniversary of our National 
 Independence, to procure a room, where, having 
 assembled together, they seat themselves around 
 
 * This incident is given on the authority of ao eye- 
 witness. 
 
 their table, and in the good old American fashion, 
 amid patriotic toasts and speeches and songs, they 
 recall their far-off homes and live over 
 the blessed memories which cluster as an imper- 
 ishable aroma around the 4th of July. To this 
 festive board the resident minister from the United 
 States is always invited, and is, indeed, the chief 
 guest. On the occasion of which I speak, an in- 
 vitation was accordingly extended to Mr. Rive?, 
 but he declined attending; and why, think you, 
 was he unwilling to be found in American compa- 
 ny on a day so glorious in our history? "Becau-^e," 
 said he, "I fear" — an ominous word to be found in 
 the mouth of an American minister on the 4th of 
 July — "I fear my presence will give offence to the 
 French Goverment"f — that government consist- 
 ing, be it understood, of the aforesaid Charles X, 
 who soon thereafter was chased by his infuriated sub- 
 jects from the throne, which he, and his ancestors 
 for so many centuries,had polluted by their debauch- 
 eries and their crimes. TheSaviour of t!ie world once 
 said to his disciples, "Whosoever shall deny me 
 before men, him will I also deny before my Father 
 which is in Heaven." This is the true test of fi- 
 delity; and that free people, by whatever name 
 called, who, through their officials, shrink from 
 an avowal of their principles in the presence 
 of the enemies and revilers of those principles— 
 the spoilers and oppressers of our race — are total- 
 ly unworthy alike of the respect, of mankind and 
 of the freedom which they enjoy. 
 
 I have thus spoken, with no view of arraigning 
 personally Mr. Rives or his Secretary, but have 
 been induced to exhibit their conduct, simply be- 
 cause I regard it as a fair specimen of the bearing 
 of American officials abroad. The simplicity, the 
 manhnees, and the glorying in the principles of 
 freedom, which distinguished the earlier days of the 
 Republic, have departed from this class of her 
 representatives. American Envoys, Charges, and 
 Consuls, with few exceptions, now bow as low as 
 the lowest of the abject flatterers who crouch 
 around European thrones, making everywhere, as 
 they do, the impression that, however much the 
 rabble of this country may be devoted to republi- 
 canism, they themselves, the elite and the culti- 
 vated, are heartily ashamed of it. 
 
 Within the present year, an Araeiican merchant 
 ship was fired into by an English man-of-war, oif 
 the South American coast. I know not what 
 words were deemed sufficient to atone for this out- 
 rage. The circumstance is significant, as indicat- 
 ing how humble must be the prevailing estimate of 
 our national character, when subordinate officers, 
 without any authority from their superiors, feel 
 that they can with impunity, make at pleasure 
 American vessels a target for their guns. 
 
 During the difficulties connected with the inva- 
 sion of Cuba by Lopez and his followews, an Amer- 
 can steamer proceeding on her regular voyage, 
 filled with passengers, commanded by a Lieutenant 
 of our Navy, and with the national flag displayed 
 at her mast-head, w:is fired upon and brought to, 
 upon the high seas, by ajpctty Spanish vessel of 
 
 t This anecdote is related on the authority of a gen- 
 tleman long resident in this city, and who, at the timo 
 spoken of, was attending the medical lectures in Paris . 
 
12 
 
 war. If any atonement has been made for this, it 
 has not transpired. Falsehood — I would not be 
 BO harsh, if without it, I could be truthful — fidse- 
 hood, I repeat, is an essential element of European 
 diplomacy, and he who is most expert in the use 
 of this weapon, is held to be the greatest diplomat- 
 ist. Ilence those transatlantic Governments do 
 not hesitate, through their minions, to insult ours, 
 and the moment the matter is pressed upon them, 
 they reply, "all a mistake," "sorry for it" — both of 
 which are false, for it was no mistake, and they re- 
 joice in it, and even while resorting to this paltry 
 subterfuge, they are chuckling in their sleeve, at 
 the large wondering eyes, and half-benevolent, 
 half-stupid face, with which Brother Jonathan is in 
 the habit of receiving these excuses. I do not 
 scruple to affirm, that had General Jackson been 
 at the head of this Government, instead of going, 
 hat in hand, to began explanation of the authorities 
 at Madrid, he would have despatched a war steam- 
 er in pursuit, and would have returned gun for gun, 
 aye, ten for one, if need be, wherever that insolent 
 Spanish Man-of-war might have been found — be it 
 upon the high seas, or be it in the harbor and un- 
 der the shelter of the fortresses of Havana, It is 
 thus, and thus only, that a nation so treacherous 
 and so false, should be dealt with. 
 
 Within a few days, the Crescent City, another 
 American steamer, bound from New York for Cha- 
 gres, arrived at Havana, where, under existing 
 treaties, she had a right to touch; but, although it 
 was blowing a gale at the time, she was met out- 
 side the harbor, driven otf and compelled to pro- 
 ceed in an opposite direction six hundred miles to 
 New Orleans, where her passengers and mails for 
 Havana were landed. Why this enormous viola- 
 tion of private rights and gross National affront? 
 Simply and solely, because on board of that steamer 
 was a Mr. Smith, who, it was charged, though de- 
 nied, had in the exercise of his constitutional rights 
 as an American citizen, written and published in 
 the journals of New York, certain reflections upon 
 the brutal and sanguinary career of the Spanish 
 authorities in Cuba. In that "ever faithful Island," 
 you know men are garrotcd for speaking the truth, 
 and this is an attempt to enforce the same code, in 
 a modified form, in the United States, by muzzling 
 the free press of this country. 
 Very recently, too, the American barque Cornelia, 
 while at .anchor in the port of Havana, was board- 
 ed by Spanish officers, her mail seized, opened, and 
 rilied, the desk of the Captain forced, and he him- 
 gelf dragged a prisoner upon the shore. For this, 
 as for all the other wrongs proceeding from the 
 same quarter, there was not the shadow of provo- 
 cation. 
 
 Thus, from month to month, with every circum- 
 stance of indignity, are the government and peo- 
 ple of this country, insulted by the very basest 
 of the Nations — a nation "born in rapine, and 
 baptized in blood," with no passions, save an in- 
 fernal lust of gold, and thirst for human carnage, 
 and knowing no principlo of subordination, save 
 the grovelling instincts of the craven and the 
 slave. Yet none of these things move at all, 
 the shrivelled and frozen soul of the present Whig 
 Administration — no more than they would the 
 sensibilities of a mummy, whose spirit went to 
 
 sleep three thousand years ago, and of which 
 naught but the pitchy cerements and grinning 
 skeleton remain. Why are these things so? We 
 hear of no such injuries being inflicted upon the 
 commerce and seamen of other nations. Whence 
 then is it, that all the shots fired and all the op- 
 pressions suflered upon the Seas, are fiited to reach 
 American ships and American sailors? I will 
 tell you why. It is because — and I feel that as 
 an American citizen, I could lay ray face in 
 the dust for very shame and humiUation while 
 I speak it — it is because, so timid and cow- 
 ering has been the foreign policy of this govern- 
 ment for years gone by, that in the estimation of 
 other Nations, we are rapidly approaching that de- 
 plorable state, in which individuals are to be 
 found in almost every community, who, having 
 lost all chai'acter for courage and self-respect, are no 
 longer insulted by the brave and the bullying only, 
 butlilly-livered cowards, timid though they be as 
 hares, are found buffetting and spitting upon them! 
 The arm of the untcrrified Democracy alone, is 
 strong and bold enough, to snatch our beloved 
 country, from the depths of this degradation. — 
 And be assured, that if in the vindication of Na- 
 tional honor, or in the fulfillment of its high des- 
 tiny, that Democracy shall be called upon to plant 
 onr standard upon the soil of Cuba and unfurl the 
 stars and stripes upon the balmy breezes of the 
 Southern Seas, England, France, Spain, and all the 
 rest may bluster and bully as they will, but our 
 glorious constellation, there once unrolled, shall 
 never grow dim, but with each returning day and 
 year, will wax brighter and brighter, until each 
 star shall blaze as a Sun, over the startled empire 
 of despotism, that now broods as an incubus of 
 perdition over those beautiful lands. 
 
 I object, lastly to the Whigs, their total want of 
 sympathy with foreigners, — * not with foreign 
 governments, nor with the titled and prosperous 
 ranks of foreign society, but with those masses 
 whose bitter lot it is to sow and reap not, and who 
 stand every where in the presence of their Rulers, 
 as "the sheep before her shearers." This want 
 of sympathy, was fully manifested by the passage 
 of the Alien and Sedition laws, by the instructions 
 to the Commander of our Mediterranean Squadron, 
 on which I have commented, is daily and hourly 
 manifested in the bearing of American officials 
 abroad, and General Scott spoke from the depths 
 of a Whig heart, when he wrote his celebrated let- 
 ter against the Naturalization of foreigners. It is 
 true, that since his name has been mentioned in 
 connection with the Presidency, the expression of 
 his views on this point, has undergone a change. 
 In the resolution on this subject, as found in the 
 Whig platform, there is a mathematical precision, 
 an iciness of detail, and a surgical sang froid, 
 which, I confess, chill within me. The Whigs 
 seem, as if with the very point of the dissecting 
 knife itself, they would pick out, grain by grain, 
 every seed of hope, yet left in the bruised but 
 still palpitating hearts of European patriots. How 
 does all this contrast with the letter of Gen. 
 
 *To this, tliere are exceptions, at the head of which 
 must bo ranked the brilliant organ of the Whig party in 
 the i^outh WoBt— The Louisville Journal. 
 
13 
 
 Pierce, addressed to a committe, inviting him on 
 behalf of the citizens of Philadelphia, to join them 
 in the celebration of the 4th of July past? Ho 
 says: "It is pleasant and profitable to dwell on the 
 associations connected with the revolutionary era, 
 and especially is it just to remember, that the bree- 
 zes, which then swept across the Atlantic, browjht 
 us, not mereli/ empty professions of sympathi/, 
 but treasure to support, and bold arms to strike In. 
 our behalf.'''' It was nobly and gracefully said; and 
 when I throw my eye back upon that eventful pe- 
 riod of our history, when this nation, then a feeble 
 colony crossed swords with the Mistress of the 
 Seas in support, of human rights, and behold such 
 men as Montgomery, Steuben, De Kalb, Koscius- 
 ko, and La Fayette, "quitting their own" to stand 
 on ours, to them "a foreign soil," and not merely 
 to stand on it, but to water it with their blood in 
 our defence, I can have no sympathy with, and 
 but little respect for the framers of that resolu- 
 tion. 
 
 It is not to us as men or as Americans, that 
 Crowned heads and Princes have and will continue 
 to oifer indiirnities, but it is the popular institutions 
 under which we live, that they seek thus to stigmatise 
 and to weaken. In the penal code of Kings, republi- 
 cans are felons; shall the tameness of our submission 
 enable them to add, that they are cowards also? 
 It is the mission of this Republic, to vindicate the 
 truth, the respectability, the moral grandeur of 
 the Republican principle, in the face of its foes. — 
 As the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so 
 did our fathers lift up that great principle, high 
 above palaces and thrones, for the healing of the 
 nations; and if, with folded arms and sealed lips, 
 we now see the National law, by worse than Van- 
 dal feet, trodden down, and the pale-faced, suffer- 
 ing multitudes who wo-nld turn to that uplifted 
 principle that they might live, stricken by tyrant 
 hands to the dust, we are false to the solemn trust 
 bequeathed by the past, false to duty, to glory, to 
 nature and to nature's God. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, I oppose the election of General 
 Scott, first, because he is a Whig and boasts that 
 he has ever been so; and secondly, because he is a 
 military chieftain, in the strongest acceptation of 
 that term. He has never held a civil office. For 
 more than forty years, he has been attached to the 
 army, and is, at this moment, at its head. For 
 thirty of those years, profound peace prevailed in 
 the Republic, yet, during all this period, none of 
 the professions or avocations of civil life, had for 
 him any fascination. He clung to his sword and 
 his epaulettes — thus showing, that he was a sol- 
 dier from choice, and that his spirit found in the 
 military camp, at once the nutriment of its strength 
 and the theatre of its highest gratifications. But 
 say our Whig friends, did not the Democrats elect 
 General Jackson to the Presidency , and what was 
 he but a military chieftain? I answer that he 
 was much more. At the call of his country, he 
 led her armies to battle and to victory, but when 
 "grim visaged war bad smoothed his wrinkled 
 front," he returned again to the peaceful pursuits 
 of private life. He was a lawyer by profession, a 
 profound jurist, and distinguished as such, on the 
 bench of the Supreme Court of his adopted State. 
 He was a statesman of varied experience, and of 
 
 matured, far-reaching views, and as such was 
 known upon the floor of the Senate of the United 
 States. From the records of history, and the 
 grateful remembrance which his countrymen cher- 
 ish of his services, you loarn that he was a milita- 
 ry chieftain; but look at him as he enters the lists 
 of rival Candidates for the Presidency. There is 
 no sword at his side, no plume upon his brow, — 
 he has thrown all these trappings aside, and comes 
 forth to receive the suffrages of his fellow-citizens, 
 unheralded by picture books, and songs of "Hail 
 to the Chief who in triumph advances," simply and 
 unostentatiously, as Ciucinnatus came from his 
 plough; — not so, I am grieved to observe, with the 
 hero of Lundy's Lane. 
 
 It will be conceded, I presume, that not merely 
 a statesman, but one of pre-eminent ability, and of 
 thorough acquaintance with the civil departments of 
 the government, is required to fill with success and 
 honor, the Presidential chair. Now, although poets 
 are said to be born such, statesmen are not; they 
 are made — made by toil and study, by much ob- 
 servation and prolonged experience in public af- 
 fairs — made in the Cabinet and in the Halls of 
 Legislation, not in the military camp. For it may 
 be safely asserted, that the milit;iry camp has in 
 all times been the nursery of licentiousness, of ar- 
 rogance, and of lawless ambition; and although 
 many statesmen have passed that ordeal of fiery 
 temptations unscathed, no statesman's habits of 
 thought or of action, were ever fashioned there. — 
 Such seems to be the nature of man, that habits of 
 command, continued for more than forty years, be- 
 get, almost necessarily, a haughty, imperious and 
 insubordinate temper. But this would ill become 
 the statesman of any country, and most especially, 
 the statesman, who should preside over this repub- 
 lic, and be charged with the maintenance of its 
 constitution. He should be thoroughly imbued 
 with the spirit of that Constitution, which is 
 the spirit of conciliation and , of compromise. — 
 How much of this is found in the life of Gen- 
 eral Scott, let his well known history an- 
 swer. Mr. Clay, once exclaimed, "give us war, 
 pestilence or famine, in preference to a blind and 
 heedless enthusiasm for mere mihtary renown," and 
 he refused his support to General Taylor, because, 
 as he says in his letter of 20th Sept., 1848, he was 
 "exclusively a military man, without the least ex- 
 perience in civil affairs." 
 
 But I will now read you an extract from the 
 speech of a distinguished Whig orator, (Judge 
 Johnston,) delivered at the late Niagara Celebra- 
 tion: "He hoped," says the Reporter, "that the 
 whigs would lose no time, but go to work manfully 
 for the success of the Whig Part\ . He reviewed 
 Scott's life, and compared it with the mihtary he- 
 roes and rulers of the Bible, from Moses and Saul, 
 declaring, there was c/rouud for the relujious prin- 
 ciple in the world, that the man who takes life in 
 battle, and sheds blood for his countrymen, shall 
 RULK OVER THEM. He referred to Washington, 
 Jackson, Harrison and Taylor, as instances of this 
 principle. 
 
 This is taking a bolder position than has ever 
 been assumed by the Kings and Princes of Europe. 
 They do, in point of fact, rule their subjects by 
 the force of arms, but they have not the indecency, 
 
14 
 
 openly to say so — they claim to govern them by 
 the (jrace of God. But here the Presidency is dis- 
 tinctly deiuaaded fo" General Scott, upon the "re- 
 ligious principle," that he has won it by the sword! 
 Turning away, however, from all argument and 
 from the opinions of statesmen living or dead, upon 
 the question, let us look for a moment into the past, 
 for the fruits of the military caieer. I unrol before 
 you the volume of Universal History, and what are 
 ita teachings? Who destroyed the RepubUc of an- 
 cient Rome? A military chieftain? Who over- 
 threw the Republics of ancient Greece, enslaving 
 that chivahic and noble people, and desolating their 
 fair and classic lands? A military chieftain? Who 
 swept away, as with a besom, the Republic of Eng- 
 land, the only one which has ever taken root in the 
 soil of our forefathers? A military chieftain — the 
 treacherous and godless General Monk! Who sapped 
 the foundations of the Republic of France, and ul- 
 timately crushed it as an egg shell in his iron hand? 
 A military chieftain! And who arc they, that from 
 year to year, and from month to month, are carving 
 with clotted swords,their way to every seat of power 
 in tiie convulsed and degraded republics of South 
 America? Military chieftains! Yes, fellow-citizens, 
 if you will go back into the cemetery of nations, 
 and walk there amid the tombs of all the govern- 
 ments which have flourished and fallen before us, 
 you will find that the sepulchres of the republics 
 that have gone by, will strike your pained vision, 
 as do the graves of the little children in our church 
 yards. Some are scarce a span long — they seem 
 to have perished in the first breath of 
 their being. Othsrs have struggled on, in con- 
 vulsions and inbbod, a few years longer, but how 
 few, alas ! how fev/, have reached the glorious me- 
 redian of manhood ! And over all these sepulchres, 
 is inscribed the same mournful epitaph : "Died of 
 the sword," "Died of the sword" — of that sword, 
 which Judge Johnston, embodying the sentiment 
 of the Whig pai ty, has told us has been destined 
 from the days of Moses and Saul to those of Gene- 
 ral Taylor, to rule mankind. Ah, is it not time, 
 that mankind thus long ruled by iron and by steel, 
 had risen in their might and shaken off their bond- 
 age ? Is it sadly true, that in this matter and in this 
 only, the chemistry of human experience is fated, 
 never, never, to extract wisdom from the past ? 
 Why is it, that in the nineteenth century, when 
 the human intellect is exploring, as on the wings 
 of the morning, the remotest departments of know- 
 ledge, when the arcana of the Universe, hitherto 
 undreamed of, are at every point unveiling them- 
 selves to the wooings of Philosophy, and when the 
 wondrous problem of human existence, in all things 
 t'l-se, is being wrought out with such sublime results 
 — why is it, that human intelligence and human for- 
 tune are doomed to remain Kta'.ionary, in all that 
 concerns government — in all that concerns politi- 
 cal organization — matters confessedly so vital to the 
 dignity and to the happiness of our race? Is it 
 indeed true, that, in the midst of the light which 
 flashes upon us fi-om the troubled and sanguinary 
 drama of the South American republics, and in 
 contempt of the voice of warning that comes up 
 to us from the tombs of more than fiffy centuries 
 — centuries whose inhabitants have lived and died 
 in slavery and in sorrow — is it true, that in despite 
 
 of all this, we are but children still, and that the 
 nodding plume, the gleaming scimetar, and the 
 "pride, pomp and circumstance of war," have still 
 power to dazzle our worse than infantile vision, and 
 hurry us on, as were hurried the nations of old, 
 blindly and heedlessly, behind the chariot wheels 
 of every Military Conqueror? If so, then indeed 
 have our fatherslivedin vain; in vain, we ourselves 
 do live; in vain "day unto day uttereth speech and 
 night unto night sheweth knowledge," to our dull 
 and unheeding ears! 
 
 But, respond our Whig friends, we have elected 
 General Harrison, a military cliieftain, to the Pre- 
 sidency, and again we have elected General Tay- 
 lor, a soldier without the slightest acquaintance 
 with the duties of civil life, and still the RepubUc 
 stands firmly upon its foundations. True, but hap- 
 pily these foundations were laid so deeply by our 
 fathers, that the "rains must descend, the floods 
 come, and the winds blow and beat" long upon 
 them, before the noble superstructure will be seen 
 to totter. Again, it must not be forgotten, that in 
 the dispensations of Providence, deemed by some 
 a special intervention, both of these public servants 
 were removed from the theatre of their earthly la- 
 bors and responsibilities, soon after their election. 
 But the evil has begun, and now, at the threshold, 
 is the time for tlie wise and for the good, to resist 
 it. Go to your dark rolling Mississippi, whose 
 rushing floods, a world would scarce suffice to stay, 
 and trace upward its resistless currents. As you 
 ascend, league by league, the stream grows narrower 
 and narrower, less and less deep and less turbid in its 
 waters, and so you go onward and upward, through 
 many a long and winding valley, and athwart many 
 a lofty range of hills, until at length, the stream, 
 ever dwindling, has shrunk now to a petty creek, 
 and now a rivulet, and now a trickling rill, bubbling 
 up before you, from some mountain side, a spark- 
 ling little fountain — tranquil and gentle, a very syl- 
 van gem, in which forest leaves and forest flowers, 
 bathe and mirror themselves. Such is the origin 
 and such is the progress of the mighty Mississippi 
 — such is the beginning and such the onward and 
 downward career of evil — such is the commence- 
 ment and such the formation of the habits of men 
 and of nations. It is the part of wisdom and of 
 patriotism, as I have already intimated, to resist 
 the beginnings of evil, nor wait as doth the. fool, 
 until our hands and feet shall be trammeled, when 
 resistance would be vain. Combat then, I would 
 say to the American people, at every point and by 
 every means, the introduction of a principle into 
 your pontics, which, if all the voices of the past be 
 not false, must, in the end, be fatal to the public 
 liberties. Much evil has already been done, by 
 the election of the chieftains referred to. We are 
 rapidly rendering ourselves insensible to those sen- 
 timents, which used to move upon us with electric 
 power — we are approaching that state of stupor 
 and of deadness, in which the people of South 
 America are found, and like them, it is to be feared, 
 we shall come in time, to regard the Presidency as 
 a prize, which may be'legitimately won by the sword. 
 Such, as I have shown you, was the distinct 
 teaching of one of the Whig orators, at the Niagara 
 celebration. Much evil, has moreover, been thus 
 done, in discouraging the hopeful fiiends of free- 
 
15 
 
 dom in other lauds. They are perplexed with 
 doubts and difficulties, in regard to this question 
 of self-government, to which we, happily, are 
 strangers. They look to our example and con- 
 tinued existence as a republic, as at once their vin- 
 dication and their beacon light. But when they 
 cast their eyes over the sea of tinic, there rises up 
 before them, a rock, towering in height, rugged, 
 precipitous and grim with its utter blackness — a 
 rock whose base the billow ever laslieth, and around 
 whose summit, the storms and the lightnings ever 
 play. It is the rock of Military Power; and 
 about that rock, for many a weary league, are 
 gathered the wrecks and fragments of every free 
 government on which the sun has risen. When 
 therefore they behold our vessel of state, charged 
 with the destinies of this republic, with all sails 
 spread, bearing right down on this rock, they trem- 
 ble and are filled with dismay. And on the other 
 hand, be assured, that if to the examples cited, be 
 added the election of General Scott, from the 
 palaces of St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Naples 
 and Madrid, the jewelled finger of regal scorn will 
 be pointed at us, with the exclamation, "Behold 
 the Model Republic, professing to be governed by 
 great fundamental principles, already drunken 
 with enthusiasm for military renown ! Behold her, 
 going the way of all the republics of the earth, 
 casting herself, her creed, her traditions and her 
 glory, beneath the Juggernaut car of the Military 
 Conqueror!" Many and many may be the centu- 
 ries which shall pass over this green earth, before 
 these words of scoffing shall fill on the aching 
 heart of the American Democracy ! 
 
 Can it be possible, that the American people will 
 deliberately swallow a deadly poison, merely be- 
 cause they are young and vigorous, and can resist 
 for a long time, its certainly pernicious influences? 
 Will they imitate the tormentors of the old world, 
 who stretch their victims on the rack, and as the 
 machine turns, and joint after joint is heard to 
 ■crack and to dislocate, the surgeon stands by the 
 side of the sufferer, and feeling his pulse, reports 
 how much more he can endure and live? Shall 
 we thus deal with our institutions? Shall we 
 stretch them upon the rack of torturing and fear- 
 fully perilous experiments, and shall our own solici- 
 tude, and our only enquiry be, how much more 
 they can bear and not be overthrown? 
 
 Let no man charge me with being the enemy of 
 Gen. Scott, or with desiring, in any degree, to sully 
 his hard-earned fame. To him, as to all who have 
 served their country well, be every honor given, 
 compatible with that country's safety. But can- 
 dour obliges me to say, that I would rather this 
 nation's treasury should be exhausted and thrown 
 in one dazzling heap at his feet; rather that moiui- 
 ments should be reared to him, whose summits 
 should mingle with the skies; rather that at his 
 coming, cities and States should rise up and call 
 him blessed, and one loud acclaim ascend in his 
 praise, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of 
 the Pacific — rather, infinitely rather, that all 
 this wealth, and honor and adulation should be 
 lavished upon him, than that he should be elevated 
 to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic, for whose 
 duties he is so utterly disqualified, and thus es- 
 iablish a precedent, fraught with interminable evil 
 
 to us, and chilling with despondency, the friends 
 of human rights throughout the world. 
 
 At stated periods of the year, you are accus- 
 tomed to listen to eloquent discourses, setting forth 
 the inestimable value of our institutions and of the 
 freedom which they secure; yet, there is reason to 
 believe, that wc reflect but too httle upon these 
 things, and have, at no time, a sufficiently hearty 
 and exalted appreciation of the privileges which 
 we enjoy. It is not for the robust to know the 
 value of health, but for him who languisheth upon 
 a bed of disease. The demon of practical op- 
 pression has never crossed your pathway — you 
 have never felt his icy and withering gripe. With 
 you, human despotism, is but a nursery tale. Its 
 grim and phantom form may have served to amuse 
 or startle your childhood's hours, and ai-ound 
 your fireside of a winter's night, the story of its 
 atrocities may, many a time, have stirred your 
 manly spirits to indignation; but most of you, liave 
 never been in those foreign lands, where this story 
 is so livingly and fearfully realized. You have not 
 entered the dungeons of Europe, and beheld them 
 crowded with patriots, whose only crime is, that 
 they loved the land that gave them birth, better 
 than the tyrants that despoiled it. You have never 
 been on board of those prision-ships, which from 
 time to time, leave European shores, transporting 
 these patriots by multitudes, a tliousand leagues 
 across the sea, and casting them upon inhospitable 
 coasts, where, far from kindred and country, in 
 poverty and brokenness of heart, they lay them- 
 selves down to die. You have never examined 
 those instruments of torture, to be found in the 
 prisons of the old world, and still but too often 
 used, on which every arm that strikes a blow for 
 human rights, is liable to be wrung and broken. — 
 You have not walked through European capitals, 
 and seen them filled with the spies of the Gov- 
 ernment, pursuing your footsteps to evei-y place of 
 business and of pleasure, noting your minutest ac- 
 tions and catching with greedy ears, the bi eathings of 
 your most secret thoughts. If you had lookrd up- 
 on this picture, you might have some appreciation 
 of your own political blessings, and of what, un- 
 happily, other nations are deprived. But you may 
 learn something of the value of these blessings, 
 by what they cost — the blood of, as I verily be- 
 lieve, the noblest band of martyrs that ever drew 
 a sword or put their trust in the God of battles. — 
 It was not gold or silver or precious stones that 
 bought them — they are altogether above the price 
 of the treasure that perisheth. Could the inhabi- 
 tants of Spain, of Italy, of Austria and of Russia, 
 coin your California mines into one great offer ing, 
 and lay it humbly at the feet of their Kings and 
 Princes, they could not i)urchase from them, one 
 free press, nor could they, with all that gold, buy 
 the privilege of holding one such public meeting 
 as we hold here to-nigiit. You may estimate the 
 worth of these blessings also, by what the good 
 and the truly great of all climes and ages, have 
 been willing to pay for them. Open again the 
 volume of History, and you will find, that in puf 
 suit of these blessings, which, though piecious 
 above rubies, you enjoy as the common air, the 
 patriotic and philanthropic, the true lovers of their 
 land and of their race, h""" ever been ready to 
 
IG 
 
 
 pacrifico thoir time, their toll and their fortune; for 
 them, they have submitted to wander in exile, the 
 victims of remorseless persecution, homeless and 
 fiiendless; they have lived in the caves of the earth, 
 and in the gorges of the mountains; they have 
 defied chains and prisons and racks and the curl- 
 ing flames of the stake, and from age to age, in 
 Ttncounted millions, have poured out their blood 
 like water, and bleached with their bones a thou- 
 Band battlefields. And yet, these blessings, they 
 have not had! You have them, but you have them, 
 if I may be allowed the use of the hallowed meta- 
 phor, "in earthen vessels." You have them in in- 
 stitutions partaking of the frailty which belongs to 
 all that is of earth — -institutions fated at every mo- 
 ment of their precarious existence, to find in the 
 selfishness and guilty ambitionof the human heart, 
 enemies that never slumber, that never grow weary. 
 
 Let the Democracy then be vigilant, strong in 
 faith, resolute in purpose. Let them not, under a 
 momentary impulse of gratitude or of admiration 
 for militiiry renown, plant a tree, which, though 
 slow in growth, it may be, must bring forth fruit, 
 evil and altogether evil. The acorn has germi- 
 nated, but is still beneath the heel of the Ameri- 
 can people, and may be crushed; if nurtured by 
 their folly and the folly of their descendants, a 
 century hence, it may be an oak whose knarled 
 truak and spreading branches, will mock at the 
 tempest! This truly appalling military power, now 
 presents itself tows, clothed with its most intoxi- 
 cating witcheries. But we know not, fellow- 
 citizens, we know not, what we worship. The 
 Prophet of Khorassan wears, as yet, for us, his 
 glittering veil; and may that God who led our 
 flithers through the paths of the revolution, grant, 
 in his infinite mercy, that this nation may never 
 be called to stand, stricken and cowering, beneath 
 the terrific glances of that power, when the veil, 
 which now shrouds its frightful form and features, 
 shall have been torn away forever. 
 
 Our Whig friends often ask us, how is it possible 
 that we can be enthusiastic in the support of such 
 a man as Gen. Pierce, and they really seem to en- 
 tertain a most amiable apprehension, lest we should 
 get into a towering excitement about, what they 
 profess to regard as very small matters, and thus 
 render ourselves ridiculous! I must confess, that 
 I believe them sincere, in the surprise which they 
 express, at the tides of Democratic feeling that 
 arc swelling around them, and that they are alto- 
 gether unable to explain this state of things. In 
 Whig priufiplcs, it is lamentably true, that there 
 is nothing, absolutely nothing, to excite human en- 
 thusiasm. It is a creed, whose dwelling place is 
 within the arctic circle of the moral world. Hence, 
 its votaries have been driven to rely on Tippecanoe 
 and the Thames, log cabins, hard cider, "coons," 
 ekinned and unskinned, Monterey, Buena Vista 
 and Cerro Gordo. These are the themes over 
 which Whig or:itor3 grow eloquent, in glorification 
 of which Whig poets sing, and in the contempla- 
 tion and discussion of which, the Whig .msses en- 
 deavor to persuade themselves that they er.joy a 
 Bpecies of elation, which they call enthusiasm. 
 Now, although, in the ataiidess public and private 
 lif • of Gen Pierce, in the inflexibility and loyalty, 
 with which he has devoted himself to the constitu- 
 
 tion and the Union, and in his eminent civil and 
 military services, there is much and quite enough, 
 to move us to ardour in his support, yet, none of 
 these things mingle at all, as an element, in that 
 volume of excitement, which is sweeping over the 
 land, as a conflagration borne on the wings of the 
 hurricane, sweeps over the prairies of the West. 
 No, fellow-citizens; it is the Democratic creed, 
 which is the electric battery, that is sending the 
 thrill of its inspirations along every nerve of the 
 National Democratic heart. It is altogether natural 
 that it should be so; indeed, it could not be otherwise. 
 For he who studies and understands your princi- 
 ples, who appreciates them and dwells, as it were, 
 in their midst, whose soul is steeped in those princi- 
 ples, it is just as natural that that soul should glow 
 with enthusiasm, as that the edges of the storm 
 cloud, should glow and flash with the hghtnings 
 which are sleeping in its bosom. Yes, he who ex- 
 amines the Democratic faith, in all its length and 
 breadth and depth, who comprehends its all pervad- 
 ing philanthropic sympathies, its supreme triumph 
 over the hoary headed errors of the past, the gran- 
 deur with which it seeks to clothe the character 
 of man, and catches those visions of glory with 
 which, in prophetic spirit, it sweeps the horizon of 
 the future — to expect that he, surrendered up to 
 inspirations like these, should be without enthusi- 
 asm, is to expect that he could stand upon the Ta- 
 ble Rock, and be unmoved, amid the dashing cat- 
 aracts and pealing thunders of Niagara. We are 
 enthusiastic, and right well do we know, 'the rea- 
 son of the hope that is within us,' and whence 
 springeth the fire that kindles our spirits. Let us 
 not then be alarmed or ashamed, at the jeerings 
 of our Whig friends. With their cause, with their 
 practices, we have nothing, we desire to have noth- 
 ing in common. We are emphatically "children 
 of the day" and upon the waving folds of our ban- 
 ner, is pencilled in letters of sunshine, the en- 
 chanted word, which is stirring the moral world 
 to its deepest foundations — that word is pro- 
 gress. Let us not seek then, to chill our- 
 selves down to the temperature of those, who, 
 worshipping the past and living for the pres- 
 ent, shrink, like children in the dark, from every 
 hand, as spectral and boding, that would break the 
 seals which lock from us, the teeming fountains of 
 the future. The effort would be vain; for Whig- 
 ery is, at best, but a sluggish stream, which niakes 
 its way onward, struggling and slow, amid the 
 deep valleys — now looking up tremblingly to the 
 sun, and now hiding itself stealthily beneath the 
 soil — but Democracy is an Alpine torrent, which, 
 wild with its own native freshness and vigor, is ever 
 leaping fiom precipice to precipice, fascinating the 
 world with the music of its roar, and dazzling it by 
 the rainbows which overarch its pathway. Such is 
 our cause, about which come thronging all that is 
 enkindling in human hope and all that is grand in 
 this earth's patriotism and philanthropy. In it, we 
 do and well may glory. To it, we may give, not 
 merely our profoundest convictions, but our labor, 
 our fortunes, our love. In its behalf, we may, 
 without a blush, indulge the gushings of the wild- 
 est enthusiasm, and before the world, clap our 
 hands for very joy, in anticipation of its victories. 
 
 \ 
 
 825 
 
. . .^^ .0- 
 
 
 S- ./^, 
 
 --?- 
 
 % ' 
 
 > I. 
 
 
 "o 
 
 o'^ 
 
 
 .^-^ 
 
 '^>< 
 
 .-o- 
 
 %> 
 
 .^^' 
 
 •*- 
 
 i* 
 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 . ' 
 
 ' <■ « 
 
 
 
 ■ \^" 
 
 
 
 -v^, .-^^ 
 
 .:-^ >^ 
 
 ■^7?;>^' 
 
 .^ -^t: 
 
 A -71 
 
 .^"^■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 •V 
 
 
 -0' 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 '\' 
 
 ,0^ >^'^^*;'^ 
 
 .^" '^>. 
 
 
 ;-^^^^ 
 
 
 ..-^ -T-.L. 
 
 
 
 .r'^' 
 
 ,,-^- ^.^ ^.^ 
 
 ^'^ . '^ v. 
 
 
 
 
 ■0' 
 
 ^\<^ 
 
 ^' , ^ ' 
 
 %;'^ 
 
 
 ^ a"* ^-" #'''^^^^ •* 
 
 
 
 
 i^^^\r .,.,;v*^^'»'\^' .^. 
 
 
 
 
 "■^/> ,^\^'' 
 
 ,•0- c' 
 
 «. -^^ 
 
 ^^ V> 
 
 .0 o 
 
 '^ V 
 
 -■>, i- 
 
 "^y <^^ 
 
 
 x^^ ■'^>-. ^-. 
 
 x^^^^. 
 
 
 ..^' V 
 
 .6^ 
 
 
 ^. !/ 
 
 1 ' ^f* s » o / 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 a'^ V ^ ' 
 
 ..■ ,^v 
 
 ""■ % 
 
 
 ■'% 
 
 ^>-^-.%-^' 
 
 
 
 '' ''/ s^ v\ 
 
 •O ^ , V "< 
 
 
 ■^^ ' ■» -- " .\ , , 
 
 ft , -/* 
 
 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 
 
 '^ '"oo^ 
 
 
 xO^^. *, - 
 
 
 » 1 * " 
 
 
.^' 
 
 
 
 '-e^. 
 
 
 ■**; 
 
 
 :^'-/ 
 
 
 ^■C? 
 
 -0- 
 
 
 ^> .0 
 
 
 
 ""b 
 
 
^■» 
 
 m 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 011 898 445 6 * 
 
 iiiii 
 
 
 
 M§ 
 
 Aim 
 
 m 
 
 (1 (><*('*' 
 
 iiitfAiiiHH*t>